Probably SE engineers and CEO’s are asking themselves the same question.
Directory frenzy begun when Google announced his PR mechanism, slower in the beginning but extremely accelerated lately.
Keeping the same trend it’s very accurate to say than in 6 months, with continuously improved automated tools for submitting, the quantity of links to be considered by crawlers will grow, artificially, extremely.
And the content itself will be almost the same while the services provided by directories to visitors (others than submitting webmasters) are practically null.
There is one axiom, one question and one estimation :
The axiom :
Search engines will degrade and penalize some but not all directories.
The question :
Will this happen on automated algorithmic bases or a human rating will be involved ?
This question is linked to the definition of “bad neighborhood” and “link farm”. The algorithm will decide that a directory has over a certain % links to “bad sites” and penalize it ?
Let’s take a look at DMOZ : based on this algorithm Google will need to penalize DMOZ because is crowded with dead links and forbidden content (due to corrupt editors).
So we may think that a “kind” of human rating will be added in the equation. Because it’s obvious that an “AI” can’t judge the value of content, especially related to the usefulness towards live people.
The estimation
In my opinion all automated directories will be penalized. If the submission isn’t human rated or approved than the directory will be blacklisted.
Also all the directories based on the same principles : approving links without providing any content/human intervention, will be penalized.
The “paid” directories, which contains a handful a “selected” links, will not be penalized but their usefulness as real traffic are questionable and , probably, the PR benefits will be degraded a little.
The “big” directories, counted on the fingers of a hand, will stay with the same weight. Nothing new here 
big guys are always friends.
A hyperlink, also called simply “a link”, is a reference in a hypertext document to another document or other resource. It is an integral part of the hypertext transfer protocol (http) for World Wide Web, but it is used also in offline documents, such as .pdf (portable document file, Adobe Acrobat native format) and in .XML (extended markup language). Hyperlink can be used to fetch content and save it, view it as a separate document or display as a part of the reference document.
The history of the hyperlink
The history of the hyperlink began in 1965. Theodore Nelson in “the Xanadu Project” transposed the idea from fictional microfilm cross-referencing system into the computer world. In a series of books and articles published from 1964 through 1980 the general concept was changed from linking whole microfilm pages to connecting specific lines of computer text. Primary concept was intended to use on single computer machine, however introduction of DARPA network boosted the idea into creating links between documents and files stored on several networked machines. The idea of connecting parts of a single document via hyperlink arose independently, but was quickly merged to the hyperlink system. Both concepts combined together were fundamental for creating World Wide Web.
How does a hyperlink work?
A hyperlink has two ends, called anchors, and a direction. The link starts at the source anchor and points to the destination anchor. However, the name hyperlink is often used for the source anchor, while the destination anchor is called the hyperlink target. Every browser shows text hyperlinks somewhat exposed (they usually mark it with a different color). Clicking on the hyperlink activates it and displays target document.
Hyperlink - measuring the Net
But hyperlinks are not only the way we surf the Net. Life on the Web without search engines is almost impossible today, because of unbelievable amount of networked information. Most search engines use so-called “page ranking” to measure which site may contain useful information. This mechanism is mostly based on hyperlink popularity. Although whole idea of “page rank” mechanism is more complicated, its general concept is based on a simple rule: the more pages have a hyperlink pointing to the ranked page, the higher rank that page gets. Of course, each hyperlink has different value, based on the popularity of the “source” site (This means simply that if your website is a target for hyperlink placed on the big site like CNet of Microsoft, it has much higher page rank than a site with several hyperlink connections from private sites). This mechanism is based on measuring of hyperlink’s quality. Although not perfect, both mechanisms usually works well enough to determine which website has got good content and which hasn’t.
Web site promotion is a complex process, and one of the oldest ways to promote a web site is by the exchange of Links. Link exchange is the original web site traffic generation system. In the “old days” before the rise of search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN ( and all the others that have followed since ) the only way to find a web site that you hadn’t already been to was to follow a link from another web site. Therefor if your site didn’t have many links pointing to it, it didn’t get much traffic.
Search engines still use links to find new sites and to help with the calculation of a web sites importance or value. So the exchanging of links is still a very usefull way to promote your site and increase its importance to the search engines.
There are three main types of link exchange. The first type is the reciprocal link, where you literally exchange a link with another web site. They put a link to you on their web site, you place one to them on yours.
The second type of link exchange is not really an exchange at all. A visitor to your site simply decides that they will put a link to your site on their site. Maybe they like the information that is presented on your site or they like your product etc. These one way links are considered to be more important by the search engines than reciprocal links are.
This leads us to the third type of link exchange. This method of link exchanging is an “artificial” type two link exchange. How can that be? Aren’t type two links voluntary links placed by a visitor? Yes they are, but that effect can be simulated by doing the following. Basically the idea is to create a “triangle” of links - and it requires at least three web sites for it to work. Picture( or draw ) a triangle with a web site at each of the three points of the triangle. The web sites are any three sites, and they each only link to one of the other sites. So if the sites were to exchange links in a clockwise direction around the triangle they form an “artificial” set of one way, voluntary links.
So thats the three main link exchange types, now how do you go about the actual process of link exchanging? Well its really quite simple. The best way to exchange links is to ask the other web site if they are interested in do so. Usually the request is sent via email or a form on the site you wish to exchange links with. Regardless of how you contact the webmaster of the other site, remember to be polite and to give them all the information they may need to complete the exchange. For example, briefly introduce yourself and your site, with a link back to your site so they can have a look at it. It is good practise to have their link on your site before you contact them for an exchange. Once you start exchanging links you will soon work out what to say and how to say it. Unfortunately many sites are very slow to respond to link exchange requests, so it can take a long time to create a link directory - but it is still well worth doing.
There are “rules” for creating a link directory that should be followed if you want to get the most benefit from it. The rules are very simple and they go something like this.
1. Only exchange links with sites that are relevant to your site. Why? Isn’t any link a good one? Yes, to an extent all links are good - but some are better than others. If you concentrate your link exchange efforts to sites that are relevant to yours, then your site will be seen by the search engines as more important to your topic than if your links went all over the place. It is also better for your visitors to have a link directory relevant to the topic of the site they are currently on.
2. Don’t make your directory pages too long. In other words, if your directory pages scroll for more than 2 or 3 screens they are too long. Why? Because very few people will scroll further than 2 or 3 screens. So if your link is at the bottom it will rarely be found and that doesn’t encourage a webmaster to exchange links with your site. A common limit is 25 links per page of the directory. If you have more links than 25 for any particular catagory a numbered “sub” page is the best way take the extra links. For exanple if you have a directory page called “Software.html”, then once you fill that page with 25 links, the new page could be called “Software-2.html” etc. Remember to include easy navigation within the link directory - its not there just for the search engine spiders..
Thats about all there is to it, other than using link exchange sites and finding some link exchange software to make the job a bit easier. Happy Linking!
Unlike Reciprocal Links, One-Way Links also known as Inbound Links are obtained by you or in fact given to you with Love and for ever. Yes,they have come to stay. One-Way Link is a link pointing to your website from another site. You do not have to link back to that website. In other words you need not reciprocate. One-Way Links play a vital role in increasing your Link Popularity.
Link Popularity is a measure of the number of sites of quality and relevance that point to your website. The more number of such sites, the higher will your page rank be.
Search Engines consider One-Way Links superior to Reciprocal Links because the website that links to your site without getting a link back, endorses the fact that yours is a website of quality.
Webmasters are known to adopt various methods to artificially increase the Link Popularity of their websites, such as purchasing of high PR links. Search Engines have now become aware of this and hence major Search Engines appear to be devaluing sites that solely depend on reciprocal links.
Good Reciprocal Links are often obtained by begging and are in some instances not permanent due to unethical practices of some webmasters. On the other hand One-Way Links have a different story to tell.
1. If your website has good content and valuable information, other webmasters will link to your site, because they Love and appreciate the contents of your site. You thus get a permanent One-Way Link more often with the same theme as that of your website.
2. I have posted about 550 articles in my website written by other webmasters, because I Love those articles and would like my visitors too, to appreciate and benefit from these articles. Similarly several hundreds of webmasters have published my articles in their Directories, Ezines, Newsletters and Websites for the same reason.
Writing expert articles of quality, that are informative and educative, sincerely from your heart is appreciated by the audience. The result is that your articles are often sought after and published by webmasters. Thus you are given a permanent One-Way Link with Love.
3. Listing in Web Directories is another great way of securing One-Way Links. In addition to well known Directories such as Yahoo Directory (charges a fee for guaranteed listing), The Open Project Directory (DMOZ), and Joe Ant Directory, there are several other Secondary Directories that Love to list your website without requesting a link back. A list of these Directories can be obtained by going into the Search Engines. By submitting your website to the relevant category in these directories you are assured of a high quality relevant One-Way Link that will be there for ever.
Furthermore there are several high PR Directories who Love to list your website but charge a fee for listing. Get listed and you are again assured of a quality relevant One Way Link for ever.
4. If you have purchased a product and like the product, write a good testimonial about the product and send it across to the webmaster or vendor concerned with your URL in it. He would be thankful to you and would Love to publish your testimonial, thereby giving you a One-Way Link.
In addition to these methods there are additional ways in obtaining one way links by posting relevant comments in Forums, Blogs and submitting Press Releases etc.
To increase their link popularity, webmasters endeavor to acquire as many quality reciprocal links or one way links. For reasons already indicated Webmasters Love one-way links and Search Engines appear to Love them even more.
The manner in which One-Way Links are obtained can be viewed from a different perspective altogether.
Webmasters Love your website and link it to theirs. They love your articles and post it in theirs. They love your product and write a glowing testimony. Directories love your quality website and list it. You love them in return for giving you a One-Way Link for ever. On the other hand in reciprocal links exchange or link trade as some term it the whole approach revolves around begging and bargaining.
The more number of relevant one way links you obtain, the greater and faster your chances of increasing your link popularity and climbing up the Page Rank ladder. The benefits of a high page rank are numerous. So the earlier you start to capitalize on these On-Way Links that are given for ever with love, the happier you are going to be.
Whatever you do in business, do it big! There’s no other arena in which those words are truer than the internet. It’s a competitive world wide web, and you do have to find your niche. But once you find that niche, do it just a little bit different than everybody else. Do it big. People don’t often think in those terms. So if you are able to put yourself in that mindset, then you’ll be ahead of the pack.
You can struggle all you want trying to get your website to the top of the search engines, but by the time you get there, the rules for getting there will have changed. You can spend countless hours trading links with other websites, but you’ll find that many of those will soon ditch their domain. You may consider any number of online strategies for getting your website noticed, but the bottom line is somebody on the other end always wants to get paid.
This is when the idea of “do it big” comes into play. Let me explain. I recently discovered a website owned by a woman from the UK. Her product was original art. Specifically, cartoon-like pencil sketches. Her intention was to put her work on shirts, stationary, and greeting cards and to sell it through her website. The problem was she couldn’t get her site noticed. She had no visitors.
How many times have you lamented over the lack of visitors to your site? I have, and I do. It doesn’t matter how many visitors a site receives. It never seems to be enough. We are insatiable. But you can struggle with online strategies, or you can do something big offline. Here’s what I suggested to the woman from the UK.
Start a campaign. Call it the “loan a shirt” campaign or something of that nature. The idea would be to take a shirt featuring the artwork, and send it around the world. How? She or somebody else would wear it for a day and then pass it on to another person who would do the same. This would continue for any duration of time. But the goal would be to send the shirt around the world, and each person who wore the shirt for a day could log on to the site if they choose and fill out a quick location form so the shirt may be tracked.
It’s such a simple, low-cost idea, but it’s a creative way to expose a website as the address would be listed right there on the shirt. And people who wore the shirt for a day would get to see and sample the product first hand. It could even be an event for charity, and an effective press release would be the only invitation the media would need to get involved.
But what if somebody decided not to pass the shirt on? What if somebody stole it? What if the shirt got lost? What if “this”, and what if “that”?
Hey, what if it worked? What did it cost? Nothing. It only required a little creative thinking. A person could do anything they wanted with the idea in order to eliminate every negative “what if”.
The point I’m trying to make is we don’t often think of doing something big offline to promote ourselves online. And it doesn’t have to be costly. It doesn’t have to even follow what we believe to be the traditional rules of advertising. Just think big, do it big, and get noticed. After all, isn’t that the goal? Or is the goal just to advertise?
Would you like to know about a new robot that works for you even when you are asleep?
Let me tell you about Zeus. . . he is a simple, intelligent, internet robot that builds a link directory and creates reciprocal links for your web site.
Zeus is the first of a new breed of innovative, robotic software products for webmasters.
Zeus is a smart internet robot that traverses the web, spidering sites and creating for any webmaster, a vertical themed link directory.
Train him to find web sites, matching your unique themes or subjects, and he will zoom off to find thousands of them. Zeus then helps you to review and organize them into vertically-themed categories and possible inclusion within your link directory.
Zeus creates qualified traffic to your web site in numbers you have always thought to be impossible. This is quickly accomplished through a series of steps utilizing dynamic website content, increased search engine activity and genuine, match-each-other reciprocal links.
Content is quickly added to a website with dynamically changing, Zeus-generated, link directory pages. With a single click, your Link Directory is built and uploaded to your web site. These themed pages are keyword-tuned to score high in search engine rankings. Search engines give higher rankings to websites with themed content that match each other through mutual reciprocal links. It is now possible for your directory pages to place in the top 10 search engine listings with a single search word! Imagine having hundreds of these pages, each page built around a single keyword or phrase. As a possible added bonus, re-submission to search engines is a forgotten chore once reciprocal links point towards your site. Robots will visit your site more often because they will find links to your website more frequently throughout the internet.
One good reciprocal link can give you the same amount of traffic as a major search engine and with a Zeus internet robot; you can have hundreds of reciprocal links. The best qualified visitors to your site are from reciprocal links. Zeus simplifies the tedious task of reciprocal link generation by providing, from your link directory, a pool of qualified, theme-matching, reciprocal link prospects, organized by themes or subjects. A contact manager is included allowing you to email an individually-personalized reciprocal link request to each website’s webmaster. Everything is easy to edit, organize and maintain. Link Partners receive a preferential graphic and listing at the top of each directory page providing a compelling reason to reciprocate the link.
Your link directory will also ensure your website’s visitors stay longer and bookmark it into their favourites for a speedy return. Zeus is non-invasive to visited websites and follows all the Robotic Guidelines as described throughout the Internet. You can use Zeus in multiple themes; great for web marketers, authors, researchers, webmasters or serious hobbyists.
Zeus is not for everyone but if you are a moderately to expertly skilled webmaster, with limited time on your hands, who could benefit from a vertical-themed link directory and increased website traffic, Zeus will automate almost every aspect of creating such a directory.
There are a number of ideas about what are the best ways to promote a website and about the best ways to attract more visitors to a website. In my opinion, it is important to start up a link building campaign to increase the number of websites which have a link to your site on their site. This is one proven method which has been successful in achieving high rankings for many different sites, however there are some important factors to keep in mind when attempting to build up this link network.
If you have a new site and are desperate to achieve top rankings on the top search engines such as google, think again. Most of these search engines will probably not give your new site a high ranking until it has become established. This is where the age of the domain is important. You can not in reality expect to be placed in a higher search position than a site which has been around for eight years and which has been building up links, during this period. This is where patience is required, you should see your site as something which is going to be online for a long time and hopefully in time, some of the other sites that you are competing with will have dropped out etc.
This is the same attitude that should be applied when building up the number of backward links pointing to your site. Going from only a few, to a few thousand in a short space of time may not be the best idea. Regular increases are in my opinion the way to go and quality is just as important as quantity. Decide the ways in which you are planning to obtain your backward links and try to ensure that you obtain roughly the same amount each month, where possible of course. Over a long period of time this strategy is sure to pay dividends and your search engine position should steadily improve. You will then have an authority site, which all new sites will be aspiring to compete with. Like many areas of life we do not really want to wait for our success and want immediate rewards, such as high rankings. On some search engines this may be possible but on most it will require hard work and this type of patience.
The links that you obtain should where possible be from sites which are in a similar industry or subject matter, to your own site. This is a lot easier said than done however. If your site is very well written, optimised and of use to a large number of people, you may well receive links on other sites without the need to request the link. This is of course exactly what you want and is why it is important to spend time thinking of how your site is written and presented.
A good way of obtaining a link to your site is to write a reference or testimonial to owners of other sites with which you have had dealings with. Offer to write them this testimonial which of course will be of great benefit to them, on the understanding that they will include a link back to your site at the bottom.
I personally concentrate on obtaining one-way links as I believe these to have the most value. One way I do this is by writing articles such as the one you are reading. There are a great number of benefits of writing articles which can be read at most of the article directories such as ezinearticles. I would certainly recommend it to other people who are thinking of starting up a link building campaign.
There has been another page rank update in the last couple of weeks but it seems as though this has only affected sites which previously had a page rank of zero. The question many people are asking is when will google update the page rank of all of the other sites which already showed a page rank?
This latest update seems to be very similar to the previous page rank update in which the older sites were also not updated. When reading on various websites about other webmasters opinions on this current trend, I have found a number of reasons as to why this may be happening.
Over the last couple of years there have been quite a large number of link exchange programs which have been created. This have proven to be quite popular but are frowned upon by google as the people who enter these programs are in a way cheating to get to the top. Most people are aware of the importance of backward links and these link exchange programs make it very easy to obtain them. In clearly states however in the google guidelines that webmasters should not take part in these link exchange programs. Webmasters who still go ahead are at risk at having their site or sites banned.
The problem could be that it is very hard for search engines like google to establish which links that each site obtains are from these link exchanges and which links are actual real and valid links. It is possible that google is close to finding a formula to this problem and is delaying any page rank updates on older sites until all of the finishing touches are completed. My advice would be to never take part in any of these link exchange programs and that if you are currently in one, to come out of it as soon as possible.
There are many valid ways of promoting a website such as via writing articles and by having good content which will encourage other webmasters to want to link to your site.
I have to say that for somebody like myself who works very hard to promote my own websites, that it is quite frustrating to not be able to see the changes in the page rank, as when I see my sites go up in page rank it gives me a little boost and shows me that I am still doing the right things. In a way it should not really matter however as I am able to see my websites have higher rankings in the search engines, this itself of course is the most important thing. It is also a good thing that google are trying to stop the people who are trying to cheat their way to the top, that is of course if this is the real reason why there has not been a full page rank update for some time.
I have written articles about website promotion in the past, however things on the internet are always changing and my opinions have now changed. This article is all about my new website promotion ideas, ideas which I use on my all of websites.
A good linking campaign is the main priority. Attempting to increase the number of backward links you have pointing to your website is essential. However you have to be careful. Here is a list of do’s and do not’s.
Do:
Increase the number of backward links pointing to your website slowly
Obtain backward links from within the same industry/market as your own
Build up the number of one-way links your website has pointing to it
Write articles and submit them to article directories
Add your website domain on all of your adverts, documentation and e-mails
Offer the visitors to your site the chance to sign up to a monthly newsletter
Offer the visitors to your site a free e-book
Write press releases
Do not:
Join a link building website to automate your linking requirements. These are tempting to join however are frowned upon by the search engines. Always remember hard work pays off.
Increase the number of backward links to quickly
Purchase too many link text ads
Just leave your website without any promotion, it will not grow on its own
Build hidden pages
In my opinion one-way links are vital. These are the most powerful form of backward link and the search engines love them. I can see no way in which they can penalise a site that is only acquiring these type of links.
The best and easiest way of obtaining these one-way links is by writing articles like the one you are reading. Once you have written the article, you then need to submit it to a number of article directories. You are able to add a link to your website on the bottom of the article and the hope is that other webmasters will want to include your article on their website, thus giving you a one-way link.
I have been writing articles for around a year and I must say it has done wonders for my businesses. The number of visitors to my sites have rocketed and the page rank have also steadily increased.
I hope you have found this article interesting to read and beneficial to you.
Good luck with your website promotion campaign
Improving your websites rankings in search engines requires an effective link strategy.
In the development period of Google’s existence, its founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, were burning the midnight oil trying to discover a way to determine the importance of a web site.
The concept they arrived at is now known as link popularity.
The basic idea is simple: If web site “A” has a lot of other web sites linking to it, then all these llinking sites must think that web site “A” is important.
In other words, each incoming link to your web site can be considered as a vote. The more votes your web site achieves, the more importance Google, and other major search engines will give to it. This means that in the all seeing eyes of search engines your web site is more relevant if it has a lot of incoming links. So the more relevancy you can acquire for your web pages means higher search engine rankings (all major search engines appear to have adopted the Google model).
After your web site has been assessed for the number of incoming links (or backlinks), and the quality, see later, of those links, Google will assign a value, called Page Rank (PR), to the web pages on your web site. This is a numeric value between 0 and 10. Higher PR indicating more importance.
So, improving my web sites Google ranking is as simple as that?
Unfortunately the answer is NO! This is because the Google algorithm is a complex beast. There are over one hundred other things that Google check for, and there are different types of links. Each type carrying more or less relevancy.
So, the types of link are:
1) Outgoing: where your site links to another site. No use to you in terms of PR.
2) Reciprocal: where two sites exchange links, this now has less value than it used to have since a recent Google update, but is still effective on other search engines.
3) One way Incoming: A link to your site pure and simple, where your site does not link back. This is what you need to build PR. This is a vote for your site and is far more powerful than a reciprocal link.
What’s in a name?
Now you know the type of link that’s needed (how to get one-way incoming links will be discussed elsewhere) there is still more that will affect your PR. This concerns the link anchor text. Link anchor text is the visible part of a link, i.e., the text you click on.
Link anchor text in a link pointing to your home page should contain the main keyword that your home page is optimised for. However, if you have many links all with the same anchor text it looks, to Google, like spamming and may cause lesser significance being given to those links. Therefore, vary your anchor text.
As can be seen, generating a successful crop of links can be a time consuming process. And there are many pitfalls along the way.