Search Engine Optimization Tips Blog

For years, DMOZ was the most popular directory among search engine marketers and professionals. It had a reputation for being “quality” directory, thanks to its age, its authority among search engines, and the lack of a fee for listing. However, as years have passed, some question its real value.

It can take weeks or months to get a listing, and the prospect of success is hit or miss.DMOZ is strict as to which sites it will include, and lists major reasons why a site is not put in because of “poor quality” or for not being in accordance with DMOZ submission guidelines.

The idea is that DMOZ listings are high value, and should be treated as definitive resources. If the quality of the websites included is great, then DMOZ’s reputation stands as one of the best directories in the web. If not, and if DMOZ is just being exploited by search engine professionals wanting to get link juice, the primary purpose of DMOZ (providing a quality website directory for everyone, not just SEOs) is corrupted.

DMOZ allows users to search websites which have been “manually reviewed” by human editors and given the stamp of good quality in terms of providing information, trust and reputation; no spammy or affiliate sites allowed. DMOZ editors visit the actual website, navigate it, read your content, examine your services, check your background and verify your business address. If the websites cannot pass, a DMOZ listing is denied.

But does it really benefit you? Do people actually use DMOZ? Or is it just a strong link? Some webmasters will use DMOZ as an alternative to Google, Bing and Yahoo for search. However, a problem exists in a severe lack of websites and updated results.

By all means try for a DMOZ listing, just don’t make it your main mission, you can get good links elsewhere and grow organic traffic through good SEO.

Beware! Selling links is shady, shady territory, and you can sink yourself fast by following black hat tactics!

The world of SEO is a dangerous place know only a tiny bit about! You can read a few blog posts, understand the basics and go to work on your website. The mistakes that can be made in this situation are many, especially in the world of link exchanges. Generally speaking, the more relevant inbound links a website has, the better its ranking will be.

Unfortunately, some people have twisted this by leaving out the all important word ‘relevant’  and the  link-exchange industry has boomed. Link exchanges are not as simple or straightforward as they appear.

A link is a nod of approval between websites. When you link your site to another website, search engines count it as a recommendation of that site by you.  Page rank is calculated from a complicated algorithm ; it boils down to high is good. If you spend lots of time on your website adding pages and pages of unique keyword rich content, it is updated frequently, and other high-page-rank sites link to you, then Google is going to rate your site higher as far as PageRank goes, and you’ll probably rank well for SERPs as well assuming you’ve done your keyword targeting properly.

How do you get high PageRank?

• Make sure that the site you are linking to has good content that will add value to your own visitors’ experiences. A client should follow a link off your page and not land on a bogus website. If a recommendation by your site leads people to trust your opinion, they’ll come back to you!
• Also be aware if a reciprocal link from this other site will do you any good. Low PageRank sites should only be linked out to in cases of extreme value and relevancy.

Link building should only be undertaken if you understand the ramifications, utilize the tools that are available to you and make sure that your decisions are based on data.

You can be accused of being a link spammer even if you think you haven’t done anything wrong. Watch out for unscrupulous link directories and sites Use the techniques above to make sure you’re posting to relevant sites/directories/ articles/ blogs or wherever you choose to submit your content and links.

Linking software creators claim that you can get thousands of back links with the press of a button or for only “$89″. The only way to get good quality back links is to do the research yourself and hand-submit every single link, or sue an SEO firm that does the work manually and gives you a list of where your links are coming from and the PR of each site.

If you avoid these two traps, you’ll be well on your way to getting the links you need to get your website placed higher in search results and, as a result, generate more sales.

What do you do when you kind of end up with links you’d rather not have on your site, but can’t really get rid of? You know what I’m talking about. You set up your site, hit all you buddies and relatives up for links, and now those non-relevant, off topic, zero PageRank links from blogs and little personal sites are dragging you down.

We’ve talked a lot about what sites to link to, what backlinks will be worth the most,  and how to avoid links that will hurt you. But what if you jumped into link building the wrong way when you first set up your site, and you have some links that are sitting there like an elephant in the room?

Good news! You don’t have to hurt feelings or make enemies by ditching those links. You can instead smoothly direct search engine spiders to discount links, pages and even whole directories if needed. Do try to spend time fixing the problems as soon as possible, but don’t be afraid to block crawlers from indexing stuff they don’t need to see. ‘Disallow’, ‘no-index’ and ‘no-follow’ are useful tools to keep ‘bad links’ or junk pages from hurting you so much.  Eventually you’ll have to clean house, but if you are short on man-hours this is a temporary fix.

Add a ‘no-follow’ attribute to ‘bad’ links and ‘disallow’ spiders to access those awful pages. You can add a no-follow to a link simply by adding it to the HTML like this:

You can put a page disallow in your root folder added to the robots.txt file.

User-agent: *

Disallow: /bad-page/keep/out.html

You should also link very specifically to each page for the highest relevance. Categorizing your links carefully and matching them to the best pages in your site will help strengthen your website from within – you need strong internial site architecture to be competitive in a consumer satisfaction driven environment!

As for those reciprocal links from family and friends, consider a ‘Friends of (your sitename)’ page,  and have the less relevant links listed there. You can no-follow each link, or simply disallow the whole page. This also lends a little extra ‘testimonial’ style to your site for visitors as well; it’s like seeing your ‘followers’ . Just another step to the socialization of the web!

So what exactly are  ‘bad’ links; where do they come from, why are theyconsidered ‘bad’ and how they can negatively impact your site??

Many web entrepreneurs think that quantity is the key, and start contacting all their friends, family members and co-workers asking for links as well as any other websites in the same field. This may bring in some links, but most of these folks are going to expect you to return the favor. This means linking back to them from your own site, which devalues the link that they gave you.  Search engines are fully aware of ‘friends’ networks, and will sharply discount the value of these ‘reciprocal links’ when assigning value to your site.

In addition, the quality of these sites might not be up the best. This can reflect on you as well. If people assume that your site is probably only as good as the sites that link to you, then being associated with a low ranking page is not a god thing!

A very bad, very black hat option you may be tempted to try in order to obtain links for your site. This is listing yourself in an automated link management system. These sites say they will get you plenty of links, but basically consist of pages of web addresses all hyperlinked to each other.

Many of the sites will not even have any relevance to your field, and the whole setup is viewed by search engines with distrust. The engines will at best simply discount these as they really are just more reciprocal links, or at worst will label you a ‘link spammer’ and penalize you.

Taking the same view in the other direction, too many outbound links from your website to a friend’s may not be a good idea if the other site is completely unrelated to yours. You should have another site or blog for reciprocal or ‘buddy’ linking,  keep your website business oriented to relevant links for the best results.

Paid links are very dangerous.  There are a lot of black-hatters out there that promise to increase your links and page rank, or even guarantee a top ten spot in search results. In many cases, these are scams -  they either don’t deliver or they could use banned practices that will bounce back on you. Also, scammers may offer to pay you to write reviews or testimonials for their products; never endorse the product before researching it!

Hiring a reputable ‘white hat’ SEO to oversee your linking practices is a great idea if you are feeling worried about your site’s links. They should tell you exactly what they plan to do, and how they plan to do it. If the answers shady, try another SEO! You only want to use the right linking tactics to build trust in your site and your product.

How do you cope with 404 messages?

Broken links can quickly kill and bury a site – when consumers visit and get an error message, nine times out of ten the just move on to the next listing. Trust me, there is NOTHING a web surfer hates more than clicking on a link in eager anticipation only to be faced with the inevitable ‘File Not Found’.

Several proxy servers also can’t differentiate between a ‘hard’ 404 (which tell you that the actual URL is not working) and a ‘soft’ one (which usually means that the remote host is down) -the latter is a self resolving problem, but the consumer won’t know that if all they get is one generic message for both situations.

People expect web search to be very nearly automatic. Sites that load slowly or have broken links leading to them will wither and die while consumers find faster pathways to travel. It doesn’t matter if your site is ten times better than anyone else’s if the road is barricaded. A consumer confronted with a 404 message when trying to access a particular page will often make a metal note, consciously or subconsciously to disregard your site from that point on, even if they used you in the past.

Your site will be mentally categorized as ‘broken’, and you will not only have lost all their business but any business they might have referred, as well as all possible backlinks form them or future visitors referred by them. Not good.

Check all of your links. Next month, check them all again. Do this on a regular basis. This doesn’t just mean internal links or links in your search rankings – you have to include links in articles that you have posted, as well as any other links you may have managed to place out on the web.

Pay particular attention to links from other sources that go to specific pages other than your home page – you might need to contact a few people and hand off an updated URL, or use a redirect to simplify matters and get traffic to the right place. Other site owners who link to you will appreciate the fact that you are providing an updated link as they don’t want broken links on their site either!

You can check all the links in and out of your site by logging into your Google Webmaster Account and clicking on the site you wish to investigate. Once in your account, simply navigate through the different pages on your site. Keep a record of where your inbound links are coming from.

After you check all your inbound links, move on to your internal links. Ending up with a 404 message from inside your own site is just embarassing. Check and double check all of your page to page links to be sure that your site is fully navigational.

Now check all outbound links as well. You don’t want to appear sloppy or give a poor impression by having a 404 message pop up when someone tries to check out a site you recommend. You not only embarrass yourself, the site you are linking to has fallen down on the job. Get rid of file not found, 404 and other error messages, and you won’t end up with visitors who feel they made an error by visiting you!

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