Search Engine Optimization Tips Blog

Lots of people come to me asking for a Top Paid Directory List to which they can submit their website. I’ve (delete ’a’) created my own list of Paid Directories that I think are authoritative directories. I’ve divided this list into two sections, (A) PageRank, and (B)Longevity. In the “A list” I’ve considered those directories that have PageRank to internal pages as well as the homepage. In the “B list” I’ve included the directories that has been around the web for long period of time, but have no PageRank to the internal pages.

Authority 1 – Paid Directory with inner page PageRank.

http://dir.yahoo.com - PR8 - 1995

http://www.business.com - PR7 - 1998

http://www.botw.org - PR6 - 1996

http://www.joeant.com - PR5 - 2000

http://www.ezilon.com - PR6 - 2002

http://www.incrawler.com - PR6 - 2003

http://www.kahuki.com - PR6 - 2007

http://www.stpt.com/directory - PR4 - 1995

http://www.mavicanet.com - PR4 - 1999

Authority 2 – Paid Directory without inner page PageRank

http://www.gimpsy.com - PR6 – 2001

http://www.cannylink.com - PR5 – 1997

http://www.chiff.com – PR5- 1998

http://www.goguides.org - PR5 - 2001

http://www.mavicanet.com - PR4 - 1999

http://www.thisisouryear.com - PR3 – 2001

Please feel free to suggest directories to this list and do tell me why to think they should be included in the list.

Regards

Rishi Modi

SEO Expert – SubmitEdge

An interesting aspect to linking is that you can always get new ideas simply by tracing links to see where they come from and why they linked to you in the first place.

Sometimes you can learn a thing or two! For example, at PetStyles.com I have been focusing on the keywords ‘pet’, ‘dog’, ‘cat’, ‘clothes’, ‘sweater,’ ‘boots’, etc.

Suppose I use one of those nifty programs that lets me see who has been linking to me. They are readily available all over the net, and simple to install; or if you use Google Webmaster you will have easy access to them from that site.

Suppose I see a lot of links from sites having to do with children and their pets? Whoa! I hadn’t thought of that. Kids love to play dress-up, and who hasn’t seen a photo of a little girl wheeling the cat around in a baby stroller with a bonnet on? In fact, there’s probably about a million cutesy videos on YouTube right now.

Maybe I need to add a keyword phrase to my list. I don’t want to add the single word ‘children’ (too confusing when mixed with the clothing terms) - but what about the combination ‘pet stroller’ or ‘pet wagon’?

People who go the extra mile for their pet by dragging it around in a four wheeled contraption are the sort of folks who plunk down good hard cash for baseball caps with holes cut out for ears to poke through, bandanas sewn to collars, and hand-crocheted mini sweaters.

Google’s Tool is my personal fave because it actually tells you what the most commonly used words are being used in the anchor text of these inbound links. Silly me. I never thought of using the word ‘comfortable’ to describe my line - I kind of concentrated on ‘cute’ and ‘four-legged friends‘.

But there ’comfortable’ is, in anchor text originating from several pet sites devoted to pampering your pet. And there’s another good word - ‘pamper’. I’m just learning all sorts of stuff today!

Keeping an eye on your inbound links is a good idea in any case - you want to see who is linking to you in case you end up with some links that would be better no-followed, and it also lets you see if any reciprocal agreements are being honored. (Sorry guys, some people are unscrupulous enough to trade link postings and then renege. What? You’re surprised? Soooo naïve!)

Remember that how someone links to you is almost as important as the fact that they link to you at all.

Happy linking!

***Tomorrow - Deep Linking: How it can increase your site’s value***

The Google spiders are not perfect. They sometimes see things that aren’t there, and this can hurt you if they report incorrect findings back to the head spider.

Internal links that are inconsistent when it comes to urls are the most common mistake that can lead to poor ranking. If I have a link to www.PetStyles.com/DoggieDuds.html in one place, and simply to PetStyles.com/DoggieDuds.htm in another, I know they both go to the same page on my site.

Unfortunately, the spider doesn’t know that, and may see these links as going to two separate pages with identical content. Hear that ugly sound? It’s my ranking, going down the tubes. We HATE duplicate content.

The fix is simple, fortunately. Adjust all your internal links to match, consistently using either ‘www.’ . Set up a permanent redirect, so when someone types in your site name, it automatically redirects to the www. version.

Avoiding the very appearance of ‘evil’ is important when it comes to Google. Another pitfall can occur if you purchase different domains. This is a sound practice to help protect your brand, but can lead to the same problem with ‘duplicate’ content.

Simply redirect all alternate domain names to your main company site. Some web hosts don’t provide a 301 redirect, but ‘park’ your redirected names and keep the user in the same domain.

This can cause you more problems, but you can get around it by getting a second web hosting account and implementing your own 301 redirect in the .htaccess file. You can ‘park’ all your alternate domain names in the redirected account, and visitors to any of them will be funneled into your main url!

Back to the internal links; it is important to watch your links from content you have put out on the web as well. Make sure all your inbound links are consistent in their direction.

Once you have cleaned up all of your links and redirected your traffic to show the spiders that you have no duplicate content, you will probably see your search engine ranking improve.

Happy Linking!

Link buying is a highly controversial area. This is because buying links can easily be looked on by Google as ‘ballot stuffing’.

An inbound link is like a vote. We are all in a popularity contest, wanting to gain a seat on the first page of the SERPs. If other sites link to us because they like our content, our product or our style, we have won our votes fairly.

However, if we pay for links from other sources just to increase our ranking, this is looked upon as a blatant attempt to skew the results. In the search engine world, one link does not necessarily mean one vote.

There are companies which sell large amounts of links and advertise that you will be able to substantially increase your Page Rank. Take a close look at what sites are linked to you through such programs; if you are running an online pet clothing boutique, do you really need incoming links from casinos and insurance sites?

These send up a red flag to spiders that you are artificially trying to increase your standing by obtaining large numbers of incoming links that have little or no recommendations behind them.

Another common practice is not to actually buy the links outright, but to trade them - you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. Unfortunately this often has the same negative result, as reciprocal links are often not considered natural links either.

This is not to say you should never buy or trade links. If you are using your links mainly for traffic driving, to get visitors to your site directly, then reciprocal links, links bought from websites relevant to your own and text links can be extremely beneficial.

All you have to do to keep from being penalized by Google is add a ‘no-follow’ attribute to such links, so they will be discounted when your site is evaluated for Page Rank.

Pretty clear, isn’t it? Yet one gray area still remains.

Social networking and blogging has become the new way to get noticed, and top blogs are now open to reviewing your site - for a price. This can gain you a ton of exposure, and bring traffic as well as links your way.

Do these count as paid links? Some say yes, others, no. If the blog links to you in the review, then by all means, no-follow it, but what about the readers who then check your site out and link to you independently?

Paying for a blog review is really just another form of advertising, say many webmasters. It’s no different than paying for a keyword ad from Google. In fact, if Google objects, it’s just because they want your advertising dollars themselves!

Be that as it may, it certainly seems that natural linking as a result of a visit originating from either an ad or a blog should be treated equally.

Google has declined to take a firm stand on either side of the question, merely repeating their stock statement that paid links for the purpose of artificially manipulating Page Rank or SERPs is not allowed.

Only time will settle the issue of whether linking from interested blog readers counts on the plus or minus side of the equation.

 Subscribe in a reader

• Email Subscription by Feedburner