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• Yahoo!

• DMOZ.org

• sbd.bcentral.com

…and move on to…

• Gimpsy
• Skaffe
• Joeant
• GoGuides
• Business.com
• SevenSeek
• ThisIsOurYear
• LookSmart
• BlueFind
• WowDirectory
• Best of the Web
• GeniusFind

Here’s a good list of directories

http://www.strongestlinks.com/directories.php

Submitting to the following directories is a great way to get quick quality backlinks.

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Everyone knows that a bookmark is a piece of paper that marks a page so you can find it easily again.  Most people know that a computer bookmark is a link on your computer that marks a web page so you can find it easily again. 

A social bookmark is a link that marks a web page so you can find it easily again, but also so you can share it with others (that’s why it’s called “social”, usually by posting it to one of several dozen social-bookmarking websites.

Social bookmarking is all the rage these days, with websites like Del.icio.us and Digg and Dzone and Reddit and Furl and, well dozens if not hundreds of others commanding a presence among the top traffic generators on the Internet. People like to bookmark their “finds” and they like to show off their “finds” to others. Hence bookmarking, hence social bookmarking.

Webmasters hoping to capture the attention of today’s Internet user should heed the signs and recognize the phenomenal opportunity presented by social bookmarking. In a follow-up article, I will explain the “how-to”s, but here are five types of marketing advantages ofsocial bookmarking.

REPEAT VISITORS: Considering that many people do not buy/register/contact/take action on their first visit to your website, repeat visitors are a necessity (not to mention laser-targeted prospects!) You can get more repeat visitors to your website if they can find your website again. That means getting them to bookmark your website, either on their computer or on the social bookmarking site of their choice. The more bookmarking options you offer, the more visitors are likely to return. The easier you make it for them to bookmark your site, the more of them will. However, you really must have quality content, or nobody will want to bookmark your page.

VIRAL BOOKMARKING: When somebody bookmarks your website on their own computer, they share it with, well, themselves. It’s a private thing. But when they bookmark a web page on a social bookmarking, it’s more “social”. Other people will see it. Other people might share it. Other people might even bookmark it. Websites like Del.icio.us, Ma.gnolia and SpicyPage are ideal for this. In fact, many of the biggest users of a social bookmark website are often users of several. However, you really must have quality content, or nobody will care that somebody else has bookmarked your page.

VIRAL LINKING: When somebody sees your link at a social bookmarking website, they might bookmark it…or they might add it to their own blog or portal or fan site. Suddenly one person’s bookmark becomes several links to your website, presumably from reasonably well-targeted sources of traffic. However, you really must have quality content, or nobody will want to blog somebody else’s bookmark.

SEO-FRIENDLY LINKS: Many of the social bookmarking websites offer no direct SEO value. The links might feature the NoFollow attribute. Or the mea robots tag might be set to NoFollow. Or your bookmarks might not show on unique URLs. Os the links might use a redirect script that search engine spiders don’t follow. But there are some social bookmarking websites that offer SEO-friendly links.

SEO-FRIENDLY LINKS ELSEWHERE: Even if a link from a social bookmarking website is not SEO-friendly, don’t underestimate its SEO potential. There is a whole industry growing just to game Digg and Del.icio.us, knowing that if a website’s bookmark can stick on the home page for an hour or two, it will mean dozens or even hundreds of inbound links from reasonably relevant blogs and portals and fan sites. And this is natural linking, the kind that search engines love! However, you really must have quality content, or whose going to post a link to your website just because they found it bookmarked?

ABOUT THE WRITER:

David Leonhardt is an effective SEO writer and SEM consultant. Read the David Leonhardt SEO marketing blog, specifically the social bookmarking blog post that inspired this article.

Keywords: Social Bookmarking | Profit From Social Bookmarking

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The opportunity to get targeted traffic quickly without having to wait for natural rankings for certain keywords. When someone sets up an Adword account they can choose to have there ad appear on other websites and the search engines or just one or the other. Google splits the commission with you for referring the targeted traffic. Really it’s a win, win situation; everyone gets a piece of the billion dollar pie. Adsense is free and simple to join, but before you do make sure your site is in working order and has good content. Google can reject your site. Once you get your Adsense account you will be able to place ads on any site that you create.

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Another great video by Matt Cutts!

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There are minor disadvantages; the software is not as flexible as some of the other, more expensive editors, so you may not be able to add flashy headers etc… For the money and the ease of its use I would say it is one of the best software on the web. Paul gives you a 365 day money back guarantee, which is unheard of and insane. The reason he does this is because once you use the software and see the ease and start making money, you would never want your money back. I personally use many different html editors and platforms and I use XsitePro quite frequently, especially for my sales letters. Take a look and see what you think, I would suggest even using the software. “Heck you have a full year to see if it is right for you” and if you do decide to try it please let me know what you think.

Click here for more information on XSitePro

Keywords: XsitePro

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Research

What are you marketing? Not all PPC services are the same and some will be better than others depending on the subject of the marketing campaign. Just as the cost per click through depends on the demand for that keyword, success will vary from site to site. For example, BizRate , NexTag , and PriceGrabber are used for price comparison and are geared for retail. Google is by far the most popular search engine with approximately 50% of all search activity.

Set-up Several Campaigns

It is easiest if you start with a single provider with several different keywords, you should quickly be able to tell which keywords are most productive. Once you have honed your keywords, launch with several other providers and compare the effectiveness of each. If you start your campaign with many different keywords and providers, it will be harder to differentiate the success of the site and the success of the keyword.

Metrics

All campaigns are a work in progress…always! To be effective it is important to track of your campaigns progress. Overall, you want information that will help you track your Return on Investment (ROI). At a minimum, you should measure and track the following:

• Times each specific keyword ad was clicked
• Number of people exposed to your ad
• Daily Unique Visitors
• Hourly Unique Visitors
• First time visitors
• Avg. page views per hour
• Page views per visit
• Page views today
• Visits today

Adjust

Now that you have collected and analyzed your information, adjust your plan. Don’t hesitate to change providers or keywords. The internet changes daily so it is important to continue analyzing and change as needed. The following is a list of the most popular providers of pay per click advertising.

• Google AdWords
• Ask.com
• Yahoo! Search Marketing 
• MIVA 
• ABC Search
• Enhance Interactive
• SearchFeed
• 7Search
• Findology 
• Microsoft adCenter

All pay per click campaigns has the potential to be successful. It is an ongoing process but very rewarding when your ROI grows. If you are not able to properly manage your campaign, you may want to look into hiring a management service. This is particularly helpful if you are not staffed to spend the time on research and statistical analysis or if you are investing large sums of money into your campaign. There are also many software programs that can assist with analysis and management.

Keywords: Pay Per Click

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When you enter keywords into a search engine the page that comes up is called the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). This term sometimes refers to the single page or the complete collected results depending on context. It is important to understand how people respond to these pages to formulate a complete marketing plan for your website.

For years, psychologists have study eye movements in relation to attention, comprehension, reading speed, and general interest. Cornell University performed a recent study on SERPs. They measured both the click percentage rate and visitation time on sites via SERPs using a number of undergraduates in a controlled study setting. The results provide some valuable information for SEO and SERPs in particular. Some key points from the study and application for your site are outlined here:

• The first two listings of a search page receive almost equal attention initially when a page is displayed. However it drops off significantly from there and dissipates. This reiterates the importance of high listings on pages. Interestingly, rankings 6-10 receive almost equal initial attention from the viewer.
• People tend to focus more on entries before the page break, no matter what rank the page break falls. For instance, if the break is at 6 you will see a drastic drop off at 7.
• The time spent exploring the abstract of search result 1 are almost 3 x that of the next closest, item 2. The time spent actually exploring the sites however decreases at a slower rate. This may indicate that they assume pertinent info to the subject to be obtained in the first abstract and then are clicking looking for format and other features that appeal to them.
• On all search engines tested, from the 5-6 result all measurements fall off dramatically, leading one to believe that 5 or above is really the magic SEO rating.

This study re-emphasis the importance of high ranking but it may also imply that most of us are going to be forced to lure customers through other means including pay per click advertising that also has a prominent feature on the page and further studies can be used to demonstrate the effectiveness of this and other techniques.

Another study was performed by The Estlow Center regarding eye movement and page layouts. Though this was performed on homepage layouts, it gives us great insight to how people scan all pages. The following were reported in 2004:

• People scan from the top left part of the page and spent more time fixated on this portion than any other portion. This would indicate the most favorable spot for ad placement and is consistent with the Cornell study.
• People generally move from the top left in a diagonal line to the middle right, bottom, then top right looking at the right margin from bottom to top. Though most people assume that people read from left to right in sequential order, this is not true for scanning information. The top right portion of a page is scanned later and for a shorter amount of time than the middle sections all the way across the page. This indicates the least appealing ad space or listing space on a page.
• The best overall placement on any page is indicated to be in the top left to left middle of the page.

Research has always been important to marketing. These are just two studies in a flourishing area of research. Use these tips to pick search and ad placement. We will continue to explore similar studies in future blogs so stay tuned.

Keywords: Serps

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The prevalence of persons using trademarked names illegally has currently come to light in many venues but in particular, Google® Adwords. Some competitors have apparently begun to use other trademarked names to advertise on Google® Adwords. The advantages to such a ‘black hat’ tactic include:

The use of established reputations by vendors to promote a similar product or product off of the valued name

The advantage of ‘stealing/hijacking’ search results meant for the originally trademarked brand

Increased search traffic due to the originally trademarked brand

So with people participating in this and other ‘black hat ‘methods of SEO…how can you compete? Short answer…easily. Consider the following:

Expand the number of search phrases that you use for advertisement
Many people stop brainstorming after they have completed the first round of keywords. KEEP BRAINSTORMING. Relevant search phrases not only bring potential customers but may also attract a higher search engine rating.

Build your ad content around each phrase and promote all phrases with unique content
Black hat promotions are built around tricks…not solid offers of valuable content. If you are not a writer…make sure you plan enough of your budget to provide valuable content through outsourcing.

Relevance is important…customers will never return if redirected to irrelevant content. Black hatters make their money from a number of initial hits not returning customers/viewers. A solid marketing plan should be built around repeat readership so make sure you are encouraging this.
Analyze your results: Not even Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Donald Trump come out of the gate with all the answers. Analysis is extremely important. To do effective analysis, you must start with very good records. At the very least track where your clients come from, interests, visitation rate, and input.
Black hat SEO has immediate but not long-lasting results. They are shady webmasters who try to make a quick profit then disappear. The same can be said of a certain segment in all businesses and industries.

As with all start-up business; assume the first year is a wash and don’t expect any profit until the second year. While the internet has many examples of exceptions…just as the restaurant industry; most online businesses will fold within the first year. The exceptions typically occur because their owners planned for the worst case scenario and when they made a first year profit…they were able to reinvest.

In general, Black Hat SEO employs any method to send their website to the top of a search lists no matter what the ethical implications are. White Hat SEO employs similar methods but within ethical boundaries. For example, White Hat systems do not represent non existing pages, content, or keywords.

Trademark infringement is just one of the many techniques employed by Black Hat SEO artists and firms. If you treat the internet as you would any other business venture, you can prevail. However, if you are looking to get rich quickly, beware. The internet is just another business avenue and as everyday passes it must be treated as being more and more within the traditional business mold.

Keys: SEO and Trademark

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