If you do a search on a major search engine, you find the pages and sites listed in the search engine’s database. Or if you are on a site with a directory, you can search for a topic to find whatever might be listed in the directory. The more directories in which you have a listing, the more likely that your site will be found.

Of course directory searchers do not want to find sites or information irrelevant to their searches or to the categories of the given directory. So when submitting your site to directories, you are usually asked to place your site in an appropriate place so that people looking for what you have to offer are more likely to find it filed in a logical place. And your site will thus not be appropriate for every directory.

Aside from Yahoo!, DMOZ is another large directory, although what the site owners are looking for is unique contributions that make affiliate sites typically unlikely candidates barring a large amount of unusual and valuable content. Not to worry. There are many others. Here is a small sample of some relatively reputable ones (see http://www.seoinpractice.com). Some are free, others for pay or either free or paid versions are offered.

http://www.canlinks.net
http://directory.ldmstudio.com
http://www.directoryvault.com
http://www.freewebsitedirectory.com
http://www.info-listings.com
http://www.linkcentre.com
http://www.newwebdirectory.com
http://www.prolinkdirectory.com
http://www.searchsight.com
http://www.skoobe.biz
http://www.theshoppings.com
http://www.worthwhilelink.com
http://www.wowdirectory.com
http://www.zunchdirectory.com

Probable delays between submission and–if approved–publication to a directory can vary between minutes and months.

Be aware also that the ease of submitting backlinks to directories implies that backlinks from those directories typically is not weighted highly for the Google PageRank or authority of your site (again Yahoo! and DMOZ being common notable exceptions) nor are link exchanges–but why not include directories in garnering traffic back to your site? Even link exchanges can be mutually beneficial to sites and viewers, the former if the two sites are related, but not in direct competition like a site for back-friendly mattresses and a site for a chiropractor linking to each other.

You can find directories appropriate to your site by searching with the following queries or the like:

“submit link” +”your keyword(s)”
“submit a link” +”your keyword(s)”
directory +”your keyword(s)”
directories +”your keyword(s)”
keyword *directory
(or even “free general directories”)

And if you can find a directory for a local area, your competition is usually reduced. Why compete with the world online when you can compete with your local city or county (see wowdirectory.com, above)?

A last word of warning: Do not add too many backlinks from directories all at once, especially if your site is new. That may look suspicious in search engine eyes.

SEOLinkVine.com (with which I am affiliated) offers an exchange service.

Content providers offer spun articles with up to three self-serving links to webmasters looking for good and relevant content for their sites. Webmasters not wanting to come up with all their own content find a source here.

Granted, those accepting the content for site publication have to accept the content as is, links and author name included. And granted, content providers have to write content site owners are seeking.

And granted, competition for ranking with the content depends in part on how well the content is spun (variations). Duplicate content may not show up in search engines. But content providers increase their traffic and content publishers get more to please their traffic.

So all in all, its a fair exchange.

Online video tutorials helps you get started on one side of the other.

Of course, you don’t want just any traffic. You want people to see your site who are more likely to be interested in what you offer. A given market of people buy what they want, and you can offer it.

1. Keywords as Anchor Text

Online, a big way you get targeted traffic is via keywords. The keywords you choose ideally should be:

(i) relevant to your page (and not ambiguous — “shepherd” as in German Shepherd or the guy who leads sheep or a music band),
(ii) have enough people searching for it,
(iii) not have too many other pages on the world wide web using the same one (i.e., lower competition), and
(iv) be of the sort that is more commercially viable. People are more likely to buy when they type in “baby toys” than when they type “George Washington’s birth year.” Or so says Market Samurai.

And use your keywords as anchor text.

2. Relevance

The text of the anchor text should be transparently relevant to the content on your page or site the viewer reaches when clicking on your anchor text. And your anchor text should flow naturally within the content where the anchor text lies. It should be relevant there.

And the scope of your content where the anchor text lies should be relevant, where applicable, to the broader context. If your content consists of a comment to a blog post, your content should be applicable and relevant to the post.

3. Put content and links on highly ranked and varied pages & sites.

One can find PageRank (and many other pieces of information), for example, using the Firefox browser using the free, open source software SEO Quake.

Many links to your site from a single external source may not be as powerful a set of “votes” to your site as many links dispersed on several sites.

4. How to Search Using Google

Do you want to find places to offer content for high quality backlinks?

Aside from reading the post immediately linked above. Here’s some illustrations (from Adam Short).

i) “your keyword” + “post comments” – “comments closed”

ii) “your keyword” + site:.edu + “comments” (or “your keyword” + site:.gov + “comments”) – .edu and .gov sites tend to be ranked highly in search engines.

5. Trust

Trust is hard to earn and easy to lose. It comes by developing relationships in a way that is consistent and provides value to the reader, the consumer, the partner. Trust is built by work ad skill. Trust is built by the excellence of content. Write content and anchor text for the benefit of humans, not search engine robots.

Short cuts and corner cutting may get you farther ahead faster, but if integrity is sacrificed in the process, sooner or later your friends and customers will find out, and you will pay for it.

Market Samurai has found a gold mine in the teaching of Kenny Goodman about choosing domain names. I’ve taken a few pointers from Kenny’s richer material. And yes, I wish I’d come across this a long time ago.

Note first that your domain name is a keyword and ranks as a keyword, whether as a broad, phrase, or exact match. If the searcher types in a keyword with a match to your domain name, an exact match, Market Samurai has found, seems to be a high playing card in the algorithm that ranks sites. Phrase and Broad match are also important, though proportionately less so.

The trouble is, most of the short tail keyword domain names are probably already taken in your niche, especially if the keyword has commercial value–meaning that people searching for that keyword are more likely to buy something directly associated with that keyword.

What to do? Two possibilities: (1) buy an existing domain name or (2) add a relevant prefix or suffix to the preferred short tail domain name. For example, choose “mybabytoys” or “babytoysreviews” if you can’t get “baby toys” — i.e., a broad or phrase match if you can’t get an exact match for a “baby toys” search.

With either possibility, Kenny would suggest buying an aged domain name instead of starting from ground zero with a new name so as to take advantage of the previous traffic building and ranking efforts of a former owner.

And the process of buying aged domain names introduces problems like how to find the names when they become available and how to recognize a good buy from a bad one. One does not want a domain name with a history of spamming or illegal activity. Or mere neglect or irrelevant content.

I suppose the bad news is that fishing for the best catch may take time and effort. The question is whether that is easier than starting to develop your new domain name’s online reputation from scratch.

Doing it the manual way, Kenny recommends checking the following auction sites for available names: Namejet.com, Snapnames.com, Afternic.com, Pool.com, Sedo.com, RickLatone.com, Bido.com, and Flippa.com. Kenny suggest making a bid 10 minutes before the deadline is ideal. Or sometimes one can find and contact site owners directly using Whois.net to make bids.

Once you have found a desirable name initially, check:
DomainTools.com – for domain name age
Archive.org – using the wayback machine for the history of domain names
Alexa.com & Compete.com – for an ideal of traffic and popularity
DMOZ.org & search.yahoo.com/dir – to see if listed
site:www.domainname.com – to find pages indexed on Google

Also check pagerank in browser with a browser application

Check for fake pagerank by typing in on Google “info:www.domainname.com” – if a different domain name shows up, it is forwarding to a higher pagerank domain and is thus fake.

In rare cases, trademarked domain names may cause you grief. In the US, check www.tess2.uspto.gov.

Or for a useful tool in the process, See Domain Samurai and/or join DN Forum.

So do other people. The question then arises how to organize these favorites or most useful sites. Social bookmarking sites exist to organize what people find interesting. The one doing the sharing tags the preferred site on a given social bookmarking site with a word or words which describe the topic or content.

The tags, and sometimes descriptions, serve as handles to organize the sites for future reference. So if a group of people like your content or if you use social bookmarking sites to refer to your content, traffic to your sites can increase. If the tags accurately represent your content, the traffic can be targeted to your content.

Unfortunately, there are no standards for making tags, which introduces certain kinds of problems, and bookmarking sites have been subject to spamming and collusion abuse. And friends in various instances can limit the exposure of a given site reference to a small or private group. But on the whole, search engines still see value in bookmarking as a means to provide searchers with the content they seek. And you can get back links to your site this way.

Here is a brief list of some of the social bookmarking sites with heavier traffic. The list is ordered more or less from the most to the least traffic as of the time of this writing–save for the last entry, which serves to download to a number of social bookmarking sites at once.

Digg – for social news, videos, and images
Technorati – for blog searches
Del.icio.us
Stumbleupon – The “stumble upon” button randomly selects content in a given topic.
Mixx
Slashdot
Propeller.com – news
Folkd
Citeulike – scholarly and academic articles
Diigo – personal data saved or work collaboratively
Sphinn – for internet marketing
Faves
Blinklist
Simpy
Connotea – “Free online reference management for all researchers, clinicians and scientists”
Blogmarks

Onlywire – downloads to multiple bookmarking sites at once. Free (with ads) or paid (no ads) versions available.

Useful as social bookmarking may be for getting back links to one’s site, one wonders if Facebook won’t dominate in many ways. In any case as usual, the best long term strategy is to provide and share content people are looking for.

The difficulties in finding the sweet spot keywords for business, for example, are multifarous.

Some keywords may be ambiguous or not specific enough, crossing over between different concepts, so that they words may attract the wrong kind of people … for the split second before they leave you site. Some keywords may attract lots of viewers who have no interest in buying anything related to your site or in giving you their email address.

But probably the most difficult problem is competition.

Most keywords have too many competing pages on the web for most of us to get noticed. All the good watering holes have already attracted the mass herd. Or too few people search for other keywords to make it worth our while to bother. Or we get the popular keyword phrase, but not in the popular order … or we miss one important word, as Market Samurai notes.

Of course, if there were only ten competing web pages for your keyword, but each of these ten pages were found on large, authoritative, well established sites with thousands of backlinks and pristine ranking … it could take years for your site to appear on the front page of a search. You could be virtually lost on the second page. A few iron clad competitors may be as hard to beat as a million moderate ones.

Of course, you may be the first to capitalize on a new, popular niche, but statistically speaking, that is a bit like winning the lottery.

A more probable road to success for the small business person is to find a less competitive sub-niche possibly related to a popular one, and longer and less competitive keywords possibly related to a popular niche. Either assume the low hanging fruit in the popular niches has been taken and reach for the higher fruit or find a little tree few have even noticed.

Would you like a list of proven niches to give you ideas? Check out
Proven Niche Markets, with which I am affiliated. This includes keywords for each niche. Or see a free list of business ideas for more.

Keywords for business are best when they qualify on four different parameters: relevance, traffic, competition, and “commerciality.” Or so notes Market Samurai.

The keywords one uses on one’s site and in one’s ads or backlinks and anchor texts should be relevant to one’s site and business goals.

The keywords should have sufficient traffic … but not too much competition for the given traffic (or one risks getting lost in the crowd). A lot of traffic alone is not a sufficient indicator of a useful keyword.

And the keywords should give some indication that the people using them have commercial intent. A percentage of the people using the keywords should buy something relevant to the keyword and your site. Or if your goal is lead capture, the keyword is best if an acceptable percentage of people doing a search of that keyword sign up. And so on.

I for one am enthusiastic about this tool. You can even keep a very useful version of the research tool free if you decide not to buy after the trial period. See Dojo for training videos.

Optimizing your website to both rank well in search engines and attract targeted human traffic particularly involves good and relevant content, helpful internal linking for navigation purposes, and inbound links. Meta tags in the source code may also help, although they are not weighted as heavily as they once were. They come between the head tags — <head>in between these</head>.

Title Tags

Titles in title tags come between the beginning and the closing tags (between <title> and </title>). They should be about 63 characters or less so they can be read on search engines. Include keywords related to page. Have title tag for each page, and make each viewer friendly.

Title tags will appear in the upper left of the browser screen when the page is in view. Title tags are probably the most important of the tags listed here, and thought should be given not only to how the title summarizes the page it represents, but give the reader reason to read the page. A too-generic title tag is not in your best interest.

Description Tags

Description tags briefly summarize a given page. The format looks like this: <meta name=”description” content=”description in here”>, with the description between the quotation marks as here. Description tags should be less than 160 characters in length (1 to 3 sentences). If your site is indexed, the description may be important for conversions, but probably not for SEO (search engine optimization). The description should be viewer friendly, with a keyword included near beginning.

The content of a description tag may show up as the second (and possibly third) line in organic search results.

Keyword Tags

Keyword tag tag format looks like this: <meta name=”keywords” content=”keywords in here”> with the keywords between the quotation marks as here. One or perhaps two keywords are recommended per page. Keyword tags are not overly important; but don’t overdo the keywords by multiplying or spamming them. Use keywords found in the page represented. However, Google does not use keywords in the keyword tag for ranking.

Heading Tags

<h1>This is heading 1</h1>
<h2>This is heading 2</h2>
<h3>This is heading 3</h3>

Heading tags (not to be confused with <head> tags above) may make it easier for a robot to crawl your site, sort of like a bold-print outline to a human.

And of course the headers, keywords, descriptions, and titles should be representative of and relevant to the pages they represent.

Lastly, Brad Fallon notes, “SEO is a marathon, not a [quick] race.” It will probably take time for your site to be ranked in the search engines.

P.S. For further information on html basics, see my HTML Basics post or for training in internet marketing, see Niche Profit Classroom for which I am an affiliate.

When you do an internet search, do you want to see results comprised of a list that shows identical content for every entry, though on a variety of sites and sources? Or would you prefer a diverse mix of relevant entries with each containing different content? Google, for one, bets you prefer the latter.

Pretty obvious, no? You’d probably look at at list of all the same stuff in disgust and call it “spam.”

If you are a webmaster, duplicate content on your site or blog is sometimes preferable; duplicate content is not spam. Despite a common notion, Google does not penalize for duplicate content. It just seeks to avoid showing duplicate content in any given search results.

So if you have one article submitted to a long list of article directories, eventually Google is going to show only one of them for any given search query. However, if many webmasters publish your one article on their sites, users may find your content in ways other than by typing a keyword into a search engine. Particularly when those sites are popular.

Don’t be afraid of duplicate content. But if you want your content to be seen, write great content using keywords people want to find (preferably with lower competition among webmasters). Probably on the whole, that will work better than when you post your same content in a lot of places.

1) Make the name irrelevant to the subject matter of the site or blog. If your subject matter is growing tomatoes in your garden, choose a name like “spaghettirecipes.com” or “farmfertilizer.org.”

That way, most of your site visitors will leave instantly and be disappointed.

Part and parcel of being irrelevant is avoiding keyword research. That way, choosing a good domain name will be like pinning the tail on the donkey when you are blindfolded … and in the wrong room … and usually, the wrong house.

2) Choose a name which is obscure. Either make it relevant to a niche which is too obscure to attract anyone (”bedtimestoriesfordustmites.com”) or looks like personal code (”xlc462quagmirez34.com”) so no one will remember it. The longer, the better.

3) Make your name relevant to a fad as the fad is waning. That way, your domain name will be desired for the shortest possible time frame. As someone said, “He who is married to the spirit of the age is soon divorced.”

4) Avoid “.net,” “.org,” and especially “.com” addresses. Prefer “.info,” especially if you want to avoid a professional appearance or be harder to find.

5) Use misspellings. That way people are more likely to miss you when typing in your domain name into a search engine. Unfortunately, this can backfire if the misspelling is funny or common. Be careful to misspell properly.

Prefer “o” and “0″ which leads to confusion between letter and number. Similarly, keep searchers guessing whether your domain name has Roman numerals (”ix,” “v,” and so on) or letters of the alphabet.

6) Prefer underscores, hyphens, and numbers in your domain name, especially if they are unnecessary or have nothing to do with your existing brand or business name. It adds to the difficulty people have with your domain name.

7) If possible, choose a name which is generic in a highly competitive niche. That way, no one will ever find you in the crowd. Nothing in the name will make you stand out. You will be camouflaged.

Of course, there is an exception: your domain name infringes on the copyright of some big fish. At least that way, you will invite a law suit.

But otherwise, we hope the above helps keep you in the dark and on the web.

Peter Rubel

P.S. NameCheap.com and GoDaddy.com are two places to get started with domain names. Check for domain name availability at WhoIs.net.

P.P.S. As a bonus, you could purchase an old domain name with lots of baggage–one with a history of spamming, porn–whatever works (or doesn’t). Just try to shake such a reputation! Find out about the baggage for yourself on archive.org.