SEO|The Full Insider SEO Details Exposed

If you were writing a textbook on SEO linking circa 2001, you almost certainly would have included a chapter on web directories. They used to be the primary way of actively acquiring one-way inbound links, before content syndication, blogs, or the paid link market really took off.

Web Directories and SEO Links: What Went Wrong?

Fast forward a few years, and you’d have to rewrite the chapter on directories and web links. In fact, you would probably downgrade web directories from a chapter to a page or two. In the SEO world, nothing good ever lasts long, and so it is with web directories.

* Traffic. With Google more accurate than ever, there was no more reason to turn to a human-edited list of websites. A directory might get you one or two click-throughs a month–or none at all.

* Redirects. Once directory owners realized their link popularity was valuable, they started hording it. Overnight, many, if not most, directories switched their HTML links to search-engine-invisible redirects.

* Fees. Most directories started charging for inclusion, or at least, for inclusion with a link rather than a redirect. If the fees were reasonable, that would not be so bad. But why would you pay $35 for a link on a PR 3 page with dozens of other links and virtually no content, on a site with dwindling traffic?

* Corruption. In the SEO world, low-hanging fruit quickly goes rotten. Any volunteer-edited commercial category in a link directory runs a very real risk of being taken over by a corrupt SEO.

* Dubious link popularity. Given the notoriety of many directories for selling or inappropriately bestowing links, it’s not hard to imagine a search engine quality control engineer turning the link popularity juice off from these sites.

* “Welcome to our list.” If a directory doesn’t charge a fee to enter, it may ask for payment in the form of an email address. You’d better use your special Hotmail account for that one.

* Anchor text. Many directories do not allow for anchor text to be specified, delighting in providing as little SEO value as possible for the effort involved in submitting to them.

* Time. When link directories really were vital efforts to categorize the web, getting a link in them was as simple as having a good website and letting them know about it. Now that they’ve turned into tightly rationed supplies of link popularity, that kind of responsiveness is out the window.

* Idiosyncratic applications without any promise of timely follow-up.

* Application forms that often empty straight into a black hole:
* No way of checking on the status of submissions.
* Threats of scuttling submissions that are re-submitted when there is no response.

Web Directory Linking Alternatives for the 21st Century

* Reciprocal linking with a twist. If you network with other site owners, you can triangulate link trades so that they are not direct. Heck, if you really like each other, you may just link to each others’ sites for the sake of it! It’s worked for me with some high-PR links.

* Blogging. Blog early, blog often, and someone is bound to link to you. It’s the nature of blogging. The fastest way to get inbound links from your blog? Write about other blogs. The more controversial, the better. Post this article on a webmaster blog, and in the same post, reference the blog of someone who thinks link directories are still a good idea! In the blogosphere, arguments mean lots of links.

* Article directories. These are the closest things to link directories, from an SEO standpoint, to emerge in the 21st century. You submit an article to one of these sites (of which there are over 200). In your article you include a link to your site. Article directories are everything link directories used to be: responsive, fair, fast, no-fee, relevant, and quality sources of not only links but information. OK, most of their pages are PR0 and the rest tend to be PR 1-2. But with most article directories, you can choose your exact anchor text for the link–often more valuable than PageRank for non-competitive search phrases. Besides, if most of your links are on PR 4+ pages, how natural will that look?

In short, even if web link directories do still have some SEO value, they should no longer be your first stop for one-way inbound links. There are much better, and much less aggravating, linking methods.

SEO in 10 easy Tips
Having your site top-ranked for a hot keyword can effectively improve your traffic and therefore your profits as well. All you need to do is to optimise your content and create many links of different quality. But if you don’t have any money to start off, its hard but it can be done.
You may also have the money it takes for reaching a top position, but are unsure if your money will be well spent or not. It may cost you a whole lot more than you thought in the beginning.
Wether you have the money or not, considering a self made budget SEO is a wise thing to do, because it’s both free and educating. After a while, you will gradually improve your technique and you will become an SEO expert. Once you’re there, you will be able to perform as good as a paid SEO but saving the money it takes to hire one.
Here’s 10 free ways to improve your rankings
1. Directory submissions - The most effective way in getting lots of back links fast. Grab a good directory list and submit your link in every single directory. Make sure that you get a few new back links everyday to ensure long term success. The best way to do that is by viewing all new directory announcements in Digital Points forum Solicitations & Announcements section.
2. Article Submissions - Almost every single article directory on the web is free. Article directories are a good compliment to ordinary directories because it will bring you more diversity in your back link structure. Write a good article with more than 500 words and include a back link to your site and submit it to all major article directories. Hope fully, if your article is good, some webmaster will pick it and put it on their own sites, so you’re not only getting back links from the article directories themselves, you are also getting free back links from real sites, which is very valuable in search engines like Google.
3. Wikipedia.org - A good source to collect incoming links. Do you have any content that is related to any wikipedia article? In that case, you can edit the wikipedia article and input your link on the link page. Make sure that the content you are linking meets up with the standard, otherwise, your link will be removed as fast as it came up.
4. Onpage SEO - Onpage optimisation was the most important SEO technique available before 2001. Today, it does not have the same decisive factor that it once had. It is however still very useful to do some basic onpage SEO. Make sure that your targeted keywords are included in the title, the headline and the footer. Make sure that you always provide some fresh content on the pages that you specifically want to optimise. Provide it at least with an RSS feed. But most important, make sure that the onpage SEO does not overshadow the content and make your site look less useful.
5. PRWeb.com - Post a press release once you release your site. It will help you a little bit in the rankings, but most importantly, if your Press release is good, you will get some natural links generated by PRWebs users.
6. Myspace.com - Myspace has recently become one of the hottest sites on the internet. It has also became one of the most effective places to market your site. Just make a profile for your site there, then try to get as many friends as possible. Post links to your sites on other profiles, post bulletins of your site and if it’s cool enough, you will get some natural back links in return.
7. Ask for back links - Send out nice original emails to other webmasters that have similar sites. Write some sentences about what you think of their site or anything related to the subject of their site. When you get the reply, answer them, tell them something more and then ask for a reciprocal or a one-way link.
8. Forums - Forums are not only a great place to discuss things but also a good resource for generating back links, feedback and traffic. Put a link in your signature. Make a post about your site or even better, make a post about something and then make a related link to your site. Note, go for inactive forums, they tend to give more weight than the active ones and your link will be displayed over a longer time.
9. Make sattelite sites - Put up a site with some content on e.g. geocities.com and include a back link to your site somewhere, then submit the sattelite site to somewhere around 100 directories so it will be indexed in Google, and you got a high quality back link.
10. Also, SEO is an area where there are lots of paid alternatives that may help you in getting a good ranking. Some of these are paid article submission, paid onpage optimisation, paid directory submission paid link exchanges and paid links. If you are good on doing directory submissions but bad on onpage SEO, you can charge for making directory submissions for others and then hire someone to do onpage SEO for you.
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Todd Gamble is a staff writer for onlinetips.