Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

To increase visibility online is the core of every online business marketing strategy. Driving traffic to your website and getting noticed by search engines takes a lot of time and effort.

‘Links’ play a major role in determining your ranking position on the various search engines. Obtaining inbound links or back links in quantity and quality can influence your search engine rank immensely. One simple way to obtain back links is to submit your link to directories. Online directories exist for the sole purpose of providing links to web users to various sites categorized under relevant topics. “Directory submission” is a website optimization strategy that no website owner should ignore.

Directories catalog links for easy access to users. Much earlier, directories were the primary source for web users to find websites on various topics. Today search engines have taken over but directories have not lost their importance yet. You cannot obviously expect too much traffic from a directory submission. But you can expect an improvement in your search engine placement.

Here is how it works. When submitting to a directory, the major hindrance as well as the major benefit lies in the human editor. Your submission will be viewed by an actual person who determines how relevant and unique your website is. After passing his scrutiny and editing, your website will be accepted in the directory. This automatically establishes the credibility of your website; hence search engines will consider links submitted to directories.

Some directories even feed their databases to other directories and search engines. Search engines base a certain factor on directories in judging a website’s popularity and relevance. Depending on the quality of the directory and the number of back links your website has, search engines will be able to determine your relevance and qualify your website accordingly.

Note how important listing in a directory is. If your website is low on content but rich in images, flash content, etc. search engines may not be able to categorize your website when the search spider visits your site. By submitting to a directory under a particular category, you allow the search engine to categorize your site under a relevant topic.

There are general and specific directories available online. Specific directories target only those websites based on a particular subject or field. No matter what your business is, odds are that directories will be available that cater specifically to it. There are also regional directories available which may be highly useful if your online business targets a local audience.

You can submit to some directories for free while others are charged. Look for directories relevant to your website and submit to them. There are even online directory submission services, like DMOZ available that work towards submitting your links to directories.

Every directory has their own set of guidelines that they follow when approving sites. Summarized below is a general set of guidelines that most directory editors would follow when deciding on whether to approve a site into their directory. Ensuring that you follow these guidelines when submitting your site will give you a better chance of getting approved.

These guidelines have been broken down into the 7 aspects that most editors would look into with regards to your submission:

• Title
• Description
• Keywords
• Category
• URL / Domain
• Email
• Site Content

Title of your Site

Each directory has its own criteria where titles are concerned.

Some directories do not allow the usage of keywords in the title and only allow for the company or website name. In such instances, you should only use the official name of your site without any keywords, e.g. for our site http://www.SEO.com, our official company title would be ‘SEO Company’ – note that there are no keywords included.

There are many directories, though, that accept titles with keywords to describe the site. In such cases as well, there are a few points you should keep in mind when writing your titles:

• The title should be relevant to the purpose of the site and aptly describe (in a few words) what the site is about.
• The title should be meaningful and not just contain a list of keywords.
• The title should not be too promotional and read like an ad text, instead it should be as objective as possible.
• The title shouldn’t be too lengthy (anywhere between 20 to 50 characters is usually fine).
• THE TITLE SHOULD NOT BE IN ALL UPPER CASE.
• Avoid the use of an exclamation mark ‘!’ in the title.
• Avoid repetition of keywords.
• Avoid words like ‘best’, ’leader’, ’cheapest’, ’greatest’ or any other exaggerated adjective.

Description

Most, if not all, directories require a description for your site. The general guidelines for writing acceptable descriptions would be:

• All the points mentioned above for the title

Do not mention any pricing details or any other promotional details that are subject to change with time. Again, a description should ideally just describe what the site offers (you may include features and benefits as long as it doesn’t make the description sound too promotional)

• Most directories wouldn’t want you to mention a phone number and address details in the description – so it’s best to avoid putting in those details.
• Avoid Capitalizing The First Letter Of Every Word In Your Description.
• Try and avoid ending your description with ‘and others’ or ‘etc’ or even ‘…’

Keywords

Most directories aren’t too strict about what you enter in the keywords field but just make sure you don’t repeat any keyword more than once and also make sure you have the keywords entered in the format required. Some directories may require you to enter each keyword separated by a comma, e.g. keyword1, keyword2 – while some may require the keywords to be separated by a space. So just make sure you follow their guidelines.

Category

Quite a few directories are very particular about you choosing the right category. Many people make the mistake of selecting the category too fast without checking if there would be a more relevant category. Take the time to go through the directory’s choice of categories and choose the most appropriate category. For some directories, where you’re not able to find a suitable category, you may even suggest a relevant category (if the directory allows you to do so) and if the directory editor finds it suitable, your site would be added under the newly created category you suggested.

URL / Domain

Not many directories are particular about the kind of URL or domain you have but make sure you:

• Submit the domain or URL in the correct format. Most directories accept a URL in the format of http://www.mydomain.com while some directories accept it without the http://
• Do not submit parked domains and domains that have no content
• Do not submit domains that redirect to another site.
• Unless specified, only submit your home page URL and not a URL pointing to one of your inner pages, e.g. http://www.xyz.com and not http://www.xyz.com/this-page.html  Also, when submitting your home page URL, do not include the ‘index.***’ portion of your URL – it should just be http://www.xyz.com
• Some directories are particular about adding a forward slash ‘/’ at the end of the URL. Remember to do so where mentioned.
• Very few directories accept domains hosted on free hosting services or domains that are not registered – avoid submitting these kind of domains.

Email

A few directories are particular about not accepting sites where the email address included belongs to a free account like yahoo, hotmail or Gmail. This is applicable in very few cases. It is preferable to include the email address of your site domain, e.g. if you’re submitting http://www.xyz.com, try and use contact@xyz.com although don’t worry too much about this as there are very few directories that are particular about the email address entered.

Site Content

Apart from following the guidelines given in each directory about the kind of sites that are acceptable to them, here are a few other general guidelines about a site’s content that most directories are particular about:

• Never submit a site that is under construction or is about to launch. Make sure your site is fully operational before you have it submitted.
• Do not submit sites that have no content.
• Some directories don’t accept sites having just one page. It is preferable for your site to have a few pages.
• Your site should have a substantial amount of content and not be full of affiliate links or contain just ads all over.
• A few directories do not accept sites with ‘mirror content’, i.e. sites having the same content but different domains.

Many directories get plenty of submissions a day and it could take just one reason for an editor to reject your site. So be careful and try and stick as close to the guidelines as possible.

YOU SHOULD CHOOSE 5 OF THE BELOW STRATEGIES WHICH YOU FIND THE EASIEST TO IMPLEMENT AND WORK ON THEM FOR 5 DAYS (1 DAY EACH). THEN CHOOSE THE NEXT 5 AND IMPLEMENT.IMPLEMENTATION IS THE KEY HERE, WORK UNTIL YOU HAVE EXECUTED ATLEAST 30 OF THE STRATEGIES AND YOU WILL HAVE QUALITY TRAFFIC FOR A LONG TIME.

1. Trade an adequate amount of Stumbles to improve your site’s Stumble Ranking. Stumble Upon is a feasible option, where-in better the content, higher the hits. Also, Diggs can be utilized to get your site indexed quickly.

2. Backlinks can be substantially incremented through sites such as Propeller, Only Wire and Social Marker, which serve the purpose of improving indexing and rankings.

3. A suitable press release publicizing your site can be submitted directly to PRWeb.com to attain a good flow of traffic and even rankings.

4. If a competitor with high traffic-site uses Ad Sense, then you can use Google’s Site Targeting Program to get your ad directly to your competitor’s site, evading hassles of contacting the owner.

5. Advertise your site with certified and commonly visited classifieds such as the centralized network on CraigsList.org.

6. Posting quality content through constant offerings on groups, communities and forums with common interests will help attract a good amount of traffic.

7. LinkedIn.com has a widespread online business social networking forum which effectively helps increase your contacts and repo amongst other online marketers.

8. It is essential to keep updating and modifying your site in order to make it seem more dynamic. This will attract more visits from popular search engines.

9. Publishing brochures or even a mini-book based on what your site is all about can assist in creating huge publicity spreads.

10. Posting regularly on your blog and then pinging each time you write in is of great help. Also, each post must contain apt keywords concerned with the business in order to initiate better search results.

11. Writing eye-grabbing reviews about products that belong to the same niche as yours on blogs in your own niche with a link back to your site.

12. Helpful suggestions or comments can be left on other people’s blogs, with a backlink to your site attached at the bottom.

13. Options such as social bookmarking, Refer to a Friend and other such viral techniques will enable a widespread of your site’s popularity.

14. Sites such as OnlyWire.com help in automating social book marking, which enables you to generate more backlinks automatically, thus resulting in traffic from affiliated sites.

15. Offering free items on your site, such as free courses, affiliate products or e-books will help gain a higher number of subscribers and repeat traffic.

16. Attaining membership to the Better Business Bureau will not only help you develop marketing skills, but also enable you to have your site’s link posted on their website.

17. Submitting articles with qualitative contents to popular article directories and blogs and forums.

18. Business cards are also an effective method to create contacts and expand networks.

19. At times, you can get to advertise your site on the Thank You and Reference pages of other Sales websites in return of a nominal charge for the site owner.

20. Personal profiles on popular social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter can prove heavily beneficial to circulate your site’s information and backlinks.

21. A video-clip containing informative footage regarding your site can be uploaded on common video hosting sites such as YouTube. The link to your site must be included primarily in the About Video/Information section of the clip.

22. Buying advertisements on EBay or using PPC techniques is a way of spending your way into luring customers.

23. Some local Radio stations often accept advertisements at relatively affordable costs. So, investing some amount in advertisements on Radios in another medium of mass-communication with a large reach.

24. Also, sponsoring a small segment on a local News channel is a viable long-term option to spread word about your site.

25. Niches impact traffic flows heavily. Picking the correct niches to venture into and combining them with properly researched keywords thus becomes important for long term traffic.

26. If the content is able to generate enough heat, encouraging people to subscribe to your RSS feeds will become easy, which is an efficient method of building a loyal base of visitors.

27. Many readers who use backlinks to reach your site may not necessarily enter your index page. Hence, each standalone page of the site must be intriguing and attractive enough to make them navigate further and read on.

28. Multiple blogs can be created with one parent site to backlink to. Since all of these blogs act as channels leading to the same parent site, continuous traffic inflow is ensured.

29. Giving out attractive bloggers’ awards or rewarding the best blog entries in cash or kind can prove to be a healthy way of attracting a constant inflow of bloggers.

30. Posting backlinks on websites in similar niches and higher Page-Rank will assist in getting your site’s ranking up. Higher the Page-Rank, better the rankings on Search Engines.

31. If you use Yahoo, then it is a common trick to set up a feed on My Yahoo. This will help Yahoo keep automated track of the updates on your site and blogs.

32. Web campaigns either earn money or cost money. Thus, it becomes vital to keep track of your site’s campaigns from time to time through effective tests of their feasibility.

33. An effective offline strategy, which is slightly expensive and lesser known, involves bringing forth your advertisements in front of the common public via modes such as posters, t-shirts, publishing in magazines etc.

34. Also, public places such as alleys, bus stations, cafes etc. are apt sites where you can put up paper Stick-Ons to promote your URL amongst the common masses.

35. The Alexa Tool Bar is an efficient tool to monitor traffic reports and acquire traffic rankings after searching profitable niche keywords on search engines like Google.

36. Hosting Tele-seminars or Webinars with other marketers of your niche can prove to be critical tools in enlightening members of your network with information about your site.

37. If you can’t get famous, get infamous. A trick to attract more eyes is to generate a controversial idea, against the popular beliefs common in the market, and then spread it around through articles and e-books.

38. There could be sites with misspellings or variations of your domain name floating on the web. Try and purchase some space on them in order to forward your URL.

39. Buying an authoritative site and getting high powered people to use it adds to your reputation. Following that up with a few press releases helps attain publicity.

40. Every time you make a presentation to a club, forum or local society, it is highly advisable to mention your site as many times as possible and expand your contacts amongst other online marketers.

41. Write articles and submit to E-zine articles and build backlinks to them if necessary (for quick Google rankings), link back to your main page.

42. Use twitter to direct traffic, use automation software to add followers.

43. Add valuable articles to forums in your niche and have a link in your signature.

44. Write guest posts on high traffic blogs in your niche. Do a domain who is search for getting the details of the owner or write a comment telling that you have an offer that can be of mutual benefit.

45. Build a list and send them quality information once a week, soon you can have them come to your site just by requesting.

46. Build relationships in your niche. With fellow webmasters and more importantly the traffic. Make lists and satisfy them with good information.

47. Make video files watermarked with your URL and upload to torrent sites and other sharing hubs (mediafire, rapidshare). Give links to these download pages in forums.

48. Make link wheels and keep at it consistently.

49. Ping, social bookmark and submit your RSS feeds to Rss feed aggregators to get a steady source of traffic each time you update your site.

50. GET TO WORK AND STOP DAY DREAMING.

Off page optimization (off-page SEO) are techniques for search engine optimization that are carried out off the pages of a website to help maximize its performance in search engines for target keywords related to the page content. Off page optimization is just as important as on page optimization. Examples of off-page optimization include linking, and placing keywords within link anchor text. Methods of obtaining links can also be considered off-page optimization. The most important off page SEO techniques can be summarized as follows-

(1) Press releases.

(2) Link exchanges.

(3) Article distribution.

(4) Social networking via sites like Facebook, Digg and Twitter.

(5) Link campaigns, such as asking complementary businesses to provide links.

(6) Web directory listings.

(7) Blogging, run a separate site or on the same URL.

(8) Forum posting, responding to queries.

On page optimization (on page SEO) are the techniques that you use, when designing your web pages to help make them Search Engine Friendly. A Search engines job is deliver their users with the most relevant site pages for any particular query. Maybe your website has a lot of material and is relevant to searches for your product, but it may not have been designed or written in a way that is search engine friendly. The correction of design mistakes and the re-writing of the websites text and meta tags is what is known as on-page search engine optimization.

The most important areas in on page optimizations can be listed as follows-

(1) Keyword Research

(2) Include your keyword in your Domain Name

(3) Use Title Tags and make sure they are different for all of your web pages

(4) Content optimization, keywords should be used at a density of around 6-8%

(5) Header Tags, ensure your top keywords sit within the h1, h2 and h3 tags

(6) Image Optimization use your image tags and include a keyword or phrase

Task of improving the rankings of any website has never been so easier for me earlier, when I was not aware of the tactics involved in finding the right methods to be followed. Before you start work on any project one should be careful in selecting the processes that could literally affect ranking in just few days of work. But it’s not that easy task unless and untill you have spent enough of your time and you have scratched your mind to the fullest in doing research on various methods traditionally followed by all the search engine professionals. Many of the methods are in front to follow that helps to improve the rankings but to choose the one that affects very strongly and quickly but at the same time is very interesting to do.

Social media is the latest in a series of tools that are emerging for search engine optimization. This is different type of social media optimization, which is about getting your site listed in the social sites. There is social bookmarking or social networking sites out there that provide you the quality one way links which means that if you craft a piece of content and title it with the keyword phrase you need then surely you will be getting a free link with the correct anchor text.

I too have been assigned a task of the same kind for which earlier ranking results were needed. So to start with any off page task was not that tough for me as I had already worked on many of the similar kind. But to improve the ranking of keywords falling not even in first thousand positions within month was something bothered me. I was bound to adopt a keen strategy for further proceedings of the off page task. As I was aware of the fact that according to search engine ranking algorithm highest preference is given to the quality inbound links. So I knew I had to follow the approach that floods me with quality inbound links and with other optional features alongside. So after keen evaluations the only answer to all my queries that can actually affect the rankings very strongly was to link to the huge social networks on the web. This was going to provide large number of quality links on one side but on the other side my website was also about to gain popularity among the web networks. So what else was needed for me to enhance search engine rankings?

• A piece of content that provides value
• A compelling title
• Keyword phrase within the title
• A way to monitor your accounts
• Regular analysis of each link in google

Creating killer content is my thing. Because I know that is the only thing that can attract numerous numbers of users connected through social networks and causing them to pick my link, add my link, vote for me and even tell their pals about it. And if one of my stories actually gets picked up and voted on at any of the social bookmarking sites then it is entirely better.

The biggest problem with this method is time and the relative effectiveness of the links. You have to make sure the content is good and the title passes spam detection else it will simply be delete.

The good thing about it is that it’s a cheap and interesting way to get sites deep crawled and indexed.