WEB DIRECTORIES
Directories play an important role in aiding a sites web visibility. Crawler-based search engines will, upon finding your site on a directory, or series of directories, consider these directories as one-way links. This will then add importance to your sites relevance in the eyes of these search engines and will most likely increase the chances of your site being added to their listings.
Relevant reciprocal link exchanges are given some importance by search engines but the most valued links, those which are most likely to boost a sites rankings in the major SES are one-way links - sites that accept your link without requiring a reciprocal link from you. These links are highly regarded due to the reasoning that other sites must hold your site in high enough esteem that having your link on their site is acceptable without an exchange requirement. Consequently, the more one-way links, the better!
Few, if any, sites today will agree to a one-way link favoring your site. The only way to achieve this is thru submitting to web directories.
Web directories and search engines have made a conscious effort to exclude bulk submitters. Youve seen the ads - We submit to 1,500 search engines and directories for $10.00, etc. For this reason, many directories require your registration and possibly entering a security code. Practically all of these directories require you provide an email address. Although hot mail or gmail is usually accepted, some directories will require an email corresponding to your domain name and will allow you to submit your site only after verification so it is best to establish an email specifically for web submissions.
An important consideration in submitting is to be sure the directory has a page rank of no less than three. Four or more is better - the reason being that the big search engines like Google and Yahoo will attach more relevance to the link if the directory is well rated. In fact, submitting to a directory with a low or no page rank can - if done frequently - lower your own sites page rank.
One of the best sites in which to find relevant web directories is Vile Silencer (www.vilesilencer.com). This site will guide you to appropriate directories and even displays the page rank of each directory.
Since directories are search engines edited by humans, detailed preparation must be made by the site owner or webmaster prior to submission. Be sure to offer a concise description of the sites offering, staying within the word allowance limits of the directories. In addition, the description should not include such self-promotional terms as the best, the largest or best prices. Directory editors consider this marketing hype and will undoubtably reject the submission.
Regarding cost, many directories offer the option of free as well as paid submissions. Many older directories with a large database may no longer accept free submissions - although some still allow freebies despite their size. Newer directories almost always allow free submissions in order to more quickly increase their database. The larger these directories grow, the more their importance on the web becomes and the more likely they are to charge for submission.
Stuart McHenry is President of Site Sift Media, Inc. which owns an operates
The Google patent application submitted in March, 2005 has generated a good deal of debate among search engine optimization experts. The patent document contains many general suggestions about the direction Google wants to move their search criteria and ranking techniques in the near future.
The document points out two areas in particular in which there remains a need to improve the quality of results generated by search engines. (0009) These two areas are
(a) artificially inflated rank due to spamming techniques, and
(b) stale documents that rank higher than fresh ones, and therefore degrade the search results.
Googles ingenious proposal is to deal with both of these problems by focusing on the history of web documents and web links. Assuming they have the technology to record such a massive amount of information, their objective seems to be to keep a detailed record of the pattern of changes within web pages.
This should address the spam issue by revealing unnatural patterns of change. Too many links too quickly suggests unnatural linking activity has been taking place. Significant links that come and go might suggest that expensive links are being purchased on a temporary basis and are not natural.
And it should address the staleness issue by looking at the way specific pages have been updated. If a page that has ranked high in specific searches has not been updated for a period of time, this will be seen as a reason to downgrade the importance of that page. Other pages with more activity, more up to date information, and more linking activity, all other things being equal, will rank higher.
History is more important than ever
This means Google either already gives, or intends to give the history of documents more significance. And not just the date when the document is created, or most recently changed. They also propose tracking the pattern of the changes in content, changes in anchor text of links, changes in numbers and quality of inbound links, changes in quality and number of outbound links, changes in other pages within the same associated group of documents, and even changes within the pages linking to a document.
On top of that, they propose tracking user habits and patterns over time. How users got to the page in question, how long they stayed there, how many times the particular page was clicked on when it was presented in a search...a very impressive (bewildering) array of factors.
In fact this is an ingenious attempt to solve the spam and staleness problems at the same time. The major assumption is that up-to-date relevant content -- the kind the search engines are supposed to be giving us -- will be regularly updated, will be inter-connected by an ever-increasing (and regularly changing) group of inbound links. In other words, links will come and go, changes will happen gradually, and spikes in either traffic or increased link activity will be sure signs of spamming activity.
Conclusions
Whether all of these measures will ever be fully implemented or not is beside the point. These suggestions make sense, and will be adopted to some extent by all search engines. The future has been defined, and it is up to creators of websites and online marketers to make the most of it.
The most important conclusions we can take from the patent application is that the history of our pages matters. In practical terms, this means:
-- Rapid and wholesale changes in content will be looked upon with suspicion
-- Rapid increases in numbers of inbound and outbound links will trigger red flags
-- Changes in anchor text that alter or remove its relationship to on-page content will be suspect
-- Lack of regular and steady (but not radical) changes will get your pages labelled stale
-- Links that were valuable last year (or month) will not be as valuable this year (or month) because they are becoming stale.
In other words, webmasters and internet marketers must keep adding content, keep upgrading their pages, keep improving and adding new ones, continue to get new links, and freshen up their old ones if they can.
But they should not do any of it too quickly.
Think of this history component as a method of measuring change. It may seem ridiculously vague, but this is the reality we have to deal with.
In the new world order, change has three speeds: Too Slow, Too Fast, and Just Right.
Rick Hendershot publishes the , a group of more than 35 websites and blogs offering web owners advertising and link promotion opportunities.