A little know tool offered by MSN has made its way onto the scene.  I know, I know you think I am making a typo on this, but seriously it is MSN.

The MSN Webmaster Tools is a place you can register your site to see its performance in the MSN search engine.  The performance factors which MSN provides you with include sitemaps, statistics and indexing which all affect the search results of your website.

You will need to register for an account if you don’t already have one.  Once you do that you will need to enter some site information and upload a meta tag to confirm your ownership much like Google. 

Taking the time to do this is well worth it because it will give you some insight to making your website more visible in the MSN Search Results. Full Story »

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7 Tips

1.    Make sure that you do not post the same article on your site that you submit to article directories as it more than likely trigger duplicate content filters in the search engines.  You should at a minimum make alterations to the article.

2.    Don’t attempt to clutter the article with links to your site.  Most article directories allow for no more than two links in the author resource box.  If you place more than that or put links in the article itself the chances of it getting approved drop significantly.

3.    Attempt to find a few article directories which relate to the content of your site.  Try to do a Google search using “(your keyword) submit article” which might return some good possibly places to submit your article.

4.    If you don’t want spam do not publish your email address with your article.  If you feel you must publish your email get a separate email address to use for this purpose only.

5.    Submit your article by hand and in your own name if you want it to get picked up by other big sites.  If you use a submission service chances for pick up decrease as they submit hundreds of articles using the same generic name.

6.    Make sure that you submit your article only to the most relevant category.  Submitting to incorrect categories decreases acceptance rates.

7.    Remember to submit articles consistently on a scheduled basis if you have to.  Submitting just one and stopping there will not get you anywhere.  You should set a goal to submit X number of articles per week and schedule the time in to do it every week. Full Story »

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In December Google made a few changes by adding some new features to their Webmaster tools.  One of those features was content analysis which is useful when it comes to looking for any issues there may be with the content of your website.  The feature really is designed to look for issues with metadata that could affect Google’s ability to crawl and index the pages of your site effectively and issues of usability. 

To find the new tool just login to your Google webmaster tools area.  When your dashboard comes up click on one of your domains listed there to reach the overview of that domain.  Over on the left side you will see a diagnostics link so click there.  Now you will see the content analysis option which you can click on.

The content analysis information which Google will provide is fairly basic and includes:

Title tag issues

1. missing title tags
2. duplicate title tags
3. long title tags
4. short title tags
5. non-informative title tags

Meta description issues

1. duplicate meta description
2. long meta description
3. short meta description

Non-indexable content issues

1. flash files
2. images
3. other non-indexable content

Based on the information you find here it is very easy to make corrections to the content of your site to improve the ability for Google to crawl and index your site.

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It seems like most people don’t really have a clear understanding of the differences between a web directory and a search engine.  The basic and fundamental difference between the two is in how they obtain information about and attach relevance to websites. 

A search engine will search the internet with an automated process using spiders or robot crawlers to follow links and index the sites they find.  Search engines attach relevance to sites based on the text they find within the sites they crawl and a few other factors.

Web directory listings are a much more manual process on the other hand, but the results are typically of higher quality.  In the case of web directories, site owners will submit their websites to the directory under categories that are suitable to the sites content. 

These submitted sites then go through a manual human review process by the editors of the directory to make sure the site is of quality and relevant to the category submitted to.  In some cases the editors may find a poor quality site that is rejected or they may find upon review that it really relates better to another niche category and relocate it there.

Basically it boils down to quality and how website information is obtained and categorized.  While a search engine may return results to a query quicker than a manual search through a directory, the results of a search engine query can be of a lower quality than the directory listings. 

The sites listed in a quality directory will have been reviewed by humans for quality of content and relevance to the topic.  The results from a search engine are web sites indexed by automated spiders and in many cases contain spam or just don’t have the content that you were looking for.  How many times have you gone through all the sites returned by a search engine only to have to search again with a different phrase because you did not find what you wanted?

What is the importance of a Web Directory?

A web directory plays many important roles on the internet that relate to search engines and internet traffic.  Let’s cover a couple and start with the roles they play for search engines.

Like we just discussed quality web directories contain web sites that have been reviewed by humans for quality and content relevant to its category.  Search engines look to web directories as a trusted resource to help them establish the relevance and quality of any given site.  When search engines develop a trust factor with a quality directory it will bring its voracious appetite for crawling content to the directory frequently to find and index the quality resources it finds there.  The search engine can then easily categorize and rank the value of the sites there as it trusts that human directory editors have already reviewed it.

These links from trusted web directories then help your website to rank higher in search engine results for relevant searches and improve the quality of the search engine results for internet traffic. 

Another way web directories are important to the internet is as a destination for visitors to find quality resources.

As we already discussed the human reviewed resources in a quality directory are more trusted than spiders which are driven by software and code.  The search engines themselves value trusted directories for the resources they list knowing they have been reviewed by humans.  It is only natural that people who are in a hurry to actually find the resource they are seeking would turn to a quality directory to find it.  This search traffic results in direct traffic for the resources listed within the directory.

Links from a quality web directory that is trusted by the search engines will not only bring you targeted traffic through direct links it will also let the search engines know that your site has been reviewed by human editors is quality and has content relevant to the niche.  This will help to increase your ranking in search engine results for queries related to your niche.

What are the SEO Benefits of Directory Submissions?

There are few big benefits that we will cover and the first one is obvious.  It gives you a one-way link as a doorway to your web site.  Not just any old link though a quality link from a human reviewed directory which search engines value to help them rank search results.

Your link from a directory will contain anchor text that will further assist search engines in categorizing the content of your web site and help you to rank higher for queries related to that content.

Plus directories will send you traffic that is targeted to the products, services and content offered on your website.

So the reason you should submit to quality web directories is to accumulate valuable, trusted one-way links to your website that will build the credibility of your site in the eyes of visitors and search engines and increase your online exposure.

Getting your Site Ready to Submit to Directories

Now that we have explained the relationship of web directories and search engines, the importance of web directories and a few of the primary benefits what should be done to get ready to submit your web site?

The main thing to remember now is that quality, trusted directories are reviewed by humans and what you need to do is convince the editor that your site deserves to be listed.  To do that here are a few things you should check prior to submitting your site for review and consideration.

Your site should be easy to navigate through in order to find any important pages.  If you have navigation that is unclear or confusing the editor may never see it and not be able to give a thorough evaluation of your site.  This could cause your site to be declined when it might have been included.

You should have a fast loading site.  The editor that reviews your site may have dozens to review and a page that takes ages to load will not be looked on favorably by the editor or traffic in general.  Check your sites loading speeds prior to submitting to make sure there are no problems with it loading properly.

Visitors to your website should be able to immediately identify what your site is about.  A visitor should not need to read through paragraphs of text just to figure out what your trying to convey with your site.  If you make it clear and get to the point your customers, client and the editor also will appreciate it.

A web directory will have many categories to which you can submit your web site.  In some cases it may seem like there are a couple that it could fit into, just make sure to choose the category that you feel most relevant to the topic of your site.  Take a little time to search through the categories offered until you find the category you feel is right.

Read the guidelines offered on the submissions page and do your best to follow them.  Plus some additional tips can be found in the post Directory Submission Tips.

If you have a quality site and follow these guidelines you site will stand a much better chance of being accepted.

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Link bait is the hottest new buzz word in the SEO world.  When link baiting you create content that will naturally attract links to your site by getting others to discuss it on forums, link to it, talk about it, blog about it and post it on social bookmarking sites.

Link bait has been around for a while, but the problem is that most people just don’t fully understand what it takes to implement it in a link building campaign.  I get the impression that some might even consider it a black hat technique which might be why it is not used as frequently in building links.

Really link bait is a form of link building with a bit of a unique twist to it.  The twist is what makes link bait a fun form of link building.  Rather than having to search out relevant links, you are bringing links to your site through providing unique, valuable and popular site content.

For all you sportsmen it is like online fishing.  First you generate content and post it on your site, then let the internet traffic take notice.  Just like in fishing where you have to wait for the fish to bite, you wait for others to notice the fresh content and link to it.  Unlike fishing what we are hunting for is the link.

The key is the content and its promotion.  When link bait is done properly it can create a large number of links to your site without too much effort.

Creating the Hook

There are really five different forms of hooks that all the ideas we will cover  in the next section can be categorized into.

• The News hook - You report on news within your industry, but make sure it is a unique take on it and not just a rehashing.  Cover it in a way that no one else caught or several different viewpoints.  You might even try to prove another story is false.
• Contrary hooks - Contradict another’s point of view that is prominent and well known to make the article controversial while giving supporting evidence.
• Attack hooks - These go just a step beyond a contrary hook and take it beyond the level of just debunking a theory to the level of a personal attack or flame.
• Resource hooks - These are more of a collection of resources and information, breaking it down for people.  It is kind of a distillery of viewpoints broken down with a personal take.
• Humor hook - With this technique you can post funny stories, jokes or funny pictures and anything else that you think others may review and place a link to.

Ideas for Link Bait Hooks

• Make a valuable online resource with quality information, reports lists and history.
• Conduct interviews with famous, respected or knowledgeable people in the niche and publish it.
• Build a tool that people find useful.
• Run an event that is news worth such as a contest.
• Write an article that is interesting, controversial or explains how to do something.
• Be the first to report news on topics in your niche.
• Expose a scammer or unethical practices in your niche.
• Write some content that is funny or a joke about someone famous.
• Write from a view point that disagrees with a popular authority view.
• Make a free template, theme or software that visitors can download and use.
• Post a theory that is outrageous, but back up that theory with logic and facts.
• Become an expert in your niche and post valuable information and ideas.
• Be the first at researching and documenting a topic or idea.

Link Baiting Steps (the 11 Steps)

1. Put together a list of blogs which relate to the topic niche with contact information.
2. Put together a list of forums that also relate to the topic and sign up for membership.
3. Create some quality, value added content such as a free eBook, top ten list, how to guide, tutorials, free templates, free software, free internet tools, tutorials, etc as already covered.
4. Post the free value added content onto your website which visitors will have free access to.
5. Now write and submit a press release pertaining to your free content for distribution.
6. Use the contact list you compiled for bloggers in the same niche and send them the free content with a link to your site and a copy of your press release.
7. Go to the forums you signed up with and post a thread that notifies the forum members of your free content with a link to the content on your site.
8. Write several new articles which relate to your free content, embed links in them to the free content and submit them to article directories.
9. Do some link building to the free content on your site and use the title of the free content as the anchor text in the link.
10. Now you can sit back and with some luck watch the free backlinks appear and analyze how that brings additional traffic to your site.
11. As a last step in the process it may be a nice gesture to send a thank you email to anyone that may have assisted you (such as the bloggers) in the process and reward them with a link if you feel what they offered was useful.

If you want to establish yourself as an Authority Site and are concerned over the amount of link building that it might take to do so, you should consider adding link baiting to your arsenal along with quality directory submissions.  If you have the right content it can be an effective method of building your brand, reputation, links and most of all traffic to the content on your website.

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History

Alexa has been around for quite a while and really got noticed in 1998 when Netscape first included the toolbar in the Netscape 4 versions default installation.  That led to being included in Internet Explorer 4 only a year later.

Most users of those browsers at the time just assumed that the toolbar was a part of the browser.  The user base at the time was around three million which was a big number in 1999 and probably their largest base.

The increase in use led to interest in the company and in 2000 Amazon.com purchased Alexa which was bad timing as Microsoft then chose not to include the toolbar in the IE 5.0 release.  Sure surfers could still use the toolbar, but instead of it being pre-installed they had to go find the site and download the toolbar themselves. 

This change caused the base of users to start to shift.  More tech-savvy surfers were becoming concerned with spyware and the way that Alexa was reporting the traffic habits of surfers did not go over well with them.  Less tech-savvy users found the features useful and continued on with it. 

The Firefox browser started to gain some momentum in 2004 in the more tech-savvy sector and with it Alexa has also.  They were finding the traffic statistics had value in determining the value of websites and the user base has shifted towards the more tech-savvy again and caused some growth.

Viewpoint

Alexa is really a pretty simple concept.  They use a sample based system and gather anonymous information from those surfers that have a toolbar installed (estimated at a couple million).  When you are dealing with any sample based system there is a possibility for a wide margin of error.

It does make for an easier way of measuring the popularity of the bigger websites and gauge if it is increasing, decreasing or flat-lining.  There are those that say it is not accurate, but an argument can be made that if it is inaccurate, it is that way across the board.

Pros

• You get some free features including Alexa ranking for any site you’re visiting and domain registration information with a click when you want to know the WHOIS information on a site.
• Graph of the historical traffic data for a site to easily see its progress.
• Get the sites ranking on the web with just a trip to the Alexa-website.
• The data is provided free of charge.

Cons

• Only visits by those that use the toolbar are tracked so when calculating the ranking the visits by those that don’t use the toolbar do not count.
• The toolbar requires download and installation which requires some technical knowledge that keeps some surfers from using it.
• Alexa data is only really useful for service sites. That means sites where the service is obtained. Sites like General Electric or General Motors should not really be compared using Alexa while it is very useful for sites like Google or Yahoo!
• Any sites that use secure pages or sites that have multiple domains are not very well represented with Alexa.

Conclusion

Alexa is a tool and like any tool it can be useful when you understand its limitations and use the data accordingly.  Yes it only accounts for the visits by the users that have the toolbar installed, but it is that way across the board.  It makes one think that if it is inaccurate, at least it is equally inaccurate for everyone.

I find it useful in tracking a sites increase or decrease in popularity over time.  It is one way you can see what effects your promotional efforts or external environmental conditions are having with traffic.

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