Top 10 Directories To Submit Your Website To

Adding your new site to the major directories is a key task if you want to build traffic and page ranking. While the list below is not exhaustive, it will get you well underway in your directory listings.

A few points to keep in mind as you add your site to these directories:

• Directories are not search engines. Directories are edited and managed by human beings, whereas search engines are programs that troll the web looking for pages. Your site might be recommended to a directory by one of the site editors, or a very enthusiastic fan of your site, but most likely you will have to introduce yourself if you want to make a directory’s list.


• Be sure the directory is indexed in the major search engines. A quick search at Google, Yahoo & MSN will do.

• Be sure the directory is not banned by Google. You probably won’t get flagged by Google if you are listed there, but the risk is too great – there are hundreds of other places for your link.

• Page Rank isn’t everything. Don’t skip sites just because they have a low page rank. While Page Rank is extremely helpful, it changes over time. A directory with a PR of 3 this month could jump to 6 next month. Also, take note of the Page Rank of the specific page of the directory your site will be listed on. Just like it says, Page Rank is for pages, not for sites. A directory could have a PR of 7, but the page your link appears on might be a humble 1.

• Directories are not overnight traffic. Look around the submission guidelines and to see how long the editors will take to review your site. Free sites can take up to four months to get approved.

• Go after the older directories first. Google values a site’s age, and you should to.

• Review the directory’s guidelines and don’t abuse them. Don’t submit your site every week. Don’t add an unrelated site to a niche directory. Don’t try to trick the editors into adding your site to more than one category if that goes against the guidelines.

Now that you know the basics of evaluating and submitting to directories, here’s a short list of the top sites:

General directories:


1) Yahoo http://submit.search.yahoo.com/free/request

The world’s best-known directory. This free listing form may take months to result in a link back to your site, but it is well worth a try.


2) DMOZ www.DMOZ.org

This is the granddaddy of all directories, and is greatly respected by Google and the other major search engines. Listings are free, but the wait can be long. According to the DMOZ site, expect your site to appear in the listings at Google, AOL and other major engines about 2 weeks after you’re listed in DMOZ.


3) Zeal. www.zeal.com

A free listing after you register. Zeal is owed by Looksmart.


4) Best of the Web www.botw.org

Requires a $49.95 yearly fee, or a $149.95 one-time fee. Online since 1994. Listing pages usually have a page rank of 4.


5) Directory World www.directoryworld.net

Requires a reciprocal link, but is otherwise free. Good page ranks for listing pages.


6) Clickey www.clickey.com

A free link. Also sorts companies by country.


7) Seoma www.seoma.net

Requires registration and a $15 paypal fee for a link, but the high page ranks make it a bargain (compared to buying a text link).


8) ExactSeek www.exactseek.com

A free link at an established site. You can also upgrade to a “top ten ranking” for $12.


9) What You Seek www.whatyouseek.com

Standard submissions cost $24.99 and will be posted in eight weeks. Velocity submit takes two days and costs $49.99.


10) Really First www.reallyfirst.com

One of the largest directories with over 40,000 links. Poor navigation, but a free link if you add their link to your site.

This not an exhaustive list, but a great start. Also, remember, if you have a new site, getting listed here will help your website get indexed by search engines.


Written by Anik Singal
Courtesy http://www.teawithedge.com

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Classic Marketing Mistakes That May Never Go Away

It has been over fifty years since organizations began to understand the real importance of marketing strategy and planning. Prior to the 1950s most companies did not have marketing departments, but instead marketing activities were scattered among many departments such as advertising and sales. Things began to change as scholars and consultants pushed for companies to adopt strategies designed to unify a variety of marketing activities carried out in different parts of the company. By the 1960s most major college and university business programs were preaching the importance of marketing and an avalanche of books and magazines supported this cause.With so much time and energy directed to improving marketing decision making, one might think that past mistakes attributed to lack of marketing knowledge would now be all but eliminated. In reality, there are many mistakes that are bound to be repeated no matter how much attention is direct to understanding marketing. Here are a few:


1. The Research Tells Us So

Relying on the results of market research as the deciding factor when making marketing decisions is a risky proposition. Why? Because research is inherently fraught with many potential problems. These problems are often the result of how the research is designed or how it is executed. It is particularly a problem if the researcher does not have access to all information. For instance, errors often occur with customer surveys including questions not being asked correctly and non-customers completing the survey. The bottom line is companies must perform market research to gain information needed to make informed marketing decisions. However, marketers must understand its limitations. In the end the marketer must weigh all available information to make their decision and not focus solely on what the research says.


2. All We Need to do is Pump More into Promotion

Wouldn’t it be great if marketing was this easy? Just spend more on advertising and other promotions and we will quickly see our sales increase. More likely what you’ll see is your profits decrease! The argument for more promotion as the medicine needed to fix lackluster sales is heard in nearly all organizations. But to view marketing problems in terms of promotional deficiencies is extremely shortsighted. Marketing is much more than advertising. Sales problems could be the result of numerous other marketing problems. Before deciding to spend more on promotion it probably makes more sense to spend time reviewing all marketing decisions to make sure problems do not lay elsewhere.


3. We Have the Best Product on the Market

Says who? The marketer might think it’s the best product, but remember the marketer is not buying the product. The marketer’s target market is supposed to buy it. If a marketer can’t understand why customers are buying a competitor’s product when the marketer thinks the competitor’s product is inferior then the marketer does not know the market well enough. More than likely how the product is positioned in customers’ minds is different than how the marketer sees things. This situation calls for extensive customer research to find out why the product is not performing as expected.


4. The Boss Knows What’s Best

A classic problem in many small businesses is when the person who built the business believes they know what works. The entrepreneur justifies this by telling everyone that the business is successful because he/she knows what the market wants. The boss often discounts market studies as a waste of funds, and worse yet, brushes aside marketing suggestions from others in the organization. While it is very likely the boss knows a lot about the market, it is unlikely the boss knows everything about the market. Making marketing decisions based on executive intuition works sometimes, but eventually lack of information, whether from refusing to undertake research or giving a cold shoulder to employees’ ideas, will lead to poor decisions.


5. Our Customers Only Care About Getting the Lowest Price

No they don’t. They care about the best value for their money. Customers first and foremost want to feel comfortable with their purchase and know they got their money’s worth from their decision. It is a miscalculation for marketers to believe customers reduce purchase decisions to selecting the product with the lowest price. Yet if a marketer undertakes a little research they will invariable find many other issues affect the purchase. Companies that feel they are losing out to lower priced competitors are really losing out to higher value competitors. Clearly to fight this requires marketing efforts that increase the value of the firm’s products in the minds of its target market.


6. We Know Who Our Competitors Are

Most marketers when asked to name their competitors can easily rattle off a list. While the length of this list shows strong knowledge of the market, what is more important is who is not on the list. Companies not viewed as competitors are potentially the biggest threat to a company, especially for companies operating in a rapidly evolving market. At the very least the marketer should have two lists – current competitors and potential competitors. The list for potential competitors should be heavily weighted with companies that are outside the current industry. In this way the marketer broadens the universe of potential influencers in their market. Having this knowledge not only makes the marketer aware of potential competitors but investigating firms in outside industries may also provide insight and ideas for product innovation, new markets and new channels for communication.


7. The Only Thing That Matters Is ROI

For many companies investing in a marketing decision must have only one payoff – profit on the investment. Yet if this approach drives all marketing decisions the company is at best an underachiever and at worst vulnerable to competitors. Why? Because not all marketing decisions should be tied to a positive return on investment. Sometimes a firm must make strategic decisions that sacrifice profits in order strengthen other parts of the company. For example, a company may spend significant funds to develop a new product that research suggests has little chance of being profitable. But the product may serve as a major annoyance to your competitor’s top product. Because of this the competitor may need to expend more resources to insure their product retains its market position. Being forced to direct more funds to support their top product may slow down their efforts to develop new products that could compete against your products.


8. Who Needs to Plan

Marketing executives within fast moving industies often feel planning beyond the short-term is useless since the market changes so rapidly. Yet failing to lay out a plan may lead to some big surprises, like running out of money! In a business environment where decisions are made quickly it is easy to lose track of where the money is going. A marketing plan can help the company insert controls on marketing expenditures. It also has the added benefit of having marketers take a step back to see where the company has been and may uncover important information that was not apparent earlier. Additionally, a marketing plan may help insure that everyone within the company is on the same page with regard to the basic direction of the firm’s marketing efforts. This may prevent finger pointing down the road. Even if a plan is limited to only covering the next six months of operations it is an exercise that should not be avoided.

Courtesy www.knowthis.com

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Google Adsense: To Blend or Not To Blend?

For those who don't know, Google Adsense is an advertising medium presented by the number one search engine Google. The basic concept of adsense is that you use coding provided by Google to place on your website, blog, or what have you. When your account is approved for adsense ads then the most relevant ads will show on your webpage. When a visitor or hopefully visitors click the ad, then voila! You have a nice amount of supplemental income. The use of Adsense is often in great debate in most popular SEO forums. The majority of the topics are on how to place the ads on your site to get the most out of a page hit. Some SEO's (Search Engine Optimizers} say that the ads should be towards the top of your page to get a higher CTR (click-thru-rate). Of course other SEO's say the bottom is best for the ads.

My opnion is that top or bottom it really doesn't make a difference. You should always place a ad in a spot on the page where it can be seen without making the visitor feel like the ads are interfereing with them reading your page information. Remember, they are at your site to get infromation on a service or product. Also the, placement of the advertisements should be in a spot where it must be read, or glanced at without making the visitor feel overwhelmed. Remember, that we all still have that ole phobia of visiting banner only sites.

One of the next topics discussed are the facts of blending the adsense ad to the rest of your site or not to blend it in with your site. Some SEO's say that you should blend to not disturb the visitor and also it seems more like a part of your site and will make them believe they should click for even more information. This is not always true when the ads are placed on a site that doesn't offer information in the first place. Then on the other hand if you make a ad that sticks out they feel it will draw attention and get more clicks. Other SEO professionals feel that this will only irritate the visitor and may cause them to leave the site.

The major thing that you must learn is to use your blending and placement together in a manner where you can say yes to the following questions:

- Did I place the Adsense ads where they can be seen?
- Did I place them where they aren't obstructing what my visitors are orginally there for?
- Did I blend the text color of the ad to make it look like its part of my page?
- Did I match the background and border color in a way that would raise the ad off the page, giving it a slight 3-D affect?
- Did I place the google adsense ad in a place that is in the line of the visitors reading path? - After looking at my page, was the placement and blend atleast where I would read the adsense and possibly click?


If you can answer yes to yourself and be very truthful then your adsense ad is in a good spot for now. Don't forget that you should experiment when you get your traffic up. Find out what works better for you and your pockets. If you would like a good idea of how this should be done just pay a visit to my site.

Have fun out there!


Written by Carlos Penn
Courtesy http://www.teawithedge.com

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