“SEO Book is a leading SEO blog by Aaron Wall covering the search space. It offers marketing tips, search analysis, and whatever random rants come to mind. The first version of my popular SEO Book came out in December of 2003. I have probably revised it about 50 times since then.

Balancing answering emails, blogging, reading blogs and forums, buying and developing sites, working for a couple customers, and running this site is pretty hard – especially with only a couple employees.

In the past SEO Book was more about posting search news, but since the market has got so saturated on that front and I acquired the Threadwatch community I have decided to keep Threadwatch focused on the latest search news and speculation, and to use SEO Book to answer customer questions and to offer online marketing strategy tips. In 2007 I decided to shut down Threadwatch to focus more energies on improving this site. Shutting down Threadwatch has meant that more of my whinges have wound up on this blog, but then so have many of my best posts.”

This great resource covers everything from coming up with a business plan, and deciding on a brand and domain name, to marketing your website and succeeding online.

Learn about SEO with SEOBook, today!

Importance of Building Quality Links

All the content in the world will not rank your website if you don’t have quality back links pointing to your site. Building back links and staying afloat of competition is an on-going effort. Generally sites in the top 10 for competitive terms will have thousands, sometimes tens or hundreds of thousands of links pointing to their site.

Links that best help your site would be .edu, .org, and .gov if you can find them. Factors to consider in persuing a link on someone’s site is the age of the domain, links pointing to their site, and the Google PageRank to get a rough idea of a sites ranking power. You should also make sure that the link to your site is not ‘no follow’ which will kill any kind of promotion power you may have gotten.

Types of Links

Organic Links: “natural” links that are created thanks to your quality content. Organic links are created by users who enjoy your site and do the work for you by posting your link on forums, sites, and sharing with their friends.

One-Way Links : generally purchased, these links are from one site pointing to another. These include paid listings on websites, and directory submissions. One-way links are the largest carrier of ranking power from one website to your website. Some good one-way links can be obtained through relevant-site press releases.

Reciprocal Links : exchanging links is unfortunately a dying practice. There was a time when you were encouraged to exchange links with someone, creating a reciprocal link. Reciprocal linking now a days is best left to relevant websites. The days of exchanging links on your links page have come and gone. A good amount of bloggers will create profiles on sites like Facebook and Myspace, and link between their site and profiles.

Three-Way Links : so say you want the benefits of a one-way link, with the practice of a reciprocal link. You may consider a three-way linking set up, where the owner of site A would link to site B. In exchange, the owner of site B would link to another site of site A owners’. These aren’t detected by search engines as connected if done right.

For getting first page search results consider submitting to the Google DMOZ directory. DMOZ is an aggregater for many other directories, providing the listings they will use which will further promote your site without any additional work.

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!