Get Friendly With An SEO Friendly Link Directory

When it comes to generating traffic for your website, one of the most effective tools you can use is an SEO friendly link directory. What this does is that it exposes your website to even more visitors and the more hits you get, the better your search rankings. This is very important because you need different routes to your website so that more and more people visit you and hence, you earn even more money.

Typical Requirements of an SEO Friendly Link Directory

• Update your website regularly. You need to keep improving your website and adding new content in order to get those links posted on a directory.

• Don't overuse keywords. Your content needs to have a specific subject and direction and have to avoid turning it into a list of keywords. Use specific keywords that people are more likely to key in when they search for something about that subject. An SEO friendly link directory scans your content for keyword spamming and if it finds four or five keywords every hundred words, it will mark your article as spam and ban your website. Keyword density shouldn't be more than three percent in any case. Most good websites have a keyword density of one percent or less.

• Catchy titles and captions attract people so try to include them in your articles.

Most popular link directories will charge you but there are quite a few free ones out there as well. Make sure you find a free link directory that fits your needs. You have to keep investing a lot of time and effort to market your website properly because it is an ongoing process. Link directories help out a lot, but only if you know what you're doing. You should avoid ones that charge you for posting your link because you'll just end up paying a hefty sum to have your website appear on their lists, even though it might not get you enough traffic. More importantly, search engines like Google and Bing aren't that fond of purchased back links.

Avoid Spam

Avoid spamming at all costs! Good SEO friendly directories come with spam protection and actually scan your content and if they find something, your chances of making money off your website are gone. Search engines and directories blacklist spam websites and can even take legal action against you. You need to follow the rules and work sincerely; work smart and make some good hard-earned money!

HaraDirectory is a SEO Friendly Link Directory. The web directory is search engine friendly and search engine optimized. Find the sites your looking for super fast with great ease.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Hara_Kim

Website Design 101 - How to Build a Sitemap

What is the biggest mistake anyone planning a website creation or redesign could make?

Answer: Not thoroughly planning out your website beforehand is an expensive disaster waiting to happen, even when you are using great CMS technology.

A sitemap is a structured list of all pages within a website. It is the table of contents for your web presence and is crucial both during the planning phase of a website and for the end user experience. The sitemap foundation becomes the page navigation that dictates the user experience. If your content is not organized in a clear and standardized way, the user will leave your site frustrated and uninterested in your brand.

Often, a sitemap is completely separate from the look and feel of a business website. So, while the sitemap is a critical starting place to get you thinking about your web project, it doesn't dictate that your site will be "boring". On the flip side, a website that is graphically appealing or full of pizazz may still come off as a smoke and mirrors magic trick if the user does not know what information is available or how to find what they are looking for.

Visualization as an important web design tool.

A sitemap can be viewed in two ways:

1. A list format - this is like a table of contents in a book.

Think text book: the information is grouped by chapter and each chapter has a few subsections. In the web world, we call the chapters and the sections

2. A graphical map format - this is more like a mind map.

Surprising, this can be dangerous. It looks great to present the end user with a visual map of your website, but during the planning phase of a website, it might become too easy to leave areas of your map too vague or to navigate a user through a series of pages without providing them a link to main content.

Users love a new and engaging experience, but from the business world they expect a few constants:

• An About Us page: This should always be near a top-level page if not a superpage. It can be named something more clever as long as users will understand that the page is about your company.
• At least one top-level superpage devoted to your company's products or services.
• A Contact Us page: Many times, users only go to your website to get up-to-date contact information. Remember, younger people are much less likely to use a phone book. Make this easy: don't put up walls around the information your readers are looking for.

XML Sitemap Is an important part of Search Optimization.

Search engines have become increasingly good at recognizing legitimate businesses verses imitators by viewing a website's sitemap and analyzing the content of each page. A well-structured site means that when a user searches for your company name, or related products and services in your area in order to buy and submitting orders for a specific product, your website is more likely to rank highly.

In fact, depending on your market, your Homepage, About Us, and Contact Us might all be listed in a search engine result so that users have one-click access to these key pages.

Should a sitemap be created just once?

Sitemaps are crucial when planning a website, but they do not have to be set in stone. One important aspect of a content management system is the ability to grow your website over time. This means that as a company expands and adds a service or adds a second type of service or product, corresponding pages can easily be added to the website and and the content modified appropriately:

• Home
• About Us
Our History
• Our Staff
• Our Services

• Service A
• Type I
• Type II

• Service B
• Service C
• Get A Quote

• Submit Your Order
• Latest News
• Contact Us

If a site has been structured correctly, search engines will pick-up on the addition and re-index your site accordingly. One last important step in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the existence of a properly formatted.XML sitemap that lives off-menu in the root directory of your website hosting server.

It is a complicated array of URL's and priorities, where super pages are given top priority and blog posts are given lower priority, which tells search engines to list your Homepage, About Us, and Contact Us pages first in their search listings.

Because this is one thing all the major search engines agree upon, there is a standard protocol for generating and submitting these links, so there are several programs that can automatically update and submit a properly formatted XML sitemap.

A Few Simple Sitemap Tips

• When building a sitemap, start with a structure that is unlikely to change, but that will allow room for growth.
• Do not get in the habit of changing top-level pages, as Search Engines will take note and assume your content is unreliable and rank your website - and thus your digital presence - poorly.
• The sitemap can contain sections, for example, adding a top-level page call Blog or Recent News is understood as meaning that articles will be posted and displayed in that section.
• Every user experiences your site differently. Some may like your menu navigation and the way it reflects the organization of your content; however some people may prefer a simple organized list posted somewhere off-menu (see resource box)

Richard Royal is Web Developer for Steele Agency, Inc based in Rome, Georgia.

Richard is a Roman native and Berry College Physics graduate who is applying his software engineering skills at Steele Agency. He provides the ability to develop dynamic web pages and applications, and is highly experienced with Linux based operating systems and a wide range of computer programming languages and platforms.

Although he is well educated in complex problem solving and mathematical analysis, and currently finishing a second degree in Computer Engineering at Georgia Tech, he considers much of his technical expertise to stem from his hobbies such as building amateur electronics, star gazing, and studying old Star Trek episodes.

XML sitemap: http://www.steele-agency.com/sitemap.xml
Simple off-menu sitemap: http://www.steele-agency.com/about-us/sitemap/

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Richard_Royal

Want to Build a New Search Engine Optimized Website?

Before spending any time or money on a website, there are some major factors that will directly impact your Search Engine Optimization strategy that must be considered. This list includes the six most important items to be considered prior to developing of contracting to develop a new website if you will be interested in SEO for that website. Here are the top six questions that must be answered during the planning phase:

1) Who is the real target audience for the website? SEO is useless if you do not have a clear plan on who you want to bring to your site. Thinking you site is for EVERYONE would be pretty outlandish, unless you are looking to replace Wikipedia or Google. You must really drill down and figure out details on the niche of your target audience before moving any further. There are plenty of general "marketing resources" to help with this, please use them. Most people fail in this very simple task because they genuinely feel the target audience is much bigger (or much smaller) than it really is.

2) What content will your target audience find useful to READ? SEO is about helping other find the information THEY want on YOUR site. It is not a bunch of tricks trying to get visitors to your site. So, the MOST IMPORTANT CONSIDERATION in the planning phase is establishing a plan to develop all of the content that will meet your target audiences need and a plan to continue to develop new and fresh content over time.

3) How will you incorporate the content to meet your target audience's needs? Developing the content is not the same as the layout of the site, but once someone is at the site, it is very important to make sure they can easily find the other information they need. This means it should be easy to get from some content to some other content, products, etc. A plan on how to "move" a site visitor from some content to other content, allowing the user to "interact" with the site is essential. This strategy should include a degree of flexibility as not all visitors will land on the home page (especially true of a site with good SEO) and not all visitors will want to go from page 1 to page 2 to page 3, they will want to find their own path to the content most important to them. The strategy of getting visitors from some content, through some other content, to a particular product will have a great impact on SEO. Assuming a potential new customer will land on a page and proceed directly to a purchase within the first 30 seconds would be quite inaccurate. Most potential customers will "browse" through a site in some depth prior to making a purchase or deciding to fill out a contact form, so providing an easy way for visitors to access the content they are looking for is essential -- which points back to the question number two, is there ENOUGH content to fill the potential customers need for information to result in a buying decision?

4) How will you update content over time? You can pay a full time webmaster, have a team of developers, have a part time independent contractor or do it yourself (using a CMS perhaps), but regular updates are a very critical component to long term SEO. Waiting to figure out that strategy until AFTER the site is created could be a DISASTER. If a single developer hand coded each page, it could be a very big undertaking to update that site, while a Content Management System (CMS) could be much easier for an individual to add new content. (Note: while not directly related to SEO, it could be a solid marketing strategy to capture willful visitors email addresses on the website then email them when updated information is posted on the site. If you intend to employ this strategy it could have a significant impact on the method used to develop the site as it will need a component to handle this.)

5) How will you ensure the site structure and code will be "clean" and easily indexed by the search engines? Again, this is not about fancy tricks, but it could be about avoiding unnecessary items on the site that do not help SEO (such as flash, etc). It is VERY IMPORTANT to make sure your site developer understands proper SEO design techniques and if not, hire a consultant to ensure these are "built in" to the site. Many people build a site first thinking optimization can happen later, but this could involve "redesigning the site" because much of the fixes could be simple cleaning up of code. The number of people that can build a SEO website from scratch if far less than the number of people that can just give you a pretty website.

6) How will the site obtain incoming links? Since Link Building will eventually be a necessary component of your SEO strategy, you must also consider who might want to link to your site and how the site can be built in a way that would help facilitate this process. Consider who you would freely link to from your brand new website. What type of content would they need to provide for you to deem it useful to link to them? Again, more than likely people will not be lining up to link to your site unless you give them a compelling reason to do so... unless you want to make the compelling reason a dollar value by PAYING for every link, making useful content for others is the best way. This generally means USEFUL INFORMATION in general, not just USEFUL INFORMATION ABOUT YOUR PRODUCTS.

There are of course other Search Engine Optimization considerations, but plan for these first, than you can start the "fine tuning" process of an overall SEO Strategy.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Robert_E_Duncan

Web Traffic Estimates And How To Bring In More Visitors For Free

If you are not signed up with Google Analytics, then you cannot possibly be taking the web traffic, and the future of, your business seriously. This service tells you everything that you need to know concerning who is visiting, how long they are staying, and what pages they value the most. From there, you can come to a clear estimation of how many web hits you are getting per day, and what you can do to improve those statistics over the long term. Bringing in visitors is not the only part that you need to focus on, however. Once they are there, you need to learn how to keep them. Both of these needs tie in together in a manner that you are about to see.

First of all, where do you find new people to visit your site? You can start with social networking sites. The algorithms developed by sites like Twitter, Facebook, and Google-Plus will give you the opportunity to learn who your visitors are, or at least who they should be. By marketing to people, who are in your niche, you stand a better chance of getting more eyeballs more often. Aside from this method, you should also be utilizing proper Google site mapping and search engine optimization. In essence, you must make it easy for as many people to find you as possible. From there, you are able to develop the fastest, most hands free and surefire way to get more and more traffic: word of mouth.

Word of mouth marketing is still the most effective form of marketing. Instead of casting a net and trying to land 10,000 new visitors in one fell swoop, you need to be more concerned about developing deeper relationships with the people, who are already at your website. How do you do that? By giving them quality content, answering questions they leave, and responding to comments. Building a sense of community with the people, who are already there is important because 250 devoted followers can bring you thousands upon thousands of new visitors, and the only thing that it costs you is time.

Well, time and sincerity. You have to be genuine with the people that are visiting your site. If you are disingenuous, they will see through it, and not only will you not get new traffic, you will lose what you already have. Valuing the people, who have found you and continue to come back to you by giving them a sense of community and a deeper sense of involvement is how you market effectively. Once you roll that snowball to the top of the hill, it will take off on its own, and you won't feel so compelled to be "on" all the time.

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Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Darren_W_Chow

How to Get Edu Back Links From Blogs For Free

When it comes to search engine marketing with edu links and building relationships, marketers fall into talking about building relationships with these schools.

Speaking for class, conducting a workshop and talking to school associates - yes there are valid ways for building great relationships. And in return, these particular schools and associations will give you a link to your domain on their websites. Yes, this is one method how to get edu back links.

Now we're going to talk about an effective ways to build EDU links without knowing anyone at a school and developing any relationships. While most marketers believe that you must cultivate these relationships in order to get a link back, that is not necessarily true. You can learn how to get EDU back links can be done using traditional back link building strategies which is what we're going to explore in this article.

Generally speaking, the major factor with the search engines when it comes to ranking is back links.

General Search Engine Optimization Rule #1: The general rule is the more back links you get, the better. Today you'll learn how you can easily begin to increase your back links with authority edu back links from high page rank blogs.

However, not all links are created equal. Some links simply have more power and influence in terms of getting you ranks for your particular keyword of phrase. Links coming from educational organizations (or .edu links) come from institutions of higher learning. These types of links are generally regarded by the search engines as having higher degrees of 'authority' and 'trust'. The catch is that .edu links are often thought of as being difficult to obtain.

It's simple - If you have a lot of .edu back links there is a greater chance of your website ranking higher in the search engines.

Recommended Tools For You EDU Back Link Campaign

Here are few recommended tools that you'll need to implement the technique we're going to give you.

1. Use FireFox as your browser - FireFox has the ability to add many useful plug-ins for market research, SEO diagnostics and is really a vital tool if your serious about ranking high on the search engines.

2. Install the SEOQuake toolbar - Powerful SEO toolbar provides a lot of useful information on the fly. Specifically for this technique you're going to be interested in PageRank

3. Install the NoDoFollow add-on - This is a add-on for FireFox that allows you to check if the links are DoFollow. NoDoFollow links mean that if a link is on a website, it does not pass authority on to a link found on the originating site to the out bound link.

4. Bookmark Pingomatic.com - This is a powerful ping tool site that you can use to get your website "pinged" or recognized by the search engines in the quickest time possible.

A Word of Advice Before You Get Started Placing EDU Back Links:

Now a word of wisdom, before we get started with this technique. Proper link building takes time. Please do not be one of those people that post 100 links to your website overnight. This looks fishy to the search engines and you may be flagged or penalized. Limit your links to 5-10 per day when building your back links naturally.

Get involved in the conversation and make sure you contribute valuable information or insight to the discussion. Do not create more than one link per site.

Remember if you choose to leave a comment on one of these .edu websites leave value and something useful and relevant to the discussion. Do not be spumy. If you have a chance to leave a link be sure you understand what's going on that website and add value. So get involved and ensure that you are commenting something of value.

Do not create more than one link per site. This means you must keep track of your links. This is very important, because you do not want to be flagged as a spammer. If the administrator of one of.edu sees that you are constantly posting comments throughout the website he may flag you for spam and delete all of your links - and you'll be at a loss for your time and the links.

How To Get EDU Back Links from .EDU Blogs

Step 1: Conduct a search in Google for the following string:

site:.edu inurl:blog "post a comment" - "you must be logged in" - "comments closed"

Now you can get even more specific by adding your keyword to the end of the search. So the new search quarry become:

site:.edu inurl:blog "post a comment" - "you must be logged in" - "comments closed" + "your keyword"

This technique will give you 100's even 1000's of results of .edu blogs and back link options. Now we're going to have all these results populated by Google - and if you installed SEOQuake your going to see a number of different items that show up in your search result pages.

Step 2: Now what you want to do is use SEOQuake to sort your search results by PageRank. Sort the list so the websites with the higher PageRank appear first, and lowest PageRank last.

By doing this and sorting we can go down the list one-by-one and look at each blog entry to see if we are going to get a link. And by sorting first, we are going from higher authority to lowest authority. We want to go after the sites that have the higher PageRank to the lower PageRank.

Now that you have a listed of sorted .edu blogs by PageRank - what do you do next? Ideally you want to check to see if there are any other comments on the .edu blog your thinking of posting on. If there are no comments yet, you can be the first. Be aware, however, that if there are no other comments the blog owner may not be accepting comments for this particular blog or post. So you may want to limit your.edu blog commenting to blogs that already have a list of approved comments to not risk wasting any of your time.

Step 3: Once you've found what appears to be a viabl e.edu blog for posting comments, and does not contain NoFollow tags, go ahead and post a comment with a link back to your site. Remember to keep track of the URL where your comment is posted, to ensure you do not double post, or post again to this website in the future.

Finally, once your blog comment is posted and approved take a moment to visit Pingomatic.com and enter the URL of where your comment can be viewed. This will tell the search engines there is new content to be spidered at the domain and you're link will be counted and indexed fast.

And that's really all there is to it! Now you know how to post edu back links on high Page Rank, authority, dofollow.edu blogs boost your search engines rankings and increase the traffic to your site!

I've been promoting my websites successfully utilizing little-known search engine optimization techniques for over a decade. Learn from me how to get edu back links for free by visiting our site. I also offer link building services, and so spending a few bucks to buy edu back links and let me do all the work for you.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Akon_Jackson