Marketing your website on the Internet can be difficult. Sites that are higher in search engine results generally have more links, or better links. Quality links can cost money, and a lot of links can take a lot of time to build. A good search engine marketing campaign will mix both aspects of linking.
Before reading more, see DMOZ for yourself here.
Better Links
You can submit to directories and exchange links with websites all day, but what’s really important is quality links. Quality links are links that are relevant to your site and have some authority in the eyes of search engines. Your site can easily catch up to speed in the advertising game by obtaining better links, rather than more links. Needless to say, a directory sponsored by AOL made by Google is a quality incoming link to your site.
More Links
There are countless directories on the Internet. A lot of them start up and do not have any websites to list. In effort to build their directory listings up, they pull from the DMOZ directory. This means that if you are listed in DMOZ you are likely to become listed in many other new directories.
Be Patient
Submitting to DMOZ doesn’t mean you’ll get the listing. Since DMOZ is such a quality directory, a lot of people are submitting their sites. With so many submissions, it takes time for the editors to review and approve your site. Even hearing back about your listing can take months, so be patient before resubmitting your site.
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Advice from a DMOZ Editor
In my spare time I am an editor for a category on DMOZ. Here are a few quick tips for bettering your chances of getting approved:
Be sure you have submitted to the appropriate category.
There are a lot of categories on DMOZ. Make sure you find the category that is most appropriate for your submission.
Polish your title and description before submitting.
It’s easy to overstuff the title and description of your description. Avoid overuse of keywords, and do not repeat your title in the description. You’ll also notice all sites listed are a certain perspective.
Submit once, and only once.
Editors have so many sites to go through, if we see your site more than once consider yourself done for. Also, don’t submit the same site with different domains.
There is a lot of speculation, but tests prove DMOZ listings to be one of the most effective methods of search engine marketing. Utilize the above tips and submit your site!
A lot of people on the Internet use search engines to find what they need, be it Google, MSN, or some other engine. Unfortunately most people won’t go past the first few pages of search engine result pages. How do you get to the top of those results? What are some things you can do to optimize your site for search engine success? Here are some specifics.
Door Way Pages
The purpose of a door way page is to redirect traffic to another site or page. These are mainly for search engines, and not humans. We humans like more content, pictures and information when we spend the time to load a page. We humans like fresh content, new information. So what does the webmaster of a door way page do to trick search engines? They make minor changes to the page and resubmit on a regular basis, claiming new content.
Similar, but different are landing pages. Webmasters will use a landing page to convey more information and list links that are relevant to the page. They are designed with both humans and search engine spiders in mind.
Hidden Text And Links
When search engines first started collecting the Internet as they know it, there were a lot more people stuffing links all over the place. Hidden text and links was a “method” of stuffing your site artificially with content to be seen by spiders. These hidden text and links of keywords were often tucked into the very bottom of a site, occupying a seemingly blank area. Investigating hidden text and links was easy for us humans, we can find it by selecting the area or even looking at the source code.
The next step for overzealous webmasters was to stuff ALT tags. These are the boxes that come up on pictures and elements of a website to give more information about it. Generally they are to be a quick description of the element in it’s context on the page. Stuffing and hiding text didn’t last long.
Now days search engine spiders have caught on, and recognize if a page is using the same color text as it’s background. Spiders scan and index your site with the use of complex algorithms and a monster team of engineers behind them.
Link Farms
I’m sure you’ve heard of the term link farm. A link farm is where all the members of a system are linked to each other by a common set of linked pages. The result is all members having a links page with the other members’ web addresses on them. These link farm sites can have several hundred or even thousands of members. By joining you have instant access to hundreds of other web sites, all wanting to exchange links with you.
The problem with these programs is only the sites of relevance are going to give you any weight with their link. Say for example your site is about your favorite show, and you’re receiving links from a dog training website will do you little good. Be wary of exchanging a lot of links, and instead simply gather quality links that are relevant to your site.
Duplicate Content
Search engines and humans alike prefer original content on a site. They don’t want to view the same content a bunch of times. Only the first of duplicate detected content will be indexed by search engines. The rest will end up as supplemental context and won’t even rank. I’ve heard some people mention their site was banned due to duplicate content.
Some webmasters copy their sites and reproduce with different domain names, using with the same content. They link the pages together in hopes of getting a better ranking, and top spots for their keywords. In reality duplicating your websites like that will ensure a swift ban of your site.
Mind these tips and you’re on your way to succeeding in search engine marketing.
Don’t forget to read about submitting to Google’s DMOZ directory for quality links to your site.
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