Using Social Bookmark website to build links

There are many Social Bookmark websites on the internet. They are used to keep track of your favorite bookmarks (websites) the same ones you have on the web browser that you use such as FireFox or Internet Explorer. The cool thing about the online Social Bookmarks is that they are stored on web servers, giving you access anywhere you have an internet connection.

These can also be used to create links back to YOUR site. Because search engines will index those pages they will also see the bookmarks pointing to your website. All you need to do is register for a FREE account and start book marking the pages of interest. Just don’t bookmark your entire site.

Here is a partial list:

• Bibsonomy.com
• BlinkList.com
• BuddyMarks.com
• Connectedy.com
• De.icio.us
• Diigo.com
• Faviki.com
• Folkd.com
• JumpTag.com
• Mister-Wong.com
• MyLinkVault.com
• Netvouz.com
• Simpy.com
• Tagza.com

Get your website listed on Web Directories.

After you submit your website to the search engines, part of your SEO strategy is also to get your website listed with web directories. Directories are a good way to get links back to your website, increasing your link popularity and can cause a higher search engine rank for your site. You probably won’t get much noticeable traffic coming from directories, but it builds a strong link to your site which search engines like.

There are thousands of directories out there, here is a small list:

• AAA Web Directory.com (FREE – $24.95)
• Ally Directory ($12.95 – $59.95)
• Authority Directory ($6.95 – $39.95)
• Best Directory 4 You (FREE)
• Dir Snap ($19.99 – $49.99)
• Hot vs. Not (FREE with Reciprocal – $60)
• Link Directory (FREE – $99)
• Link Rain (FREE with Reciprocal)
• Londovor (FREE – $33)
• Parabara (FREE)
• Pegasus Directory (FREE – $27)
• Pro Link Directory (FREE – $59)
• URLZ Web Directory (FREE – $49.95)
• Web World Index (Free – $25)
• 10,000 Listings Web Directory ($1.95 – $9.95)
• Ztrixq Link Directory (Free – $5.95)

For a list of complete and detail Web Directory information visit the following 3 sites:

Director Rate – Offers directory lists and resources for webmasters, site promoters and SEOs

Directory Critic – Contains a Directory lists and link building resources.

Web-Directories – A list of over 10,000 Web Directories with relevant information to help you make a smart submission decision.

DMOZ and Yahoo Directory

DMOZ.org – ‘Open Directory Project’ is consider the largest and most comprehensive human edited web directory. As of June 27, 2008 there are 4,594,647 websites listed with DMOZ.org. To submit you website is FREE, just to to DMOZ.org and search for a particular category that best describes your website, then click on “Suggest URL”. The Open Directory Project is constructed and maintained by volunteer editors, which usually means there’s a big waiting list to get listed, that is IF you get listed.

Yahoo Directory – If you have the budget it is a good idea to get your website listed with Yahoo’s Directory. At $299 it is not cheap, but once included to the directory you will have a powerful link to your website from on of the biggest search engines on the net. Inclusion is fast and easy, listed in seven days. If you earn more than $300 from your website, its a smart idea to submit to the Yahoo Directory.

The other Search Engines to submit to!

Even though most of the searches done online come from Google, Live Searh or Yahoo. There are other smaller search engines which will not hurt if you submit to them. Here is a list:

ExactSeek – Free to submit

Gigablast – Free

WhatUSeek – Free

Scrub The Web – Free

Jayde – Free

Entire Web – $24.00/year

Other search engines partner with Yahoo such as (All The Web and Altavista)

Submit your website to the 3 major Search Engines…

When you have you NEW website finish and are ready to submit to the 3 major search engines (Google, Live Search and Yahoo), just do the following steps:

Google: go to the Google Add URL page, enter you web address and the “squiggly letter” shown in box then click on Add URL. Google will usually find your website in less than 7 days, sometimes sooner at that time with the help of a Sitemap it will start to index your web site pages.

LIVE Search: go to the Submit URL page, enter the characters from the picture displayed and type your homepage URL, then click on Submit URL

Yahoo: go to the Submit Your Site page on Yahoo Site Explorer, enter the webpage address and click on Submit URL

Basically thats it, pretty simple. Most of the organic search results that you will be getting to your site will be coming from the 3 major search engines. There are other search engines that you can submit to, we will cover that in the next post.

How to use Title & Meta Tags correctly

The Tile & Meta Tags is information that is included inside the <head> area of your web pages. The Meta Tags are not seen by human, but are use to give information or instructions to search engines spiders. I will be discussing the following. Title, Description and Keywords.

On this example, let’s say the web site talks about weight loss, gives tips and advice on how to do this and still enjoy foods. Your web pages content, will have the keyword “weight loss” position at least 5 times throughout the page.

<head>

<title>How to achieve weight loss in 5 easy steps | xyz.com</title>

<meta name=”description” content=”Learn these 5 easy steps to permanent weight loss without having to stop eating the foods you love. Lose weight today!”

<meta name=”keywords” content=”lose weight, weight loss, fat loss”

</head>

For the search engines results on this page you will get the following:

Webmasters Tool and Sitemaps

Ok, once your have uploaded your Sitemap to your websites server. You need to tell the search engines that the file is there. To do this we will use Google’s Webmasters, Live Search Webmasters Tools and Yahoo Site Explorer.

If you don’t already have one open an account for both Google and Live Search:

Google Webmasters and click on Sign In.

Once you have added your website, go to ‘Add Sitemap’ and enter the name of the sitemap, usually “sitemap.xml” and you are done.

Live Search Webmasters Tools and Sign In with your Windows Live ID or create one.

Same as above, once you add your website, go to ‘Add Sitemap’ and submit the complete address of your Sitemaps location.

Yahoo Site Explorer

For Yahoo to find the your sitemap.xml go to Yahoo Site Explorer Submit
and on the second option that says ‘Submit Site Feed’ enter the entire address for your Sitemap, such as
http://www.example.com/sitemap.xml

You can also add the following line to your ‘robot.txt’ file
Sitemap: http://www.example.com/sitemap.xml

Also remember if you add new pages to your website to include an updated Sitemap to your websever. Keep an eye on both webmasters tool to make sure you don’t get errors from the search engines.

Search engines and Sitemap

You see the advertisements all over the internet, “Get your website listed on Google within 7 days, only $$$”. The fact is you don’t have to pay anyone to get listed on the Google, MSN (Live), and Yahoo. Most of the times the search engines spider will find you. But you have to be ready by having a completed website, with all links working, content based of what the website is about and including specific keywords you want to target. You can help the search engines crawl and understand better you websites internal structure by including a Sitemap.

A Sitemap is a list of the pages on your website. By including one on your server you are letting the search engines know all the pages you have on your website, when the pages were modified and how often they change. You want to include two types of Sitemap, a Sitemap.xml and Sitemap.html.

A Sitemap.xml is the what the search engines will look at behind the scene. You can create a site map by going to XML-sitemaps.com input your website address and on the following page you will have your Sitemap.xml ready, download it…then uploaded to your web server. You also have the option to download a Sitemap.html, this is what the end user (human) will use to find pages on your website.

Net Neutrality – Help save the internet

The Internet (International Network) has grown to what it is today because of people, people like you and me. But now companies such as AT&T, Verizon, Comcast and Time Warner want to control i., They want to create a restricted FAST lane on the internet, but only for sites who pay them big fees, even companies such as Google and Yahoo. And the small companies and your average person will get the SLOW lane. They want to take similar approach to what they did to broadcast television and radio…Since they are the companies spending millions of dollars on the backbone of the internet, they want to take ownership too.

Google’s Eric Schmidt has posted a note about this Net Neutrality on there website.
Visit Save the Internet to learn more about this and to sign the petition , “Don’t Let Congress Ruin the Internet”

The Story of a Search Engine

A Search Engine is a program that searches for documents based on a specific keyword requested. When a search engine finds a new website it indexes the pages by crawling each of the pages that are linked to each other, its make a copy of it and stores it in its system. Unlike a web directory which are maintained by humans, search engines work with an algorithm or sequence of instructions to return the most relevant result to the user.

Search engines look at website as if they were books. If someone is searching for the keyword “weight loss”, the search engine will look into which website is relevant to that word, how many times that word is used on the site, how many other websites link to it (authority), anchor text linking, and of course the web address itself will have an impact on it.