Five Tips to Increase Directory Approval Rating

Even after the recent pagerank update caused many sites to have a decrease in their pagerank it is still very important to submit to directories. I am not saying to go out and submit to thousands of general directories, make sure that they are related to your websites niche. In my case I found a bunch of quality blog directories and submitted there. Of course some did not approve me for a number of reasons, but here are some tips that I used to increase the chance of getting in at some of the best directories. Keep in mind that paid directories to not guarantee free inclusion, sometimes even these will deny you if the terms are not followed. Always look for Deep Link Directories over the regular ones as these carry a far better SEO benefit even though the price is a little higher to get into them. Most Deep Link Directories are paid and have a fee to get listed in them.

Keep the Wording Simple

Most directories do not want a long drawn out title that looks like a sales pitch. Keep it simple and use the keywords that you are looking to boost in the rankings. For instance I was using SEO and Marketing Tips as my title. It was simple and straight to the point. When it comes to descriptions this it up to you. Most directories prefer longer descriptions, about 200-300 characters should do.

Follow The Rules

The Terms Of Service are very important, read them over become submitting your site. If the directory requires the website to be written in english and contain no adult or illegal content then be darn sure that your website complies. Otherwise you are just wasting time and if they allow these sites then the search engines are likely to hit you with a penalty for being listed with them. Even if not mentioned every directory wants to contain quality websites. Nobody wants ones that are on free templates, filled with spam, or made for adsense. Have a friend or family member review your site become submitting it, if they do not like it then a webmaster defiantly will not either.

Use The Correct E-Mail

Using the @yourwebsite.com for submitting to all directories will increase approval rates for a few reasons. It shows that you indeed are the owner of the website and builds a higher level of trust in your website with the directory owner. Without him talking to you it proves to him that you own the site and are not one of the spammers that are too often clogging the submissions to directories.

Submit A Limited Amount

Submitting to thousands of unrelated directories will do no help. You also will have a very tough time tracking which ones approved you and which ones did not. Submit to about 10-15 directories at first. Submitting to many at once may cause Google to penalize your websites search engine positions (SERPS). Nobody wants to end up getting hurt from submitting to directories.

Use Directory Lists and Services

These can be helpful and save time rather then finding them all by yourself and submitting for endless hours. Some may like submitting it themselves, using autofill you can submit to most directories in under a minute. With the services for a few dollars someone will submit to a large number of directories manually. Most of these services are poor quality and submitted to a large mass of directories which is not what you want. I have been experimenting with them and the results are not clear how helpful they are at this time. By subscribing to my feed you will have instant access to the list of best paid web directories and the best free web directories.

Posted in: Blog, Increase Traffic, Make Money Online, SEO, Search Engine Marketing, Web Directories | Date: November 27th, 2007 | Posted by: Derek | 1 Comment »

Natural Traffic Comes Fast With Quality Content!

With all of the original posts that I have made so far it would only make sense that the search engines would reward me for it with great rankings! Google has already picked up my Best Free Blog Templates post and I have been receiving some natural traffic each day. Keep in mind I never submitted this to Digg or anywhere like that. The one that I did submit to Digg has not gotten any natural traffic yet. Here are the reasons I think Google liked that one in particular:

1. It had a simple title that was straight to the point.
2. I had about a paragraph (100-150 words) of quality content before showing each theme.
3. The description had each keyword from the title in it.
4. It did not look forced and reads like a post should!
5. It had some outgoing links to other quality related sites (the ones that have the theme)

The screenshot below shows one of the search engine rankings.  Already on the second page in the top 25!

Snapshot of the natural traffic, it started coming within 72 hours after I created the post!

Posted in: Blog, Increase Traffic, Make Money Online, SEO | Date: November 17th, 2007 | Posted by: Derek | 11 Comments »

5 Reasons The Top Bloggers Are Successful

After reading what Thomas Sinfield  wrote about  5 Reason Why You Will Fail At Blogging I got a great idea for my next post. Why not share the 5 Reasons The Top Bloggers Are Successful. Lists are one of the easiest ways to increase traffic to a blog because people will spread the word to others if they find them helpful. I will be posting one or two lists every week that are motivational and inspiring relating to promoting websites and building more traffic. I may even put a publisher in there once in a while since the majority of the theory’s about them are not true.

Why exactly do the top bloggers make so much money and have such a loyal following? Here are some of the reasons these guys are successful and by following these you will be on your way to joining them at the top!

They write a new post everyday
Although they may have the post timestamped and may have not actually created it at that second they always have new content coming out. Sometimes these guys are way to busy and have “Guest Bloggers” do the posting for them that week. Either way they get the fresh content out there and everyone loves reading it. It is suggest to post at least once a day and most bloggers cannot even find the time to do it once a week. Imagine the surge in traffic and rss subscribers if you posted on a day to day basis. Give it a try, it is the best way to gain exposure.

These guys are the promotion kings
They can promote a product without some people even realizing it. Sometimes they may be a bit deceptive and hide the affiliate links but they still get signups which is more money in their pocket. Then they use this money to further promote the blog until word of mouth takes over.  They are also amazing at hyping contests, Darren of Problogger offered over $54,000 worth of Prizes on Offer in the ProBlogger Birthday Bash Competitions! The great part is that almost all the prizes were donated so it was almost free exposure to his already massively popular blog.

They know what they are talking about
Always do research before making a post, it will give you even more ideas and will make you look like a professional in that area. Even though you may already know a great deal about the topic, the readers may not, posting a tip or trick is a great way to build a loyal reader-base. Surprisingly even the basics of Google Adsense such as adding code to a webpage is difficult for beginners, and if you have that they will be sure to bookmark the site and return in the future.

They build a list of contacts
Every top blogger has a Blogroll or list of other webmasters blogs that they enjoy reading. This is a great way to find other interesting blogs and spread the word about your own. Find the best blogs in your topic and ask them to do a blogroll exchange with you. Some may be nice enough to do it even if you are a new blog, others may other do it with close friends. It’s worth a shot though! This also helps build powerful backlinks that are sitewide most of the time which means a bunch of pages will get indexed, search engine rankings will improve, and you will get that small pagerank boost.

They love what they do
These guys are working as bloggers fulltime and love it. They attend conversions and seminars for the topic and just cannot get enough of it. This allows them to share insider news and tips that other bloggers cannot. They are great at promoting their name and always conduct themselves professionally. Without this type of passion their blog would have never made it. Keep this in mind as a bit of motivation when writing your blog.

Posted in: Blog, Ideas, Make Money Online, SEO, Tutorials, Wordpress | Date: November 16th, 2007 | Posted by: Derek | 6 Comments »

The Best Wordpress Plugins in The Blogosphere

In an earlier post Wordpress Plugins Ever Blogger Should Use, I introduced the LinkLove no follow plugin. This WordPress plugin turns off the  nofollow attribute for all commenters who have posted a set number of comments (configured in the admin panel). This plugin is now enabled and everyone that posts a comment will get a SEO boost back from their contribution. Keep in mind I have the comments set to be manually approved and want them to have thought and be insightful. If anyone has a question or comment just ask me there and I will be more then happy to reply to it.

With that said here is the second list of The Best Wordpress Plugins

Theme Switcher
Easily show demos of other themes or switch between them.

Show Top Commentor
Shows the members that have commented the most time in order. Great for encouraging activity in the blog and keeping them reading the posts.

Buy Me a Beer - Displays a beer or coffee icon and provides a link to your Paypal account for readers to buy you a beverage of your choice. A great way to encourage the readers to give back something to you.

SpellChecker
Provides spellcheck functioning on your dashboard. Great if you do not use Firefox which as that built in (not as useful anymore).

WP-Contact Form - Creates a contact form for members to reach you at. Use this to sell advertising, report issues, or just for general contact.

Gravatars - It lets you place the small pictures (avatars) of your readers next to their comments on your blog. Another great community builder! Please note this is the new and updated Gravatars 2, the first one was discontinued.

Adhesive - This plugin that lets you make blog posts sticky, so they will remain at the top.These posts will remain at the top of the page no matter how many other posts you wrote later.

Posted in: Freebies, SEO, Wordpress | Date: November 15th, 2007 | Posted by: Derek | 3 Comments »

Building Natural Search Engine Traffic: A SEO Case Study

In order to keep focused on Blogging I decided to make a challenge that will run until the end of November. If any other blogger would like to do a similar challenge let me know and I will update them with your results as well. Obviously if I do this right there are no drawbacks to it and everything that comes about it will be positive. I want to increase traffic and most importantly build a loyal following. If people find me naturally they are that much more likely to stay at the blog, which is why I believe the SEO factors are so important.

Goals

Backlinks: 250
Alexa Rank: 65,000

Authority: 100
Rank: Top 75,000

People Count: 5,000

Tools Used

DomainPop Backlink Checker

Why is domain popularity important?

You need backlinks to improve your search engine ranking. Having them from different domain names is more valuable for your ranking
We Build Pages Indexed Pages Checker

This tool is to check whether URL(s) have been cached by Google and what date that were cached. This is the best tool that I found they have a nice backlink checker tool which shows the anchor text each URL is using.

How can I help you achieve these goals?

I would appreciate any help, and will strongly consider returning the favor if your site is high quality. Just add me to your blogroll, include a link to one of my other posts in your website, or any other creative way you can think of.

The easiest way to help me is to subscribe to my RSS Feed and Add Me At Technorati.

Posted in: Blog, Case Studies, Make Money Online, SEO | Date: November 12th, 2007 | Posted by: Derek | No Comments »