It’s a well-known fact that search engines like Google, Yahoo! and MSN value the number of incoming links pointing to your site, when deciding its ranking. It has also been established that links that are obtained naturally and those that are non-reciprocal in nature are more important and valuable than links that are exchanged among sites. Directory Maximizer is a directory submission service to directories not requiring you to give reciprocal links they submit to.

The cost varies depending on the size of your order, they charge 14 cents per submission; hence if you wish to submit to 100 directories, it would cost you $14 (one-time). They have a minimum order value of $5 with which one can make up to 35 submissions. Payments are made per submission and not per link approval. The basic purpose of the service is to save you the time and effort you would otherwise spend on making submissions on your own.

What I like about the service is that you can submit by directory page rank and download a copy of all the directories your site has been submitted to and use this list to submit your other sites to yourself.

Free A to Z eBook guide!

A complete lowdown on every aspect of directory submissions, including tips and advice for making submissions on your own, this ebook is intended as a comprehensive guide for novices as well as SEO professionals.

The ebook begins with a general introduction to search engine optimization (SEO) and directory submissions and goes on to explain the importance and benefits of directory submissions. There is a chapter dedicated to the common myths that surrounds directory submissions. Also included are chapters with screenshots to accompany a step-by-step illustrated example of how a directory submission is to be made, what happens after the submission and how to find your link in the directories.

This apart, the ebook discusses the benefits of outsourcing your directory submissions in addition to highlighting a few important directories to submit to besides covering the various types of directories available online. There’s a cleverly picked out glossary section at the end that explains all the words that were likely to have caused difficulty.

Chapters of eBook

• Introduction to search engine optimization
• Introduction to directories and directory submissions
• The importance and benefits of directory submissions
• Common myths about directory submissions
• How to make directory submissions yourself
• What happens after a site has been submitted?
• Link placement
• Outsourcing directory submissions
• Recommended directory submissions
• Types of directories
• Glossary of terms

Download your free A to Z eBook guide here and learn the importance and benefits of directory submissions.

Better than other keyword tools?

After trying a lot of keyword research tools in the market, I came across Keyword Country and it would be safe to say that Keyword Country is the most comprehensive and most complete keyword research tool available.

Keyword Country connects to major search engines for keyword research (including Google, Yahoo, MSN, ASK) and also connects to the industry by performing a deep analysis of the competitor websites. It also steals all the niche keywords your industry happens to be focusing on.

Keyword Country claims that a keyword research done through it’s software can yield up to 230% more traffic than any other keyword research tool available. In this product review, we will find out how far it lives up to such claims.

Basic Keyword Research (Network Search):

Just type in a keyword and Keyword Country will fetch you a huge list of keywords, which will be sorted by profitability along with other alternate keywords that your audience is searching for.

This mode of keyword research is database powered. Keyword Country claims to be the world’s biggest keyword database and displays useful information like:

Google Searches	Yahoo Search Volume
Google Competition (inanchor intitle)	Yahoo Competition
Advertisers on Google	Yahoo Advertisers
Google Max CPC	MSN Search Volume
Google Clicks	MSN Competition
AdSense EPC (estimated)	MSN Advertisers
R/S Ratio (Google, Yahoo, MSN)	KEI Ratio (Google, Yahoo, MSN)

and much more…

Since the data is too much to look at, an advanced search can help you narrow down the huge keyword lists to get the exact keywords you want.

Besides keywords and their data, the related keywords list is quite useful and you often get new ideas for niches to target and content ideas that can help you tap into the audience that you are trying to target.

Realtime Keyword Research:

This is another mode of keyword research and is even more powerful than network keyword research. It not only extracts keywords from major search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask but also gets keywords from KC’s Network Search and, most importantly, it reverse engineers any industry’s top 100 high ranking websites for each keyword in the list. It also extracts niche keywords that those websites are targeting to rank high and tap traffic out of search engines.

This type of keyword research easily finds new born keywords that industry is using actively but that free keyword tools like those offered by Google, Yahoo and MSN will take around 2-6 months to show and will only show if the keyword is able to make to their top 100 or 150 most searched keyword lists.

Realtime Keyword Research:
• Blocks junk keywords
• Filters duplicate keywords
• Keeps the keyword list laser targeted
• Clusters the keywords in ready-to-go format
• Gives you a great amount of control on your keyword research

Stealing Competitor’s Profitable Keywords

This is a very powerful tool and I couldn’t find anything similar to this tool anywhere on the web that comes even close to KC’s Site Analysis. It lets you practically reverse engineer the SEO strategies and PPC campaigns of your competitors. It can detect the search engine keywords (paid or non-paid) that are responsible for up to 96% of traffic to any given website.

Just load up your competitor list in Site Analysis and Keyword Country will rip all the keywords that your competitors are using on their pages, along with the HTML tag details in which they can be found.

For SEO:
• Finds keywords that are common between all top rankers
• Finds the LSI matches they are using
• Finds Low competition / high traffic keywords
• Details of other niches that they are focusing on

For PPC Advertising:
• Analyze landing pages and extract profitable keywords out of them
• Profitable Adwords keywords that they have found profitable after spending thousands of dollars on market research

Site analysis even lets you analyze your own content before making it public to search engines to ensure that the keywords for which you are optimizing your content are actually there in your content.

Semantic Keyword Research / Related Search Terms:

This keyword research lists all the LSI terms or semantically related keywords of a given keyword. These are the keywords that you need to include in your web pages to naturally rank higher on search engines. Keyword results come with ‘Search Volume Estimates’, which make it easier for you to judge the keywords to go for. Additionally, it also allows you to further dig your keyword deeper in Network Search or Realtime Search.

Keywords Research in 32+ Languages:

Keyword Country is the only keyword engine that gets you keywords in French, Spanish, Dutch, German and 32 other languages (and does it the right way). Foreign language support options enhance your keyword digging reach and allow you to generate your keyword list in languages other than English.

This is ideal when your audience speaks multiple languages and lets you target non-English speaking regions.

Misspellings Keyword Research:

Misspellings are the keywords that are cheaper to buy for Adwords campaigns and less competitive to achieve top search engine rankings. Keyword Country covers more than 8 sources of misspellings including mobile search misspellings and popular misspellings of English and 31 other languages. Here you can find many keywords that have less competition, considerable traffic, are cheaper to buy and easier to target.

Niche Keywords Brainstorming with Keyword Map

Keyword Map sorts the keywords in a directory structure that helps you find the most popular niches that are driving traffic to your industry. It helps you uncover popular niches that are related to your main keyword but you are not targeting right now. A good amount of traffic flows towards these niches and the level of that increases every single month. It gives you excellent ideas on which you can build content and increase your website traffic and helps you discover many new opportunities. It is ideal when you are looking for new niches to compete in.

24×7 Customer Service

The customer service offered by Keyword Country is excellent, the quickest way to contact them is by their Live Chat but there are several ways in which they can be contacted, they also offer a comprehensive video tutorial guide to find out exactly what you to know quickly and efficiently.

Summary:

We think you’ll agree that Keyword Country is most complete keyword research tool available.

Strengths:

• Largest keyword database
• Digs deeper into industry for keywords
• Supports keyword research in 32+ languages
• Shows lots of useful data for each keyword
• Steals competitors’ profitable keywords (legally!)
• LSI / Semantic keyword research
• Misspelling keyword research
• Exports keywords in ready to go format
• Excellent brainstorming tools

Weak Aspects:

• Owing to detailed keyword research, it may become slow at times
• Your computer IP may be temporarily banned by some online keyword tools for heavy web crawling

This tool is well worth investing in, the functionality of Keyword Country is unmatched and puts it in a league of its own for researching keyword phrases, it is the most complete keyword tool in the market and should be the first choice tool for SEO conscious web developers. Check them out today:

Image Tricks

Image Tricks is a free application to edit and generate images. It uses Mac OS X Core Image filters that transform pictures to unimaginable extent and apply advanced visual effects. The artwork can be used as a background, web-design illustration, for print materials, and more.

Image Magick

Image Magick is a software suite for image manipulation and display, supporting close to 100 image formats. Used to create, edit, and compose bitmap images from the command line or via programming interfaces. Images can be cropped, resized, and combined, effects can be applied, and text, polygons, and curves can be added.

Photo Filtre

A complete image editing and effects package, that will not only amaze you with features but also the fact that it is free (for personal use). Its many features rival some commercial packages, it allows you to do simple or advanced adjustments to an image and apply a vast range of filters on it. It is simple and intuitive to use, and has an easy learning curve.

Paint.Net

Paint.NET is free image and photo editing software for computers that run Windows. It features an intuitive and innovative user interface with support for layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools. An active and growing on-line community provides friendly help, tutorials, and plugins.

Photoscape

An amazing photo editing software for fixing and enhancing photos. Here you have a really excellent suite that includes just about everything you need to view, optimize, edit, print and have fun with your photos, all for free!

Inkscape

An Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Xara X, using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format. It includes a surprisingly powerful set of tools for creating graphics from scratch, or for editing existing graphics or photographs. You’ll find numerous drawing tools, the ability to create layers and combine them, and more.

Photo Plus

PhotoPlus is an amazing photo editing software that enables you to fix and enhance digital photos, even web animations. It has all the features you will need for importing or creating bitmap graphics and with built-in support for TWAIN scanners and cameras makes it easy to bring in your own photos.

Picasa

When you install this application, it immediately scans your system for photos and collects them into a single library. It also offers several basic photo editing functions, including color enhancement, red eye reduction and cropping. Other features include slide shows, printing and image timelines, all with this easy-to-use free product.

FastStone

This Image Viewer is a fast, stable, user-friendly image browser, converter and editor. It has a nice array of features that include image management, comparison, red-eye removal, emailing, resizing, cropping and color adjustments. Full-screen mode provides quick access to EXIF information, thumbnail browser and major functionalities via hidden tool bars.

Gimp

GIMP is an acronym for GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed program for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. It has many capabilities. It can be used as a simple paint program, an expert quality photo retouching program, an online batch processing system, a mass production image renderer, an image format converter and more..

Visualizer

Visualizer Photo Resizer is an image utility designed to help you batch resize images in order to create presentations, upload them on to your Web page or quickly send them via email. It is designed to handle all your photos and graphic documents (JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP, TGA, TIFF, PSD, PSP). The software will even allow you to embed a text watermark in the batch process.

Irfanview

A fast and compact graphic viewer for Windows with many supported file formats and features. It can edit, convert image files and play video/audio formats. It is trying to be simple for beginners and powerful for professionals.

Photobie

Software for photo editing, scrapbooking, animation, screen capture etc. Free for personal use with no Pro upgrade to pay for, the image editing software combines features that amateurs can use with advanced tools professionals will appreciate.

Online Editors

Web-based image editors seem to be popping up everywhere, these are my three favorites in order of preference:

FotoFlexer

FotoFlexer is the most advanced, user-friendly, 100% free on-line digital photo editor. It imports and exports with media networking sites and performs advanced effects previously only available to professionals using expensive software.

Splashup

Splashup is a powerful editing tool and photo manager. With all the features professionals use and novices want, it’s easy to use, works in real-time and allows you to edit many images at once.

Picnik

Picnik makes your photos fabulous with easy to use yet powerful editing tools. Tweak to your heart’s content, then get creative with oodles of effects, fonts, shapes, and frames. It’s fast, easy, fun and no registration required!

Download the source code and images from woork blogspot to reuse it in your pojects.

Simavera Website Templates

Flash and web site templates. Great collection with some attractive and modern designs to choose from.

Open Designs

XHTML and CSS based free web design templates. Over 1100 open source designs available for download and growing by the day!

Tristar Web Design

Just 9 templates here but if your looking for free fast loading quality XHTML & CSS templates, this site is a must!

Solucija

Free XHTML/CSS website templates available to use without any limitations. They can be used on a non commercial site as well as on a commercial one. Keeping a small credit link in the footer is not obligatory. All templates are hand coded and lightweight (under 60KB) which ensures fast loading.

Styleshout

Large collection of quality free website templates for download. All templates are valid xthml(strict) and valid CSS, and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 license

Dream Template

334 free templates but users must at all times have the pre-installed DreamTemplate linking button/text on the front page of their web site. This policy does NOT apply to registered/paid members.

Metamorphozis Design

A large collection of attractive designs released under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 license by the metamorphosis designers.

Iron Myers

Simplify your site designs with 168 of the most useful Grid and CSS Layouts. They are perfect for website templates, Blog themes, CMS or as a starting point for your web projects. Layouts offer full Grade-A browser support, That is, the layouts will look and behave the same in all internet browsers.

Six Shooter Media

A list of 11 extremely fast loading quality templates fully xhtml 1.1 and css compliant.

Nice and Free CSS Templates

Just copy and paste any of the 12 layouts, all templates are XHTML 1.0 and CSS2/ tableless.

CSSTemps

About 60 free valid XHTML/CSS templates. All templates are protected by the license inside the template.

Free CSS Templates

All of these templates are released for FREE under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 license for any type of personal or commercial use provided you follow the license. Link back required.

Clan Templates

Free templates for on-line gaming clans for games with multiplayer options. Clan Templates provides free gaming layouts and graphics to gamers and designers alike.

Free Website Templates

Claims to be the best free website templates on the internet and you don’t need to link back, but you should state that you used a template originally made by Free Website Templates.

Template World

Absolutely top quality, unique and creative web site XHTML/CSS templates designed by Template World. Templates have been tested and proven compatible with all major browser environments and operating systems. Released under Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 license you are free to modify but you must link back to Template World.

Layout Gala

A collection of 40 CSS layouts based on the same markup and ready for download! If you want, you can download the entire collection, 40 HTML pages in a single zip file.

Open Web Design

Download and upload free web designs, over 3000 demo’s to browse through!

Free CSS

All of the 1000 templates or so that are featured within Free CSS are distributed under some form of GNU/GPL License or under a Creative Commons License.

Open Source Web Design

A collection of 2000+ web designs submitted by the community that anyone can download free of charge!

CSS 4 Free

Free CSS based website templates gallery for you to preview, rate, comment on, and download. Most of the templates are licensed under Creative Commons 2.5 or GPL.

Open Source Web Templates

Free Open Source XHTML/CSS templates designed with true web 2.0 standard and 100% W3C validated.

Premium Website Templates

Tableless web templates built using XHTML and CSS with some also available as Blogger template or WordPress theme. All released under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 license

Template Navigator

Free templates catalogue that links only to high quality and free templates that can be 100% downloaded.

Templates Box

A large inventory of free website and flash templates available. Link back is required, downloads include the .PSD files and fonts.

Open Source Templates

Studio 7 designs all free CSS/XHTML website templates are free to use under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 license

Free Layouts

Offers several hundred free W3 standard-compliant website templates and flash template pages for download. The site has some older templates in the collection that may not validate, and as such, you should make sure your code validates before using the template.

Dotcom Webdesign

Premier source with 527 free website templates and layouts created specifically for CMSimple.

Themebot

Portal helping users to find themes/templates/styles/skins for various content management systems, blog and forum software. Free high quality open source website templates using XHTML and CSS.

Interspire

Dozens of website templates, website layouts, newsletter templates and logo templates, that you can download free of charge.

Free CSS Templates

One of the biggest, never before seen collection of free CSS Templates on the web! All these CSS templates are released under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 license. At present, there are 219 free CSS templates downloadable in .Zip format.

All Free Templates

Nice collection of free web and flash templates for personal and business use. Some templates include the .PSD files.

Template Workz

Templates are free to download and use for your personal and business projects. Website templates are available in Photoshop (PSD) and HTML formats, all the fonts are also included with the PSD file. Link back only required if you use the downloaded graphics.

Snakeye Dreamweaver Web Templates

20 free Dreamweaver web site templates and web page templates for download. May be used for any web site, provided the tagline at the base of the template remains within the template design.

TemplateYes

About 100 cool web, flash and CSS templates 100% free. Link back required.

Mashable

A collection of 150+ great free templates from around the web including 40+ one column layouts, 80+ two column layouts and 30+ three column layouts.

Free Templates Online

Gallery of 150 professional looking websites free of charge! Link back required.

Web Design Company

Unique and professional Web site templates, Flash templates, HTML templates including the full set of sub-pages free of cost. Submit name and email prior to download and link back required.

Andreas Viklund

All templates are made with valid XHTML (strict) and CSS, and they are supposed to be small, easy to work with and of high code quality. Templates are free to use for any purpose without any limitations, obligations or conditions.

Zymic

Preview live and download any one of the 90+ top quality free web designs and layouts. Link back is required!

Free online web template generator

Easily create unique professional web templates: Pick Template > Customise > Download!
doTemplate offers a catalogue of free web templates. All templates are fully customizable to your taste and needs. You can easily tweak the colors, the fonts, apply a bunch of graphical effects to create a unique professional template in no time.

This tool is also needed because XHTML validation is very important in the manner of SEO.

Developers DEV102 have released version 1.1 of the XHTML Validation tool for download.

Here’s an alphabetical list of websites where you can get free vectors without registration for your collection!

Art Share

Great resource for cool designs including vector girls, icons, cliparts, photos, wallpapers, silhouettes of people and much more!

Basang Panaginip

The world’s most photo realistic vector art using gradient mesh, pushing the boundaries of what the Illustrator can do.

Best Company Logo

A collection of free vector logos professionally designed available for download, to modify and to use in your projects.

BigVectors

Large resource of quality vector files for graphic designers and web developers, claims to be the largest! Licensing displayed where applicable.

BittBox

BittBox has some inspirational designs and regularly gives away free vectors in AI, EPS and SVG formats.

Briar Press

A growing collection of over 500 letterpress-era ornaments and initials reborn as postscript art, free for downloading for personal use.

Cool Vectors

Awesome collection of cool vector graphics for download!

deviantART

A huge collection of vectors organised by category.

Free-Vectors

Best collection of free vector graphics designs for commercial use.

Free Vector Art & Graphics

On-line gallery of free vector graphics. All the images on this site are free for personal use and a lot of them for commercial use.

Free Vectors

Download free vectors for newsletters, websites, church bulletins and more. Absolutely free! All vector art is available for commercial use.

Go Media

Go Media’s Sample Vector Pack is free to download and use in your designs. The pack contains a 42 item set in EPS format.

I Heart Vector

Nice collection of free vector graphics with many themes.

JLW Design

High quality fine art vector designs and free of charge!

Logo Templater

All the vector logo sets on this site are free to download and use. You may use or modify them for any purpose, commercial or otherwise, without fee or obligation of any kind.

n.Design

Vector cliparts to use for your projects, personal or commercial.

Qvector

Q for Quality, showcasing only quality vector graphics for free download.

Round Pixel

Vectors for whatever you want, you can modify, alter, multiply, combine etc. for personal or commercial purposes.

Vecteezy

Vecteezy is an index of Free Vector Graphics available for download by some of the best artists around the world. The site is updated every day.

Vector 4 Free

Web site dedicated to free vector graphics: Adobe Illustrator AI, EPS, PDF, SVG, Corel Draw CDR files free to download.

Vector Art

Free vector illustration file downloads. Full use of the .eps and .ai files. All vector art downloads are free to use under Creative Commons 3.0

Vector Vault

Free daily vector art downloads from a library of vector image collections and a growing database of the best vector graphics.

Vectors Workshop

A place where you can browse the catalogue and download good quality vector graphics for free and to share yours.

Web Design Blog

Free EPS format vector graphics available for download with the added option of downloading all the vector sets listed in one big file.

Web Resources Depot

Free vector world maps can not be found easily, Web Resources Depot have found a very nice collection that you can use in your projects.

Vektor Junkie Magazines

10 vektorika magazine downloads in PDF format.

Melissa Clifton

Enjoy this impressive showcase tutorial on how to make vector art and more importantly how to make really great vector art with Adobe Photoshop.

webdistortion provides a comprehensive overview of some of the best out there, and have tried to be as comprehensive in their review of each.

Alex Faaborg, a User Experience Designer working on Firefox 3 gives a round up to all the effort that’s gone into the goal of maintaining a unique identity and presence.

Main Window on Vista, Linux, OS X and XP

The ultimate Photoshop compendium for web designers.

Exclusive from SitePoint.com, The Photoshop Anthology: 101 Web Design Tips, Tricks & Techniques

The entire 278 page book, yours to keep, forever! PDF Only in it’s entirety, FREE of charge.

Give away expires: Friday June 13th, 2008