The Role Of Web Directories In Search Engine Optimization

The opinions about web directories are often divided. Some experts in Search Engine Optimization say that submitting articles in directories is irrelevant while others give it the five-thumbs up.

New or old websites can actually benefit from directory websites if there is a balance when it comes to link building strategy. If you would submit your website, you have to make sure first that it has the right quality that could benefit not just your site but your business at the same time. You should check out the domain age of the directory, the page rank, and other factors that would help you determine whether the web directory is reliable or not. It would be best if you take advantage of human-edited directories in the World Wide Web rather than the automatically generated ones. The enlisting of websites would take longer but it's definitely worth the wait.

You can increase the credibility of your company's website if it is part of the well-established and one of the most popular web directories. More so, the benefit of these directories is to increase the rank of your website in the most popular search engines. This is one of the most effective techniques in search engine optimization. If the web directory of your choice indeed has high quality, it will deliver you backlinks in immense amount which will be crawled by the search engines. The more traffic you get, the higher will be your rank. Therefore, people would consider you and your business to be dependable and that you can cater them steadfast services and products.

That is why it is vital that you always check the categories and the listings of the web directory before you submit your website. Don't let it be a part of the spam-filled directories which would decrease the integrity of your site, hence affecting your business. Search engines must cache your site through these websites and it must also be well-indexed at the same time.

There is a vast range of directory websites that you can find today and you should choose the right one depending on your target audience. For those who are targeting a smaller audience, local web directories are available for a particular area or a state. There are also some web directories that enlist websites of the same niche. Most business owners actually prefer the latter directory since it gives them traffic from their targeted audience. Thus, increasing the chances of getting more sales online.

Submit your website to the best web directory on the net

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

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Strategy - Navigating the Dark Waters of Website Promotion

Creating a well-designed website is the first step in your internet marketing strategy
that must be backed up with techniques designed to drive traffic to the website for
successful, long-term results. You wouldn't consider opening a retail store in a
major shopping mall without signage and you shouldn't consider having a nice
looking website designed without expanding your web presence in order to be
found on the internet. The following strategy overview is designed to bring about
these results:

• An attractive website that is complementary to your company image and provides your targeted audience with information about you, your company and your products and/or services
• A website that creates a call-to-action in the form of purchase, contact, subscription or other commitment from your viewer
• Create a successful marketing arm for your overall business promotion and marketing campaign to promote your business, products and/or services
• Become competitive in your industry and marketplace by meeting or exceeding the industry marketing standards and attracting a qualified audience for your products and/or services via the internet
• Generate and maintain or grow internet traffic to your website resulting in a conversion of traffic into sales of your products and/or services

This search engine optimization (SEO) strategy is composed of several processes in
three stages.

Tier I

Website design is the foundation and beginning of a successful internet marketing
strategy. It is true that several websites exist on the internet that are unattractive
but seem to work. If there are aspects of these websites that work, imagine how well
they could do if they simply followed basic design implementation tactics that
resulted in a good image as well as simply pushed information out to the viewer.
These basics are essential for Tier 1 success:

• Good web design that complements the company image and offline marketing campaign products
• Easy, logical navigation that leads the viewer deeper and deeper into the web of information provided by the website
• Attractive but quick-loading graphics that are pleasing to the eye and meaningful to the website.
  • Keyword usage that is search engine-friendly:
  • Utilization
  • Placement
  • Frequency
  • Relevance
  
  


• Coding that is lean, clean and without errors
  


• Relevance of content to the theme of the site
  


• Changing content that changes frequently
  


• Content is king -- it's all about content, content, content
  

Tier II

Once the website has been created and published, many new website owners think
that the project is finished. But in reality, the real work is just beginning. In order to
create a money-making site, traffic must be generated and driven to the website.
There are several effective methods that can be implemented in Tier II for this to
occur. While all methods may not be required to see successful traffic generation,
some combination of most if not all will probably be needed to create traffic,
maintain traffic and finally, grow traffic to our website with long-term results.
Consider implementing these strategies:

• Dynamic content is necessary and by updating the website frequently the search engines see your website as active, not stagnant. How often should changes be made? At the very least, monthly. But the more frequent the changes, the better. There are some tried and true methods you may want to employ:
  • Monthly newsletter (or weekly)
  • Tip of the day that rotates to the page using a script from an existing database of information at your site
  • RSS feed to public news feeds that update hourly or daily at the least
  • Changes to contact information, staffing, clients, etc.
  • Checking the links frequently to make sure that they are active and valid
  • Simple modification of content from time to time should be done in between these regular maintenance tasks which will update the website
  
  


• Good links management results in a positive weight given by the search engines
  for search positioning. The algorithms used for weighting one page over another
  require link popularity assessment for successful traffic to your website. Link
  popularity is also one of the main contributions to Google and Alexa Page Rank.
  How do you achieve link popularity? It can be tedious and requires careful attention
  to the selection of the links, but there are several means that can be employed:
  
  • Reciprocal Links - Search for relevant and desired web pages with which to trade links
  • Purchase Page Rank-based links to boost your relevance and weight in the eyes of search engines
  • List with directories, paid or unpaid that will give your website additional exposure
  • Create the links with link text in mind, designed to utilize relevant keywords
  • Link only with websites that have decent PageRank (PR); i.e., PR of 3 at a minimum, PR of 4 would be the ideal minimum
  • Blogs - web logs linked to your site or posting to popular blogs with your links included to point traffic back to your site; a good strategy is to employ pinging with the blog posting
  
  


• Forums -- forum participation that allows you to leave your link with the intent
  of attracting traffic back to your site
  


• Listing with the few free search engines and directories is essential although
  you won't see any results for months
  


• Develop an email list subscription function on your site with the intent of
  sending e-newsletters and announcements on a regular basis. This subscription list
  can be used for several other campaigns, including the sale of advertising space on
  your newsletter.
  


• Purchase sponsorship on other email lists where you can promote your product
  and/or services as well as get your website promoted in the process.
  


• Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaigns with Google and Yahoo Search Marketing where
  you purchase advertising space for keywords that are popular for your industry if
  you are not in a saturated market. If your business operates in a saturated internet
  market, seek niche keywords for your PPC advertising. Determine your budget first
  and from there, you will know how much you can afford for the positioning your
  desire. It's all mathematical:
  • Price Per Click = monthly budget/number of clicks or
  • Number of clicks = monthly budget/price per click

  Some combination of price and number of clicks will result from a well-designed
  and constantly monitored campaign. The important result to watch is the conversion
  rate. How many paid clicks convert into the desired result; i.e., new contract, sale of
  product, sign up for e-newsletter, etc.

Tier III

Finally, after the hard-core efforts that are directly related to generating traffic to
your website, you will want to create follow-on, additional traffic that is under your
control. Several methods exist for this strategy:

• Taking the large list of ancillary keywords that relate directly or indirectly to your website, begin purchasing keyword related domain names that will be used to create traffic driving websites that point to your money site.
• Setup satellite pages using the keyword domain names that are heavily populated and geared toward keyword designed to develop niche market traffic. As you develop niche markets that create new customers, you are going to be able to capitalize on those customers for the other products and/or services that your company offers by focusing on information sites that link back to your money site while informing and attracting these new customers.
• Create links, backlinks and cross-links between the satellite pages and your money site, improving your link popularity for all websites, especially your money site.
• Display articles or e-books related to your industry and place these articles on your websites being aware of the best location based on keyword dominance.
• For long-term, viral marketing results, create articles or e-books that you will either sell on your website or offer to public domain websites where your link information must be retained for use by anyone else on the internet.

Monitoring

In order to determine if the SEO efforts are successful, you must monitor results of
backlinks, PR and web trend statistics. There are many sources for generating this
data as well as programs that will assist in these analyses. Whatever method you
choose, whether it is using specific programs or setting up a spreadsheet for entry
of data, be consistent in tracking the data. There will be fluctuations from day-to-
day. You are looking for general, overall upward trends. Upward progress followed
by maintenance of a strong position with slow, steady growth would indicate a
successful SEO campaign.

Article written and copyrighted by Chesa Keane, TAO Consultants, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Chesa Keane of TAO Consultants has been involved with the internet for 10 years through internet consulting, web development and search engine optimization. Go to http://www.computergoddess.com for a free Search Engine Optimization Checklist.

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

Free SEO Directory

SEO Responsibilities

The role of the organic SEO Consultant (or strategist) has evolved as fast as the SEO industry has over a very short period of time. Given the many titles they have been assigned (I suppose in a bid to keep up with ever changing responsibilities) it is very clear that the Search Engine Optimisation industry changes almost faster than the Internet Marketing sector itself. The purpose of this article is to outline, in the most descriptive way possible, the responsibility of organic (free search) SEO Consultants.

So let's go, outlined below are 10 of the core functions of the SEO Consultant

Site Accessibility: Ensuring that the site (which in most cases is developed by someone other than the SEO Consultant) can be crawled and indexed by the search engines. This reaches far beyond just making sure the robots file is in order. The site has to be crawled and indexed by the MAJOR search engines, don't only think Google.

Industry Research: You have to know what you are up against, get to learn the language of the industry you will work in. Pick up on the buzz words, read the forums, engage in relevant online communication. This will also count in your favour when looking for new work!

Keyword research: Using the abundance of KW research tools out there, you need establish exactly what people are searching for and target those. SEO Consultants have no purpose if the cannot research key search phrases.

Content Strategy: After establishing what key phrases you will target, produce a solid content strategy, using everything you have at your disposal including asking your sales staff what people are asking them for.

Execute Content Strategy: Begin to write, design, import, paste your content. SEO is part of this process and not the ugly stepchild who follows it. Revise, change, implement, monitor.

META Optimisation: Titles, descriptions, keywords (for what it's worth) has to be continually revised and improved.

On-page Optimisation: Images, Header Tags, Links, Videos need to meet the latest standards and follow protocol.

Link Building: Although most entities are looking to employ people specifically to handle this it very much remains an SEO duty.

Social Media Management: A proactive approach to engaging with your clients is always best. They are on Facebook, your business should be there as well...and Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.

Local Search: Optimize your Google Places listing!

These functions cover the work of the SEO. So if you want to employ someone to handle it, looking to being employed in the Search Engine Optimisation industry or checking if you are covering all your basis as an SEO Consultant, I hope this was useful.

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