Directory submission is a concept that has grown in both popularity and importance in recent years. Web site owners are constantly looking for ways to not only increase the amount of traffic directly received, but also, possibly more important, their rank with search engines such as Google and Yahoo! Such search engines use a formula to calculate where a website appears based on certain keywords that are searched. One of the factors in determining this is the number of back links a web site has.

If you haven’t guessed it or don’t know what a back link is, a back link is basically what a directory submission will give a web site owner. A back link refers to any link coming from any other web site to one’s own web site. Even small web sites have hundreds of back links coming into their site, even if just because of a picture they have hosted on their web site is posted in various forums. Back links can be attained in many ways, such as the one mentioned above, but arguably the easiest way to obtain quality back links is through directories.

Link exchanges have been tried, paying for links is still used, but when it comes down to it these can be costly and inefficient. Not only is it hard to find the right site to trade or buy links from, it can be difficult to find a web site to do this with in the first place. That is where directory submission comes into play. Submitting to a directory is an incredibly simple process that generally takes around half a minute to complete. By filling out a few forms, the directory owner will then accept or reject the entry (usually they will accept it), and, once accepted, that directory will provide a quality back link for that web site.

Not only can this back link help with driving traffic to the site and improving the web site’s status with search engines, it can also raise another score that has grown in important, Google PR scores. Google PR rankings are widely used by web site owners when evaluating a web site. A Google PR can translate into more advertisers being willing to advertise on a particular site, more sites being willing to offer links to the site, and more people visiting the site in general. Google PR is an incredibly important tool for a web site that should be paid attention to.

In any case, directory submission is easy to do and available in both free and paid forms. Paid options allow such benefits as better placement, allowing for more click-through visitors from the directory to your site. Both methods have their advantages, but either choice offers web site owners the ability to increase their back links in an incredibly simple manner.

About the Author:

The author is the proud owner of isulong seoph Directory . For more details visit isulong seoph and feel free to submit your site.

Popularity: 10% [?]

Many people use article distribution as a technique for building inbound links to their site. For many, this strategy has run into problems because of the Google duplicate content filter.

Google Duplicate Content Filter for SEO – The Bad

Google is often touted as the leader in search engine technology and processes. In many cases, this is absolutely true. One fairly recent change, however, has proven to be a serious goof by the boys and girls at Google.

In an interesting move, Google has begun using a duplicate content filter to eliminate excessive listings based on the same content. In practical terms, this means Google filters out many of the pages on various sites that are reflective of a single article pulled out of an article directory. If 500 people pick up and publish this article, for instance, Google will filter out a majority of the pages on these sites that publish it. Lucky me.

Personally, I don’t really have a problem with the duplicate filter as it theoretically should work. There is, however, one major problem. As any article writer knows, Google seems unable or unwilling to differentiate the original content source from those sites that pick up and publish the article. In many cases, this means your site is one that gets filtered out. This leads to the odd situation where this article on my site does not get indexed by Google, but other sites using it do! In a twist of the usual situation, Yahoo and MSN seem to be able to tell the difference.

If you are publishing articles, there is really only one way to beat this problem as far as I can tell. The articles you submit to directories should not include the keywords you are focusing on. Modified versions that focus on a particular keyword phrase then should be put on your site. Finding the dividing line between what makes these two pages duplicates is not an easy step, but it is often worth a quick re-write. Re-writing is, of course, much easier than coming up with the original content.

In truth, article writers should have been taking this approach prior to the duplication filter being instituted by Google. The reason, of course, has to do with the nature and rankings of the article directories. The big directories are valued highly by Google, so submitting any keyword intense article leads to problems with or without the filter. The primary issue is the article in the directory will outrank the similar one on your site.

At this point, the Google duplication filter is just something we have to live with. One can hope Google will make a tweak so it can recognize the original work, but this may just be wishful thinking.

Halstatt Pires is with Marketing Titan – providing internet marketing services.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Do you post to message boards, e-mail discussion lists, classified ads sites, FFA sites or newsgroups? People will usually read the subject line before they read your ad or message, so it’s important they get noticed. Below are ten simple, but powerful tips to get your ads or messages noticed:

1. Use extra white space creatively in your subject line. You can add extra blank spaces between your words or letters.

2. Combine capital letters with lower case letters. Use all capital letters in every other word or use a capital letter between every other lower case letter.

3. Add text symbols in your subject line. You could use them between words and letters. Start and end your subject with a text symbol. ( *, $, >,{,] )

4. Begin your subject line with the word “STOP!”. People have been trained their whole life to stop what they are doing when they see that word.

5. Ask people a question in your subject line. We all went to school and were repetitively branded to answer questions.

6. Use the word “FREE” in your subject line. Your offer should be attractive to your target audience. It could be free information, software, trials, etc.

7. Begin your subject line with an “online smile ”. People use smiles offline to gain people’s attention and to win their trust, why not use them online too.

8. Don’t use unbelievable claims in your subject line. People have or know some who has been ripped off and trained themselves to ignore those claims.

9. Don’t use all capital letters in your subject line. It is hard to read, looks unprofessional, and on the internet it’s considered a symbol for shouting.

10. Test different subject lines to see which ones draws the most traffic to your web site. Also, read the FAQ before posting a message or ad anywhere.

Quote of the Day:

“The frontiers are not east or west, north or south, but wherever a man fronts a fact.” — Henry David Thoreau

Popularity: 13% [?]

Hello My Friend! So you are going to reserve your new domain name. If you avoid these top 7 web domain name registration mistakes you would not only have more valuable domains but also a high resale value if you want to sell it later on.

7. Waiting to Reserve Domain Name till Finish This Article I don’t know how but it seems that a good domain name do not come in to the mind of a single person. May be up to hundreds of people are thinking about that domain name. And the one who reserves it first is the winner. So if you have a good domain name in mind, don’t even wait finishing this article. Go and reserve that domain name first. You do not have to use that domain name at all if you later found it to be not so fit. But you have it, you can sell it or use it for something else or at least you won’t be sorry because domain names are very cheap these days. Remember domain names are cheap but only until they are not reserved.

6. Register Someone Trademark as a Web Domain Name Do an exhaustive research that your domain name is not someone else trademark. Laws are changing rapidly everywhere and even ordinary surfers feel bad about a website when its web domain name is looking like a cyber squatted web domain name. Also there is a chance of getting legal notice for doing this. They may not ask damages but they can easily take back domain name! So please either do not use anything that looks like some trademarks in your domain name or do a research. Again if a trademark infringement war starts you would be in better position if you have reserved it first so get it now!

5. Spelling Your Web Domain Name Is Difficult Can anyone easily spell your domain name At least your possible customers should be able to spell it right the first time. Try this: Talk to someone on phone and ask to spell your domain name. If he needs to confirm the spelling by re asking then probably it is not an easily spelled domain name. Make your domain name easy to spell because that avoids typing mistakes and also you would not have to tell every one twice about your domain name spellings.

4. Domain Name Having No Connection to Business Name Try as much as possible that your domain name is your business name and vice versa. If it is not possible then you have to publicize two names, which is not only difficult for you to market but difficult for the customers also because he has to remember two things instead of one.

3. Not Protecting Domain Hijacking Double check your name and contact is listed in Whois as owner and technical contact of the domain name. Your hard developed domain can be hijacked by your ISP or the person doing registration for you. Not all are bad. Some may be lazy only. They have already typed their details that can be auto filled in to registration forms. But this is their problem. You should insist your name and contact email on Contact Information. Mostly used fields are: Registrant Contact Information, Administrative Contact Information, Technical Contact Information, Billing Contact Information.

2. Anything Other Than Dot Com for Business Web Domain Name Registration If you are registering a domain name for business purposes then make sure you get it in dot com like “YouDomainName.com”. There are many reasons for this like it is the default extension in user minds and in most browsers. If you get say “YouDomainName.Net” then you would be one-way sharing your traffic with “YouDomainName.com” which is not a good idea.

1. Domains of More Than 7 Letters Though Domain names can have up to 67 Letters length, very few people would be eager to type your domain name for just seeing your offers. Also typing errors grow exponentially with lengthy names. So whenever possible use least possible domain name length.

This post is written by David Murry. David is an Domain Name Analysis Expert at Solaxim :: Domain and Web Site Design Experts. His website contains more articles related to domain name services.

Popularity: 9% [?]

As an Internet Marketer you want to gather as many links as you can to your website so that it appears to be an authority on the subject for the search engines. This kind of traffic is reasoned by many to be "free" traffic. It’s not similar to pay per click (PPC) or other kinds of traffic where you are paying for people to visit your website. Anyone that finds you through a search engine is really a free visitor! And if they purchase from you, then that means they are free money too!

Obtaining a high ranking in this field is calculated by many to be a specialist art, with the search engines elite trying to keep one step ahead of the search engine optimization gurus. With the continual impermanence in this technology it is very difficult to keep up to date with them and to keep your site optimized and ranking high.

This is why backlinks indeed work out to be one of the most productive search engine optimization techniques on the market. They are cheap, quick to generate, and long lasting. They are also not likely to ever be entirely penalised by the search engines. Yes, certain types of links or links to certain sites may depreciate from your search engine ranking, but quality backlinks will always be better for your website and your business.

A backlink is for all practical purposes a link from another website to your own. Here we are talking about one way links, i.e. they link to your site, but you do not reciprocate. This supports more value in the eyes of the search engine and entitles you to much more.

There are a lot of diverse ways to get backlinks to your website, including:

Articles – submit articles to the article directory and the resource box will accommodate a link to your website – a free backlink!

Directory entries – every niche will have at least several hundred directories of websites that are pertinent to that niche. Get yourself listed in all of these, and you have a ton of free backlinks!

Three way link exchange – unlike conventional reciprocal link exchanges where two sites point to each other, this is a somewhat more cunning way, which is meant to trick the search engines. It does mean one of the link partners needs two websites though. Website A links to Website B which links to Website C. Person A owns Websites A and C and Person B owns Website B. To the search engines, these appear as one way links (at the moment! There is gossip of the search engines catching on to this).

Forums – posting in forums is yet another mode of getting your link seen. If you engage in the forum discussion then usually you can have a link to your website in your signature file. Remember though that you must add value and not just blatantly promote your website or post to get your signature file shown as this will result in ill feeling towards you and eventual blacklisting or exclusion.

Blogs – putting comments on blogs is another way to get backlinks. However, be aware that if you are not adding value with your comment it may well be considered spam and then deleted and blacklisted. So don’t just post "great blog", writing something that is useful and becoming.

Backlinks are surprisingly easy for you to obtain with a small amount of work. If you don’t want to do the work yourself then you can very easily hire someone who will do it on your behalf, though make sure they will be ethical about it!

With backlinks you can increase your search engine rankings and get yourself free traffic, which means free money when they buy your product!

This post is written by Vincent Murphy. He can help you to find the best home based business ideas and money making opportunities so you can work at home/Backlinks Equal Free Traffic. visit: http://www.HomeGrail.com

Popularity: 9% [?]

Dear Friend,

I’ll never forget the time one of my websites made it to the top 200 of Yahoo.

I had been optimizing the site for a week and a half, and I didn’t have a clue what I was doing. I had taken the job because my boss thought I was “good with computers”.

I had been typing in my keywords trying to find even the faintest hint of my work, when it showed up like a golden harp on spot 196. I knew that if I could get it to that position, I could get it into the #1 spot.

Less than 2 weeks later, I had not just 1 keyword, but 5 different highly searched phrases in #1 spots on many different search engines.

My company saw a customer increase of 500% within 6 months.

I, of course, got a huge raise… and I learned something very important:

That if a 21-year-old with literally NO REAL computer experience could do that for a company, search engine optimization HAD to be easy.

And it is. I feel strongly that of all the different ways to market a business online, SEO is not only the easiest, but the safest for the business owner. I mean, you can’t really get scammed with FREE can you?

Still Afraid? Let’s Take a Closer Look…

Optimizing a web site is broken down into 3 steps.

Step 1: Find your keyword. Your keyword is a word or phrase that you as a business owner have chosen to advertise on the search engines with. Advertising under highly searched terms give you more traffic (more on this later).

Step 2: Onsite Optimization. This step gives you the business owner complete control over how you want the search engines to see your website. Do you want to be pretty? Do you want to be Big & Strong? You get to decide!

Step 3: Offsite Optimization. My favorite part of SEO. This is where you get to use the Internet to meet great people from all over the world, and trade information with them. You’ll meet business owners, hobbyists, professors, I’ve even met a few actors!

Is That It? Sounds More Like Goofing Off!

I told you. It’s extremely simple. You just have to NOT be afraid, and be willing to learn! Sure, there’s some clockwork that goes into this behind the scenes, but those 3 steps are the only work you have to do!

Once I realized that formula, I began to optimize page after page. Then, the company I worked for added those services to their customer package. I began to optimize all KINDS of websites for all sorts of people!

Want help getting Targeted Traffic?

Find out how my students are experiencing Increased Web Site Traffic by visiting www.optimize123.com today!

This post is written by Jeremy Estes. Jeremy is the author of the Optimize 1-2-3 Training Guide and currently provides free coaching to students via email and telephone seminars.

“If you’re serious about flooding your web site with Targeted Traffic, the Optimize 1-2-3 system is a fast, fun and easy way to start!”

Popularity: 6% [?]

Choosing a domain name for your website is a very important decision, and should not be taken lightly. A bad choice of name could seriously affect the potential profitability of your online business, and prevent it achieving as much success as it should do.

There are many factors you should consider when selecting a domain name.

Firstly, you should try and include your main keyword(s) in your name if at all possible. This will help your site in terms of search engine rankings, because search engines generally rank websites slightly higher if they include their main keyword(s) in their domain name.

In saying that though, ideally it should be relatively short and easy to remember. This is fairly obvious, but is a mistake that a lot of webmasters make. I always prefer names without any dashes or numbers in, as this increases the risk of people mistyping your address into their browsers, and try to keep them as short and as memorable as possible.

Sometimes though it’s just not possible or desirable to include your keywords in your domain name. For example, your main keyword terms or phrases could be two or three words long, and if they’re long words as well, then any available domain name you find that contains these keywords may simply be too long. Also, you may decide that any domain name containing your main keywords would be too generic and unmemorable, so in this instance you would probably have more success trying to brand yourself, and creating a unique, distinctive domain name, that sets you apart from your competition.

Indeed a lot of major companies now prefer to brand themselves with a memorable domain name, and don’t include any keywords at all in their name. You only have to look at some of the biggest companies online to see evidence of this. A lot of offline companies also do this when building an online presence, by simply using their offline company name as their domain name.

One other thing to consider is that you should not use a trademarked name in your own domain name. This is again fairly obvious, but can be a serious problem. You should double-check before you choose a domain name as you could potentially face legal action in the future when the company who owns the trademarked name finds out about your site. At the very least they could demand that you give up the right to the domain name, which could be catastrophic to your business if you have to suddenly drop your name and go for a completely new one.

Finally, whatever name you choose, I recommend, if at all possible, to choose a name with the suffix .com. This will instantly give your website increased credibility, as people still refer to online businesses as dot-coms, even those people that have never used the internet. Also I know from personal experience that when I browse various websites I will always give more credence to a website ending in .com, than one ending in .info or .biz, for example.

James Woolley is a successful marketer who has several money-making sites in various niches. His latest site is a free internet marketing resource guide, which also includes a newsletter filled with free tips and bonuses.

Popularity: 5% [?]

With the major search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN seemingly changing their algorithms on a regular basis, it sometimes feels like you’re fighting a losing battle trying to keep up with them. We’re all constantly tweaking our websites and chasing links in a desperate attempt to grab, or hold on to, that elusive spot on the first page of results for our chosen keywords, so is SEO really worth the effort?

Well firstly if you have optimized your site well, both through onpage and offpage optimization, and manage to obtain top rankings in the search engines, then you can get a great deal of free traffic to your site, depending on how popular your keywords are that you are ranking well for. So yes of course in this instance SEO is most definitely worth spending time over.

The problem, however, is that if you are launching a new site and plan to get the bulk of your traffic from search engines, you may end up being disappointed because it can take many months before you even get close to achieving high rankings. This is particularly true of Google and Yahoo. MSN is easier to rank highly for, but this is negated by the fact that a lot less people use MSN than Google and Yahoo.

This is why when I now launch a new site I’m focused more on receiving traffic from other sources, and concentrating almost solely on building my own list of subscribers. There are endless ways to start getting immediate traffic to a new site and start building your list.

I personally like to post in forums, write and submit articles to article directories and relevant ezines, pay for advertising in these same ezines, write and submit press releases, promote a squeeze page on traffic exchanges (if my site is related to making money online), credit-based safelists (free safelists are a waste of time) and other list-building services. I also like to write free reports and ebooks (containing links to my site) which can be freely given away (and rebranded for greater distribution) creating a viral effect.

I still carry out the standard onpage search engine optimization techniques, and offpage techniques such as getting keyword-rich text links from directories and other related sites, but I now no longer base my whole future profit model on obtaining top search engine rankings. My thoughts are that if they come they come, but whatever happens as long as I keep building a list of subscribers for each of my sites I know that I can always achieve good profits regardless of where I rank in the search engines.

It also eliminates any stress that can occur when the leading search engines change their algorithms. I’ve seen many instances of long-established websites whose entire livelihood relied on the traffic they received as a result of being at the top of the search engines, but who suddenly saw their sites disappear from the first few pages of results, wiping their profits out almost immediately. Some of these sites had no mailing lists either so they had no alternative profit model in place.

Hopefully you can see that while everyone wants top search engine rankings, it’s not the be all and end all, and certainly shouldn’t be used to base your whole business model on. There are numerous successful websites online who couldn’t care less about SEO, and indeed are nowhere to be found in the search engines. They rely on other traffic-generating techniques, such as viral marketing, joint venturing, or recruiting affiliates, for example, to build and grow their online business.

To conclude, while it’s important to spend some time optimizing your website and obtaining links for SEO purposes, spending several hours a day tweaking every page of your site just to please the search engines is not a productive way to spend your time. Instead you should be focusing on building your list of targeted subscribers, using other more immediate traffic-generating methods where you can see results very quickly, and not have to wait several months before you’re ranking highly in the search engines.

Just keep adding good quality content to your site, and providing a reason for your visitors to return to your site. This should have the effect of boosting your search engine rankings anyway, without having to spend hours on SEO, because other sites will start linking to you automatically, and the search engines will generally reward your site with a higher ranking if it is constantly updated with good content.

This post is written by James Woolley. James is a successful marketer who has several money-making sites in various niches. His latest site is a free internet marketing resource guide, which also includes a newsletter filled with free tips and bonuses.

Popularity: 5% [?]

Effective SEO strategies require a lot of effort and time. Although in the search engines market exist very advanced tools that cost a lot, there are many free SEO tools which can help the novice and advanced SEO marketer to save valuable time.
Here is a list of free and proven for their effectiveness SEO online instruments:

1. http://www.alexaranking.com . It displays multiple domains instead of one. Therefore, you can have instant traffic results from Alexa Rankings instead of typing and search each time separately.

2. http://www.xml-sitemaps.com . Sitemaps are extremely important for websites because they help search engines crawl and index them. This is a free xml sitemap generator.

3. http://www.123promotion.co.uk/directorymanager . You can track your submissions to various web directories and you can also visit regularly to see new directories added to the list. You just tick the appropriate submission boxes when you submitted your website. It’s very easy to use it.

4. http://www.123promotion.co.uk/ppc/index.php. This is a very powerful tool. It displays, based on the Overture and Wordtracker keyword search tools, similar data, including search figures from the previous month. It also adds statistics for average searches per hour, day, week, projected figures for the next 12 months and then also a figure to see how searches may look in 3 years from now.

5. http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/keyword-density . This keyword density tool is useful for helping webmasters/SEO’s achieve their optimum keyword density for a set of key terms/keywords. This tool will analyze your chosen URL and return a table of keyword density values for one, two, or three word key terms.

6. http://www.mcdar.net/KeywordTool/keyWait.asp . This is another Excellent Resource. When you enter the appropriate URL and keyword, it will display Pagerank and Back links pages for the Top 10 websites.

7. http://www.123promotion.co.uk/tools/robotstxtgenerator.php . You can create a free robots.txt file with this resource. So, you will be able to direct the search engines to follow the pages structure of your website and also direct the search engines not to follow and crawl specific web pages of your website you don’t want to be crawled.

All you have to do is filling the fields and when the robots.txt file is created you upload it to your root of your web server.

8. http://www.nichebot.com . This website displays keyword data using Wordtracker and Google search results. You just enter the keyword and press the button.

9. http://www.webconfs.com/domain-stats.php . You Enter the domain and get: domain age, number of pages indexed, and number of backlinks. The statistics include Alexa Taffic Rank, Age of the domains, Yahoo WebRank, Dmoz listings, count of backlinks and number of pages indexed in Search Engines like Google, Yahoo, Msn etc.

It will help you figure out why some of your competitors are ranking better than you.

10. http://comparesearchengines.dogpile.com . Shows top results from 3 search engines. This tool helps you get all kind of statistics of your competitor’s domains.

11. http://www.marketleap.com/verify/default.htm . This verification tool checks to see if your site is in the top three pages of a search engine result for a specific keyword. You enter your URL/Keyword and it displays top 30 for 11 Search Engines.

12. http://www.related-pages.com/adWordsKeywords.aspx. This tool generates a list of possible keyword combinations based on lists of keywords that you provide.

You enter a list of terms, one per line or separated by commas. This is very effective for Google Adwords and Overture.

Christos Varsamis is Internet & Affiliate Marketing Specialist. Get your Free Reports “Internet Marketing Myths Exposed” & “How to Generate Revenue from Your Sites” www.fastprofitbiz.com/Reports/Report.html

Popularity: 5% [?]

If you’ve always wanted an Internet business, but you’ve been stopped by hurdles like no website and no product idea, I have extremely exciting news…

After months of effort, Derek Gehl and his team at the Internet Marketing Center have finally developed a proven, guaranteed, and realistic SYSTEM that even a computer dummy can use to start a highly profitable Internet business, in one of the HOTTEST growth industries in North America…

… And Derek is willing to pay you $500.00 to test it for him.

No, this isn’t some deal where he gets you to re-sell his products. And yes, it will require some time and effort on your part.

Because while Derek can’t actually do this FOR YOU (that *would* be the ideal scenario), he’s taken everything he knows about achieving wealth on the Internet, including all the same secrets he’s used to generate over $50,000,000.00 in online sales, and he’s boiled them down into an extremely concise but complete SYSTEM that will allow you to…

… Finally, start an Internet business you love, and leap from $0 to potentially earning a six-figure income or more with blinding speed.

Of course, you may be wondering… will Derek’s SYSTEM work for you? His track record says “yes” — but he realizes you may be skeptical, so he’s willing to pay you $500.00 to find out.

Visit http://www.marketingtips.com/warpspeed/
to get all the information, and then make your decision to enroll.

P.S. To clarify, I should tell you that if you don’t succeed, Derek will pay you $500.00… If his system works for you, you’ll have a six-figure-income of potentially $250,000.00 or more per year to “fall back on,” and his $500.00 will look like chump change !

How’s THAT for a promise?! To try it yourself, visit:
http://www.marketingtips.com/warpspeed/

Popularity: 6% [?]