| | | Building Links with Directory Submissions
A few months ago I wrote an article about 13 ways a webmaster can go about building links to their site. One of these ways was through the use of directory submissions.
There are many reasons why you may consider a directory submission. You could be trying to build your brand, focused on links for organic rankings, or simply want to drive traffic to your site. Below we will focus on the link building and organic ranking aspect of directory submissions.
There are countless directories out there these days, some are free, some are paid, and many are garbage. If you decide to build links to your site using online directories, there are some things you will want to consider before spending your hard earned money.
Page Rank
Check the Google Page Rank. The visible page rank is only a very slight indication of a page's strength, but a PR 6 still represents a site of more value than a PR 2. Do not discount a site solely based on PR, but know that a higher PR site, if relevant, will give you more value.
Outbound Links
Check the number of outbound links on the category page you would submit to. If the page has more than 100 outbound links, then chances are it will help you very little but there are of course some exceptions to the rule. Let's say that the page in question has a few sites listed that are organically ranking in the top 10. The page also has a Google PR of 6/10, and the page is highly relevant to your industry. In this situation, even if there were as many as 150 or 200 outbound links, you would probably still want to get your site listed.
The same holds true for DMOZ. We know that DMOZ is a great place to get your site listed, and while listing your site on a page with the fewest links will give you the most value. In the case of DMOZ, even if the relevant category for your listing exceeded 100 outbound links, I would not hesitate to continue with a listing submission.
Category Pages
Check the number of pages per category. If your main category has 10 pages of listings, you may want to forget it as the deeper you dive into these pages, the less value they will hold - they also add the risk of the directory being downgraded due to spam etc. If you still want to be listed, what page will your listing appear on? If you can't get the first page, you will probably want to walk away.
Are listings alphabetical? Are new listings added to the top or the bottom of the list? If they are added to the top, you should know that in time, as more people submit, your site will get bumped down to the subsequent pages, reducing its value with every new bump.
Success of Other Listings
Take a look at other listings in the directory. Are any of these sites ranking for related top phrases? Try to assess if other sites in your category are benefiting from a link at this directory, especially if it's a paid directory.
Anchor Text
Does the particular directory allow you to determine the anchor text used, or does it simply link you URL. If you can choose the anchor text, the link will be far more valuable as it will allow more value to be passed on due to the relevance of the anchor text and the target phrase for your site.
Indexed in Google?
Are the directory and your preferred category sub page both indexed in Google and the other major engines? If it is a paid directory and they are not indexed, don't waste your money. If the directory is well indexed including your preferred category, and has a fairly recent last cache date, then it is worth considering.
Price
Prices for directory listings can range from free to hundreds of dollars, so you have to ask yourself "is it worth it". If you find that the directory is in good standing, other competing sites in your industry are ranking organically and listed here, and the page has a decent visible PR, this may warrant paying a higher premium to be listed. Be sure to consider if the billing is a one time or recurring expense.
If you have only a $300 annual budget the $299 a year for Yahoo may make sense, however if you break that up into 10 listings in other top directories for $30 a year each, this may be a better investment - it all depends on what is available for your industry, how high its quality is, and at what price.
Can Google See the Link?
If your focus is on search engine rankings, then you definitely want to ensure that both your link, and the page your link resides on, are both fully spiderable by Google. Ensure that the rel=nofollow attribute is not used on your link, or on the pages that link to the directory page; also ensure that the page is not being blocked by a robots Meta tag or within the robots.txt file. The best indication that a page is seen by Google is if there is a recent cache of it within the Google index. If this page is also noted as a back link for others sites listed, it's a pretty safe bet that yours will be seen also.
SPAM
Ensure that the directory you are submitting to is totally on the up and up. If you find that they are doing anything shady turn the other way. This could be in the form of hidden text or links, or abusive pop-ups, etc. If they are promoting some software or anything that may include adware or malware, you definitely do not want to be associated with this site.
If the site is free and without an approval process, you may as well forget it. It will (if not already) end up littered to no end with irrelevant links which will drastically downgrade the value of the link to as low as zero. While Free-for-All sites can be a quick source for links, the links will actually be useless, so avoid them.
There are many ways to build links for a site, and directory submissions are just one of them. By having your site listed in a number of relevant directories you can help your sites overall link reputation to grow. It is important to remember though, that directory links are usually not enough on their own, they are just one piece of the big picture.
| | Google Has Been Capped
News.com says Google is number 4. For a brief period of time last week Google's market cap slipped from third to fourth position. Apple's market cap reached $158.84 billion and edged out Google which was at $157.84. Wikipedia defines market capitalization as "...a measurement of corporate or economic size equal to the share price times the number of shares outstanding of a public company. As owning stock represents owning the company, including all its assets, capitalization could represent the public opinion of a company's net worth and is a determining factor in stock valuation."
The post states "Google's share price is much higher, at $505.82 compared with Apple's $178.97, but Google has only 314 million outstanding shares while Apple has nearly 886 million." Microsoft is still the leader at $255 billion and IBM follows at $170 billion.
by Bill Stroll, Sales Manager
| | Google Increases Lead in Customer Satisfaction
Barry Schwartz reports on the American Consumer Satisfaction Index in Search Engine Land that Google extends its lead in search satisfaction.
Below is the ACSI table showing current scores (August 20th) and percent change from the previous year.
by Bill Stroll, Sales Manager
| | A New and Revolutionary Acquisition for Google?
Possibly the most exciting post for me was from Oliver Marks at ZDNet . Here is a company that is thinking outside the box and developing an alternate interface for search on the internet; it involves returning results based on aggregate sets of information. Freebase Parallax is a fascinating peak into the future and it utilizes the strongest attributes to browse and explore data, a sort of marriage between Google and Wikipedia. This article has been placed under the Google section because I predict they will quickly snatch up this company and its revolutionary approach.
"Still technically in alpha, Freebase will be the underpinnings of many future companies - some would say this approach is the future of the entire Internet.
"It's built by the community and for the community - free for anyone to query, contribute to, build applications on top of, or integrate into their websites - basically an open database of the world's information."
 by Bill Stroll, Sales Manager
| | Yahoo Interface Indents
Is there a new interface in the works for Yahoo? Search Engine Roundtable reports August 19th on grouped or indented search results.
"In the past, Yahoo never ever indented search results. In fact, in the past I thought they did do indenting and then stopped, but Yahoo told me that they have never grouped results.
Many search results, including a search for search engine roundtable return grouped results now. Here is a picture:
by Bill Stroll, Sales Manager
| | Microsoft's Email Prioritizer Plug-In
Tuesday, Microsoft announced a new plug-in for Outlook 2007. Information Week reports on this collaborative effort between Microsoft Research and Office Labs. The plug-in targets email overload and "uses various algorithms to automatically identify the importance or urgency of e-mail messages delivered into an Outlook 2007 in-box."
It will allow automatic prioritizing of emails, and allow user to pause email delivery.
"Email Prioritizer affixes e-mail with between zero and three stars to represent the urgency or importance of a given message. The program uses a number of algorithms that take into consideration things like the name of the sender and whether the receiver is on the "To" line or the "Bcc" line of an e-mail to determine priority, though at this point Microsoft isn't forthcoming with a full list of exactly what Email Prioritizer takes into consideration.
"Users can also set e-mail priorities manually by changing or assigning a star ranking themselves. These user settings can inform automatic prioritization: for example, if someone always sets e-mails from his manager to three stars, those e-mails will eventually begin to arrive already bearing the three stars.
Email Prioritizer also comes with a "do not disturb" feature that allows users to tweak Outlook's settings so that no new e-mails arrive until set periods of time between 10 minutes and four hours have passed.
Office Labs is one of a number of public-facing Microsoft "labs" attached to product groups that Microsoft has created in the past few years, including Live Labs and AdLabs."
by Bill Stroll, Sales Manager | The Net Reality: Brayden's Net Travels
It's been another fascinating week online:
For starters, Europeans are once again at war. This time, the victor will hold sway over each and every citizen's right to neutrality in their net.
Speaking of war, it seems the current conflict between Russia and Georgia has given the world a sneak peak at new tactics for tomorrow's battlefields.
Microsoft's XP operating system is still the most reliable choice for about a third of new PC owners (poor Vista). Elsewhere, Google is getting their Android software ready to take on Apple for dominance over the cell phones market and this should happen fairly soon because just yesterday the FCC approved Android.
Also from the cell phone scene: Nokia announced they will offer Lonely Planet Guides for download; the future of ringback tone sales looks bright with a 2012 projection of $4.7 billion in sales, and new evidence suggests that the world could be a little safer with the use of cell phones.
If a business is looking to find out what Joe Public thinks about them, they can always check the popular social networks to read what's being said. Then, whether the news is good or bad, they can explore new ways to harness the power of these social networks to develop better strategies for reputation management.
Plus, more new technologies are just around the corner:
Airports will start using automated facial scanners for check through, new tools are out for visually impaired Web users and IBM claims their new speech recognition technology is the future. Scientists test robots with rat-brains and humanlike appearances, and concept designers give us a glimpse of what the future's roads and user interfaces might be. EBay is looking to expand its influence over Asia, and finally, a profitable career playing video games is rapidly becoming less of a 'pie in the sky' ambition (at least that's what I'd like to believe).
That is all for now. Pleasant surfing.
By Brayden Reger, Sales Associate | | | | | | | | Top Web Marketing Articles from StepForth
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