http://www.articletrader.com/ Articles at ArticleTrader en-us http://www.articletrader.com/internet/seo/importance-of-meta-tag-descriptions.html http://www.articletrader.com/internet/seo/importance-of-meta-tag-descriptions.html Sun, 10 Dec 2006 00:00:00 -0600 Meta Descriptions. Meta Descriptions' sole purpose is to explain what your page is about. But wait, I did hear someone saying that Meta Descriptions are no longer important? Did someone say that it is completely outdated and no longer relevant because they are so prone to abuse? Well, they are partly correct. Meta Tags, even Meta Descriptions no longer help in rankings for Google (although some smaller search engines still use them for rankings), but they have become important in other aspects.

The increased popularity of dynamic sites have given a new "use" for meta tags. Dynamic sites are sites which draws information from a source usually a database (like MySQL) and outputs them on your browser for display. And these sites are template driven, which means the layout is the same for the different pages, just the data drawn from the database is different. The pages of the site essentially look the same, the header, menus, footers and others are all the same. Take for example a database driven forum page, after you strip away the tags, you will have a huge amount of code and text which looks identical to another page on the forum.

Duplicate Content. Ok, we now need to "blame" Google for the next problem. Google has a very strict duplicate content filter and they will send web pages which they believe to be duplicates to the Supplemental Results (which usually doesn't rank very well). So just imagine you have a dynamic site like a forum as described above and if you do a search for your site, you will see that a lot of your pages have gone supplemental. Why? Because Google knows that for dynamic sites, different dynamic URLs can point to the same page. Google has wrongly thought that your pages are duplicates of each other even when they are not. One main reason is the lack of a significant unique page content. Unique from the other threads in your forum.

And now the Meta Descriptions come into play. The job of the Meta Description is to explain what your page is about. So with different Meta Descriptions on different pages, it is telling Google that these pages are actually different from each other and are not dynamically created duplicate pages. Althought not always successful (Google has it's own mind), the Meta Descriptions can help reduce the number of supplemental pages for your forum. Some forum scripts allow dynamic changing of Meta Descriptions on different threads, so different threads will have different Meta Descriptions. It is important to understand that telling Search Engines what your site is about is very useful when it comes to rankings, even though the Meta Description itself doesn't actually rank.

Another advantage of Meta Descriptions is that Google use it for describing your site in the result pages if you somehow rank for your page title. So if you have a well written tag, people searching for your keywords will understand your site better before they even visit your site, just like a sneak preview.

Arguably, Yahoo does seem to make use of both Meta Keywords and Descriptions, so you can improve your rankings for Yahoo by optimizing them.

I am not saying that Meta Descriptions are the solution to your site's ranking problems, they are definitely not. But they can be useful to differentiate pages from each other especially if your pages look identical to each other. And they are pretty easy to setup as well, they just require some effort. I have read reports that if your web pages have the same meta descriptions, they can actually hurt your individual pages in rankings but I believe that the main cause is still duplicate content filters. Although there is not hard and fast rule, a good description would be around 20-40 words with your main keywords sprinkled in them.



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Boon Leong is the admin for Simple Sites Forums. A forum/directory promoting the use of simple layouts & designs to create elegant & stylish sites for the web. He is also administrating: Singapore Maid Agency Listing. A web portal with a comprehensive listing of maid agencies in Singapore.

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/internet/seo/article-writing-for-seo.html http://www.articletrader.com/internet/seo/article-writing-for-seo.html Sat, 02 Dec 2006 00:00:00 -0600 Writing Article - Search Engine Optimization style

Almost everyone doing business online knows that writing good articles and submiting to article directories is a good way to increase your site's rankings in Search Engines and as well your site's exposure. However, sadly it is not just write, submit and forget. And if you do that, you will very likely not see any improvement in your rankings at all. Article writers also use this method to advertise and promote their site by offering small sniplets of information to their readers, hoping that these readers will in turn visit their site for "more" information. Thus with so many article writers publishing thousands and thousands of articles everyday, the competition is high indeed.

I will now attempt to provide you with some tips composing articles so that you can maximize the use of article writing for Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

1. Get a list of important keywords you would like to optimize for. They should include your main keywords and other less important (secondary) keywords. These must of course be related to your article and to your site's topic. There isn't much point in terms of rankings if your article is about food and your site is all about selling radios. And make sure you understand (at the very least!) the topic which you are writing about!

2. Write the article and try to make it as natural as possible. Do not, and I repeat, do not think of where to put in your keywords just yet. This way, your article will look as natural and smooth to your readers. Write normally and you will be fine. Although there is usually no limit to the number of words you can write in your article, you should limit it to 1500 words or less. If your article is too long, separate them into different parts to make it easier for your readers. Think of different parts as different articles, so why not get 2 for the price of 1? And another benefit for a 2 or 3 part article is that you can concentrate a few keywords on one part, and other keywords in the others parts.

3. After writing the article, make sure you proof-read it. Make sure there are no spelling or grammar mistakes. Would you really trust articles by "professionals" or "experts" that look like it has been written by a 5 year old? Poor spelling and grammar will tarnish your image.

4. Now, after proof-reading it, read your article once again, and only now, see whether you can add keywords here or there into your sentences. Make sure you add in your main keywords, but if you can, add in the secondary keywords as well. If your article is long enough, you should be able to squeeze it quite a few keywords. Do not overdo it and make sure your article does not sound like a broken player. From my experience, it should be pretty easy for you to add in your secondary keywords without making it too obvious. If you need to do some editing, please do. And if you do it properly, the article should still remain perfectly readable and understandable to your human readers.

5. Your article title. Another very important part to improve your rankings. As an added bonus, the title of your article will usually be the title of the page where your article directory is hosting your article. You do know that the title tag is an important component of onpage optimization right? So ensure you have good keywords in your title. Nowadays with so many articles published, you should also attempt to make your title as eye-catching to your viewers as possible. But you should still have keywords in them.

6. Your next step will be bolding your major keywords. There are a lot of article directories allow their publishers to use basic html tags in their articles, so you should take the opportunity to bold your important keywords. If the article directory supports other tags, you can also use other tags like emphasis and strong to help your human readers and Search Engines easily understand what your article is about.

7. Now, see whether you can add in 1 or 2 links with RELEVANT proper keyworded anchor text to your site in your article. It will greatly help improve your rankings. Remember, deeplink instead of only linking to your main page. You should link to your products or services page or some other page with content. Don't waste it on your main page. You do not get a lot of opportunity to do deeplinking, you know.

8. Now you have finished writing your article, is it time for you to submit to article depositories? No, not yet. Make a copy of your article first. Then go back to your article, and start summarizing it for article submission! Cut of some less important parts and see whether you can reduce the explanations or descriptions. You may be surprised as to the need of summarizing. The summarized form will be the article you will be submitting the article directories. The actual uncut article should be on your own site. I am sure you have heard the phrase "Content is King" right? So content on your site is good for your rankings. But if you submit your "content" to article directories, the "content" now is on the directories and not on your site. See the problem here? And if you have the exact same article on your site, Search Engines' duplicate content filters may ignore your site's article. So the idea here is to create 2 different sets of "content", one for the article depositories (the summary) and the other for your own site. Having the longer and thus more keywords rich article on your own site is good for SEO. All you have to do is to add the link to your full and uncut article on the set submitted to the article directories for your readers to follow. This way, you will always have an "unique" copy of your article on your site and readers of the article directory will still be able to follow your link to your site and get all the benefits of article writing. You just killed 2 birds with 1 stone.

9. Most article directories allow their publishers to have an author's bio. You can usually add a few links in this bio. Remember to link back to your site and please use the proper anchor text. Again, deeplinks would work better here.

So, you have it. Some basic SEO tips for article writing. Hopefully, I have writen it in such a way that it is easy to understand and follow and soon you will see the benefits.

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Boon Leong is the admin for Simple Sites Forums. A forum/directory promoting the use of simple layouts & designs to create elegant & stylish sites for the web. He is also administrating: Singapore Food Catering Services A web portal with a comprehensive listing of caterers in Singapore.

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/internet/seo/problems-with-dynamic-urls.html http://www.articletrader.com/internet/seo/problems-with-dynamic-urls.html Fri, 24 Nov 2006 00:00:00 -0600
What are Dynamic URLs?

Nowadays, a lot of sites are dynamic, that is their site draws information from somewhere (usually a database) and outputs these information into your browser. Think of them as webpages created "on the fly". The biggest advantage in this is that you can create a lot of dynamic pages easily and consistently without too much additional coding. Just use a template, then output the different information on them. For example, if you were to browse this site, you would realize that the pages actually are displayed with the same layout but with just different content. They can save webmasters a lot of time and effort and mistakes as well.

Thus, a site with a lot of pages and content will usually be dynamic, because it would be too tedious for the webmaster to manually edit and recreate the pages and the internal links.They are usually done with server-side technologies like php or asp and a database like MYSQL as their backend storage.

So we now know what is a dynamic site. But what about dynamic URLs? Dynamic sites usually have dynamic URLs. Let me give you an example: http://somesite.com/index.php?area=search&browse=1&category=2& . From this URL you can sort of see that it is pointing to some category(through a search function) in some directory or something from a dynamic site. The weird characters (eg "?", "=", "&" and so on) are sometimes called STOP characters for obvious reasons. These are the characters which you should be careful about.


Why Search Engines don't like dynamic URLs?

Simple, dynamic URLs can cause problems to Search Engine's indexing, specifically for duplicate content. Search Engine spiders are just not eager to index dynamic URLs because of this.

- A dynamic page may create more pages, sometimes trapping the search engine bots in a endless loop and worse, create tons and tons of pages to index which is practically useless to the Search Engine users.

- Search Engines like unique content, not duplicate or near duplicate content. Dynamic sites may create pages which are similar(or very similar) in content with just different URLs. It's like having one page with a lot of different URLs pointing to it. Think of the poor sob who is searching for something, only to find a lot of links that are pointing to the same page!

- Session ids("sid=") can cause problems with duplicate content as well. Session ids are placed in the URL usually to tell the webserver who the user is. Think of it as cookies in your URL and a lot of website use them. You must have been to some sites which require you to login to enter the site, some of which uses session ids. So a different session id each time (and thus a different URL) may point to the same page, and this creates duplicate content for the Search Engine to deal with. And some URLs with session ids expire and if their server is strict, leaving a dead link. So if Search Engine index this dead link, the next time someone clicks on this link(which is indexed in the Search Engines, it goes to a error page, which everyone(that is you, me and Search Engines) hates. Although Google DO index URLs with session ids, it is still best avoided.

Although Search Engines do read them and do index them(even those with session ids in them), they are best avoided. Your purpose as a webmaster is to HELP Search Engines index your site, don't make it difficult for them by having Dynamic URLs. In the past, a lot of Search Engine disregard the URL after stop characters which resulted in truncated URLs, so you need get a lot of the same URL, for example for http://somesite.com/index.php?area=search&browse=1&category=2&, it may be truncated to http://somesite.com/index.php. Think of the problem it would create for the Search Engines and you as a webmaster(the Search Engine only index one page!). Of course, that's in the past, but it doesn't mean that it is still not problematic to Search Engines. I definitely won't blame the Search Engines for not indexng dynamic URLs because of both the problems it will have on Search Engines indexes and the users using the Search Engine.

What can I do?

Basically, you need to change your dynamic URLs to static URLs or at least reduce the number of STOP characters in these dynamic URLs. Static URLs are like for example http://somesite.com/cars/toyota/index.html , you can see they don't have the STOP characters in them and they do look neat and juicy to Search Engine spiders.

- If your site is small, do you really need a dynamic site? If you have like 10 or 20 pages, do you really need a dynamic site? Yes, it may take some effort, but using a static site can help Search Engine bots index your site faster and more efficiently. And best of all, you have full control on your layout, script and it is probably much easier to modify and loads faster as well.

- Use some URL rewrite script or feature. If your webserver is on Apache (a very popular webserver software), they have this feature called mod rewrite which displays dynamic URLs as static looking ones and can be done in the .htaccess file. However, this requires a lot of expertise and knowledge on apache and mod rewrite. Those on MS IIS server also have a choice. There is a Module which can create static URLs from dynamic ones.This method is the most popular and most effective way to get rid of dynamic URLs. Ask your programmer for help.

- Use robots.txt to block Search Engine bots from doing certain actions, like search and so on. These actions are usually created with a dynamic URL and can create duplicate content because they may point to a page which can be accessed by other URL. For example, you may have a link which randomly shows your visitors a page. But that page can also be accessed by another different link. Two different URLs, the same page equals duplicate content. So just block Search Engine spiders from following the random link. However, you must be careful not to block the bots from indexing important parts of your site when you do this. Yes, this method will not completely remove the dynamic URL problem, but it will minimize the duplicate content problem.

- Reduce the number of STOP characters and variables in your URL if possible. Ask your programmer to use the minimal number of these characters as possible when coding.

- Use cookies instead of session ids. Althought there are some users who may disable cookies, most won't. However, you have to ensure that your webpage allows requests made without cookies because search engines don't accept cookies. If your coding requires the user to have a cookie, then your site may not get indexed as they can't be navigated by search engines.

- Use of sitemaps. By placing a sitemap on your webpage helps Search Engines index your site more efficiently than other internal links (which are dynamic) in your site. And submit them to Search Engines if possible. Oh, make sure the link to your sitemap on your webpage is static by the way!

- Cloaking. Ask your programmer to write a code especially for Search Engines. So if a search engine bot requests a page instead of an actual human visitor, then they will be redirected to another page with a static url. This way, you won't have to worry about session ids causing you and the Search Engine problems. Note that Search Engines do not like cloaking. But I believe that if your purpose is to prevent session ids problems and the cloaked page is the same as what your visitors see (except without the session ids in the URL), I think Search Engines would not mind.

The advantage of changing to static URLs is that you can add keywords into it. Like http://somesite.com/cars/toyota/service-center.html. You can see that this URL is keywords full. They have "cars", "toyota" and "service center" as the keywords. Some major Search Engine place relevance on URLs, and that includes Google.

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Boon Leong is the admin for Simple Sites. A forum/directory promoting the use of simple layouts & designs to create elegant & stylish sites for the web. This article is also published at Singapore Small Business Directory

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/internet/seo/offpage-optimization-basics.html http://www.articletrader.com/internet/seo/offpage-optimization-basics.html Fri, 24 Nov 2006 00:00:00 -0600 What is offpage optimization?

Well, they are techniques you can use to help improve your Search Engine rankings but is done off your site. Which means it is done on other sites and not your own. Onpage requires you to do optimization on your own webpages, offpage requires you to do it off-site.

Ok, what does it all mean?

With Google, offpage optimization has became more important as they place a lot of emphasis and relevance on links. The simple lowdown for offpage optimization is LINKS. LINKS from other websites to yours or BACKLINKs or INBOUND LINKs. Links with anchor text(keywords) from other websites to yours. And seriously, that's about it - getting others to link to you with the proper anchor text. LINKs are also important because they provide a way for the search engines bots to find your site.

The more links you have pointing to your site, the more important the search engines rate your site. Anchor text provides a way to rate the keywords for your site. And more links with anchor text to your site, the more important the Search Engine rate your site for those keywords. It's as simple as that.

If you properly plan your offpage optimization and what a bit of luck, you can rank better in the Search Engines.

Firstly, you have to pay attention to :

1. How many sites are linking to you. More the merrier.

2. What kind of sites are they and whether their topics are related to yours (titles, keywords and so on).

3. The Anchor text used.

4. Trustrank and Pagerank of the sites linking to you (whether they are trusted by Search Engines or have been blacklisted)

Anchor text is the hyperlink text. It is usually used to tell the reader the subject matter of the page that it links to. Like a link here - SEO Articles, you can see that the anchor text here is "SEO Articles", pointing to http://www.seochat.com and this is like
telling the reader that the subject is SEO Articles and this site "http://www.seochat.com" has information related to it. So if someone searched for the words "SEO Articles", this is helping the site http://www.seochat.com to rank for that term. So use this anchor text to your advantage by using keywords in them. Although it is not always possible to use keywords you want, you should not use "click here" as your anchor text.

Remember to optimize your internal pages as well. DO not try to link your main page with all your keywords. For example, if you have a site selling orchids(the flower) and one of your internal page is about flower delivery, is it better for you to optimize your main page for "flower delivery"? No, optimize your main page for the keyword "flower orchids" and your internal page for the words "flower delivery" or "orchid delivery". This way, at least your site will rank for more terms and get better results for different searches. And not to mention, your onpage optimization would be more effective and easier without too many keywords on one page.

How do I go about doing it?

You should start off with a link building campaign. I will divide them into two major parts.

The first step is where you get links by direct posting.

1. Link exchanges - Link with other websites, preferably with related sites. They are two-way (they link to you and you link back) links. You can email webmasters and request a link exchange with the proper anchor text. Link exchanges can be very effective if done with sites of the same topics or subjects. But beware of who YOU link to. Linking to "bad" sites can get you into trouble with Search Engines and even get you delisted or banned.

2. Article submission - Submit articles you have written to article directories. Usually they have an author's bio, where you can place your site's URL in it with the appropriate anchor text.

3. Directory Submission - Submit your site to various directories. There are free and paid directories. It would be advisable to submit your directories to free directories(especially DMOZ) and choose which paid directories you would like to submit to. It's hard to say which paid directory is best, so use your common sense if you want to do paid inclusion. Please avoid link farms (directories with tons and tons of links in their categories and subcategories) because they don't work to your advantage and a lot of them have already been blacklisted or devalued by Search Engines.

4. Forum posting - Signatures allow you to place links and anchor text to your site. If you are posting in a forum related to your site( and with a lot of keywords), you can get better results in your rankings from these postings. However, do note that there are some forums which have the nofollow tag which tells Search Engines not to follow the link. This makes the link useless in SERPs.

5. Blogging - Nowadays everyone likes to leave comments in blogs. You can do it as well. And add your link with the comment. However remember not to spam blog sites, if you add a comment make sure that comment has something to do with the topic. It is also wise to post in blogs which you have some knowledge about.

6. Purchase links - Pay other webmasters to link to you. This method is a bit like a paid directory, just that the site isn't a directory but could be a informative site or even a blog. You get a link or links with a proper anchor text. There have been reports that some Search Engine devalues such a technique, but it is difficult for Search Engines to know whether that link is a legitimate link or a purchased link. I would also recommend you to buy links directly from other websites than through a "links broker". You can do this by directly contacting the webmaster and negotiating a price and where your link will be
placed. The placement of your link is important as you don't want your link to be in very page of the site. For your link to have maximum exposure, it would be best to be in the first page(or the main page) and to reduce the spammy effect, confine to 2 to 3 pages at the most. Avoid site-wide links if your own site has very few pages!


The next step would be link baiting and this step is very highly recommended because these links feels "natural" to Search Engines. However all these link baiting are very much related to onpage optimization(what you do on your site).

1. Although this is considered onpage optimization but it would be appropriate to mention this again - content. The biggest and most effective offpage technique is related to your onpage optimizaton. Good, useful and keyword rich content. This way, you are "baiting" other webmasters to link to you when you provide useful information. Some of them even provide you with a good anchor text as well. These are what is termed as "natural links" because others linked to you without you directly asking for a link and is very much encouraged by Search Engines.

2. Software/script - Writing a script or software which a lot of people use is a good way to generate links. If you look around forums or blogs or just normal sites, you can see people recommending this and that software or script. Some scripts like forum scripts have a small link back to their site with the appropriate anchor text included, just imagine, if a lot of users use those scripts, the amount of backlinks will be enormous! Do a Google search "link:www.joomla.org" and see the amount of backlinks! Joomla.org is the official site for the free CMS script. And if you provide the software or the script at no charge, the number of grateful users with the link back will surely help your site. Simply put, it generates links for you.

3. Tutorials/How-to articles - Very related to content. Write useful tutorials like those photoshop tutorials or howtos and this will encourage other web designers or webmasters to link to that. Having useful and unique content is one of the best way to get natural links and traffic. If it is useful to a webmaster's visitors, he will surely want to tell his visitors about it.

4. Service/Knowledge Sharing - Yes, even if you don't write good content or tutorials or articles, you can provide a valuable service to others. Like script installation, colour matching service for web designers, technical support for Operating Systems and so on. Something like sharing your knowledge or helping others with their problems can very well get you the links because it is useful to webmasters and useful for their visitors as well. You can see some of the most popular sites are actually sites which help others like those webmasters forum or those technical support groups. You can even be selling some unique product or service to the public and let it generate links for you. Unique, valuable and useful service is just as important as unique, valuable and useful content. Helping others also give you that nice cozy feeling.

5. Freebies and contests can attract links from other sites as well. Who doesn't want freebies or who doesn't want to join a contest to get prizes? Everyone does and because it is such a good promotional tool, you can attract a lot of visitors(and links) from these contests even if it is for a short period.

What all this being said, it is important to note that links from high quality sites are better for rankings than links from low quality sites. A few links from reputable sites is worth more than a lot of links from unknown sites. So if you can, try getting links from these sites instead.

There are a lot of SEO experts who say that offpage optimization is way more effectove than onpage optimization. While that is not completely wrong, it is very difficult (but not impossible) for a good offpage optimization to work without unique and excellent information. And that is ultimately what is on your web pages (hence Onpage).



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Boon Leong is the admin for Simple Sites. A forum/directory promoting the use of simple layouts & designs to create elegant & stylish sites for the web. This article is also published at Singapore Small Business Directory

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/internet/seo/onpage-optimization-for-web-directory-webmaster.html http://www.articletrader.com/internet/seo/onpage-optimization-for-web-directory-webmaster.html Mon, 16 Oct 2006 00:00:00 -0500 Onpage optimization for web directory webmasters

So, you have just started a web directory and spent a bundle on a very eye catching design. But somehow, you don't seem to get many visitors or users and your site isn't ranking good in the Search Engines. What do you do?

How about making your directory Search Engine friendly through Search Engine Optimization(SEO)? The best way to get visitors is by Search Engines. They are the number one source which can drive traffic to your directory. What you need is patience, hardwork and some little tips to help you get started.

So here is some onpage optimization tips for a web directory owner.

1. URL mod rewrite must be on. This option creates static URLs by removing the dynamic variables or session ids and since Search Engines don't like dynamic URLs, this will help in your site being indexed faster. And, static URLs usually rank higher than dynamic URLs. Another thing, dynamic URLs can cause duplicate content problem for your directory and hurt you in the rankings.

2. Have a good keyword rich title for your directory. This is very important for Search Engine rankings as they place relevance on titles tags. Try to use the keywords first on your title tag, then your directory name.

3. Good Keywords in your categories and subcategories which will produce meaningful URLs which again helps in ranking for these terms. Remember, URLs are important and you should use them effectively to get good rankings. Ensure you do not have "and" or "or" in the category names as they are useless and Search Engine spider don't use them.

4. Avoid having your category links in too deep. Search Engines don't like crawling into levels to find your listings and having subdirectories which are too deep will affect your rankings. For me, the most you should have is 5 directory levels deep unless it is really necessary.

5. No broken links. Broken links prevents Search Engine spiders from indexing your directory completely.

6. No dead end pages. Make sure every page you have is linked to your main directory page or some other page. Just like broken links, they disrupt the Search Engine spiders from finishing or doing their job, which is to index your site.

7. Good descriptions, at least 300 words or more. Make sure your visitors submit meaningful descriptions with good keywords and without any spelling mistakes, so that your directory wont look like a link farm to Search Engines. A good description makes your directory listing look professional and helps your image.

8. Uptime is very important. What's the point of having all the SEO you can do when Search Engine spiders can't even find your site because it is down. Get a good and reliable webhost with a solid uptime.

9. Sitemaps can really help spiders navigate your directory so create them and submit to the Search Engines. This is especially true if you have a lot of categories in your directory.

10. Meta Tags are less important, but if you can, make sure the meta tags are relevant to your category. Another thing, try to have different meta keywords and meta description per category instead of using the main directory's.

This onpage optimization article only covers what you can do on your own web directory, it doesn't cover offpage optimization which can be very effective in getting good rankings as well. But if you use both offpage and onpage optimization, you should get even better results.

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Boon Leong is the admin for Simple Sites. A forum/directory promoting the use of simple layouts & designs to create elegant & stylish sites for the web. This article is also published at High PR Directories

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/internet/seo/effective-directory-submission-page-rank.html http://www.articletrader.com/internet/seo/effective-directory-submission-page-rank.html Mon, 16 Oct 2006 00:00:00 -0500 Some points to note before starting

1. Budget : How much you are willing to spend on submissions?

2. Purpose : Just increase to Page Rank or to drive traffic to your site or both? Or is it for prestige and brand awareness? Most directories wont give you decent traffic, even big and popular directories Yahoo! or Business.com or Microsoft bCentral Small Business Directory may not increase your sites traffic.

3. Planning : The most important part of your link building campaign. You need to spend a lot of time knowing which paid directory to submit to and how to submit your site to, what anchor text and meta tags and keywords to use and the niche or market you are looking for.

Some general points to note when submitting to directories

1. Make sure you read the Terms of Service (TOS).

2. Always submit to the correct category (if not possible, something similar)

3. Make sure your description is correct without any spelling mistakes

4. I would not encourage reciprocal links (or 2 way links) at all. Too troublesome and may work against you if the directory is sandboxed by Google. If you must, try linking to big directories or reputable ones.

5. Vary your descirption you submit to directories a bit so that it will look natural to visitors and Search Engines. And remember to add some keywords into your description.

6. Choose a local or a regional directory if possible, as these will at least give you a better amount of traffic as well as PR.

7. Niche directories are better : They are targeted and usually have less links listed just like a local or regional directory.

Free Directory
Why not? Its free so just submit to them even if they are PR0. Every bit helps and you will not know whether in the future their PR will rise and can help your improve your PR as well. Just try to avoid link farms (directory with tons and tons of links per page) as they are useless and seldom get indexed by Search Engines at all. Also ensure that they have static text links because some dynamic links(especially those which looks like session ids) or "weird" links won't push PR to their listed sites.

Paid Directory
Depending on how much you are willing to spend, you can even have links to your site from PR9 directories. My suggestion in choosing which directory is as below:

1. PR Value : Check the PR of the directory and the category in which you want to submit your site to using Google's toolbar.

2. Static Links : Make sure they provide static links, which can help you in improving your sites PR better. Do a search on Google (site:www.directory.com) and see whether their category pages and listings are indexed.

3. Number of links per page : The less the merrier. In my opinion, the optimal is 10 links per page. Sometimes smaller directories (and thus less links) with a decent PR can help more than a big directory (and thus tons of links) with a high PR.

4. Featured or sponsored links : Its good to be on top, because Search Engine spiders will crawl from the top to the bottom.

5. Correct category : Make sure you are submiting to the correct category. And make sure the category you have chosen isn't crowded or populated with too many links or it will be less effective. If your first choice category is too popular, try some other category that is similar and has less links on it.

6. Do a backlink search for the directory you want to submit to. For Google, try (link:www.directory.com) and see the number of links they have. From the results, you can see the number of links to that directory and it will give you a rough indication of how well this directory is doing and whether they can maintain their PR.

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Boon Leong is the admin for Simple Sites. A forum/directory promoting the use of simple layouts & designs to create elegant & stylish sites for the web. This article was originally published in High PR Directories

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]>