Why should you pay for a directory submission service

Nearly every knowledgeable internet business owner and webmaster on the planet knows that in order to improve their rankings in the major search engines, they need one thing: links, and lots of them. Link building services abound online today, whether it’s a directory submission service, a blog posting service or forum posting service; website owners are gobbling up these link building services like a stray dog devours leftovers and scraps that are found in the back alley.

Some website owners, in order to save a few dollars, have taken it upon themselves to perform these link building strategies without the help of the knowledgeable experts; thinking to themselves:

“Why should I pay for a directory submission service when I can do it myself for free?”

In all honesty, you can perform your own link building services, and you don’t have to hire a directory submission service for your website’s link building. However, do you really know what you’re getting yourself into?
Even though directory submission services are typically low-cost and comparatively affordable when considering other website promotion and optimization strategies; there’s good reasoning behind hiring a professional directory submitter over performing this link building service yourself.

Directory Submissions are time consuming

The biggest downfall of performing your own directory submissions is that they are excessively time consuming for the novice directory submitter. Whilst a professional directory submitter can perform this link building service quickly because they have done it thousands of time before and have the proper tools to perform directory submissions quickly; the average Joe or Jane website owner will eat up three minutes or more per submission, easily. A professional directory submission service may be able to submit to 100 directories in just over an hour while somebody who is not familiar with the directory submission process will take, with a conservative estimate, over four hours to perform the same 100 directory submissions.

In order to be effective, directory submissions need to be submitted correctly

Novice directory submitters often times fail to adhere to the written and even unwritten guidelines of website directory submissions; which can lead to a wasted effort on your part because if you don’t submit your website to directories in a way that is generally viewed as acceptable by directory owners, regardless of whether or not there are any submission guidelines posted, you will inevitably suffer from a low acceptance rate from the directories.

For instance, a directory submission service understands how to properly form the website’s title and how many words are generally acceptable, how to word the description for better acceptance and which categories to submit to in order to receive the highest acceptance rate while working to get the client the best placement for SEO purposes. A novice directory submitter does not understand these subtle guidelines and will ultimately suffer because of it if they try to submit to directories on their own.

Other pitfalls of ’self-submission’ to online directories

If you choose to perform directory submissions yourself to save the minimal amounts required by a directory submission service, there are other things that you will need to be aware of.

For instance, do you have the ability to determine whether a directory is “SEO friendly” and will help your website’s rankings in the search engines? A professional directory submitter can usually pinpoint a worthless directory right away. In fact, many directory submission services have pre-compiled lists of search engine friendly directories that they use on a daily basis so that their clients can rest assured that each and every submission takes place to a directory that will provide SEO benefit.

Do you have the ability to use multiple proxy servers to “mask” your identity during directory submissions? If you’re doing a large number of submissions, any professional directory submitter will tell you that using a proxy server during the submission process is absolutely necessary. There are many directories online that are run by the same company, and during the submission process, your IP address is tracked; if you happen to get flagged because of too many submissions, you’ll end up with a time-consuming hardship on your hands trying to weed out the directories that are prohibiting you from submitting to them.

Now this is not, by any means, an exhaustive list of reasons why you should use a directory submission service for your website’s promotion instead of doing it yourself. While initially it might seem like a good idea to perform directory submissions on your own, after you’ve spent a few hours on it and have done only a handful of submissions; you’ll better understand how much of a bargain you are getting when you hire a directory submission service for this website link building strategy.

What it all boils down to is this: a directory submission service is offered by professionals who understand how to perform this link building method efficiently and effectively. Unless you’ve got a lot of time on your hands, this link building strategy is much better when left to the professionals.

How to Choose Keywords for Your Website

Having a well-built and up to date web page and promoting it so that many thousand of people can see the products and services you are selling is the key behind earning a lot of money from doing business online. However, you must not stop at building the site and updating it. People must be able to see it if you want to increase the number of potential customers and you can only do so by optimizing your web page for search engines. Most people use popular search engines when looking for certain products and services and that is why having a site optimized for these search engines is very important. Having the correct keywords and keyword density is one of the most important things when considering creating a web site to support your business. Actually, you should have in mind the list of keywords you want to add to your site before you even start creating it. Search engines offer a series of search engine optimization services and this should be a good starting point. If you are planning an English web site, you can look at websites such as wordtracker.com or inventory.overture.com. Therefore, the first logical step is to make out a list of keywords that should appear on your webpage. Next, try to find out what keywords your competitors are using, as you can find some more relevant information this way.

You can use two methods: optimizing your website for a small number of very popular keywords, or very many less popular keywords. You will see that in practice these methods are very well combined many times. There is a downside to using keywords as a main visitor’s attraction method: all sites uses it and it is harder for a newly developed webpage to get even close to the rankings of large, old sites that use similar keywords. One of the best ways to increase traffic to your site is to attract targeted visitors when thinking your search engine optimization methods. Remember, targeted visitors are those people that come to your site and who are searching for the products you are selling and are willing to buy those products or services. It is the number of targeted visitors that come to your site that should interest you and not the total amount of traffic. From the list of keywords, that you have gathered you must choose the core keywords for which you will optimize your web page. You will not be the only one using those keywords on your site, thus the competition for the selected keywords is very high. In order to see you site fits in once launched, you must have an idea about exactly how competitive your web page is. You can do this by reviewing a set of data for the first ten results displayed by the search engine when using the selected keywords. Among the data you should look at is the average Page Rank of each of the displayed results, the average number of links that guides people to these web pages. Other elements you should look at are the approximate number of pages on the Internet that contain the selected keywords (the total number of results displayed by the search engine) and the number of pages on the Internet that contain exact matches to the keyword phrase. By having all these numbers in mind, you can make an idea about your competition on those keywords and how easy or how hard it will be for you to get a top ranking for your web page.

Now that you have gathered enough information to make a thorough examination of the competition rate for all of your keyword phrases, you can go on to include a series of key phrases with moderate popularity but having an acceptable competition rate, which you can use to further promote and optimize your site.

Because the services provided by search engines about keywords and keywords statistics, do not be surprised if at first you will not be able to obtain the most efficient list of keywords from the beginning. After you have launched your web page, you can further analyze traffic and keywords statistics to finely tune your site. Only after launching your site you will be able to see the search engine’s rating of your site for particular phrases and you will also have the number of visits to your site for these phrases. Now you can see what key phrases are attracting people that use search engines to your site and what keywords do not work as efficient. If you notice that certain key phrases are not efficient in attracting traffic to your page, you can take measure in that direction: you can edit them, or you can take then out altogether. You may also discover that a keyword that you did not take into consideration very much at the beginning is bringing you more targeted visitors than one that you considered important and you can optimize your web site accordingly. If you know that keywords are efficient in bringing you targeted traffic, you can increase their frequency throughout your web page or even create new pages around those keywords and phrases. The techniques of search engine optimization are changing all the time and what had proven highly efficient some time ago may not be appropriate in the future. Therefore, that is why you will need to changes the keywords in time if you see that the traffic numbers are not satisfactory anymore. Nothing is built forever and you will constantly need to update both your web page and your SEO methods to been in touch with the current developments.

Also, remember that your main page attracts up to 50% of all the search traffic, and because it has the highest visibility in search engines, optimizing it for search engines and for the most popular queries related to your business field should be a top priority.

There are also a lot of tools out there that can help you to research your keywords. Typing “SEO Tools” in any search engine will return huge amount of useful SEO tools. There are also tools for link building, page research, marketing effectiveness, etc

Important Factors in SE Rankings

There are a number of important factors in SE rankings. Keeping all of those factors in mind when working on extant or new web sites will help you achieve good SE rankings. The age of your site, number of backlinks to your site, keywords, anchor text and overall on-site optimization will all determine your overall search engine ranking. A good SE ranking will bring more visitors to your site increasing your business or online advertising profits.

The longer your domain has been in existence, and regularly spidered by search engines, the better your search engine ranking will be. Obviously, this is not easily changeable; however, if you envision creating multiple sites, it may be beneficial to register and set them all up and work toward content development all at once, even if each site takes longer to reach fully developed. This tip is particularly relevant for individuals creating sites to generate online advertising revenues, since they may well own and manage multiple sites. If nothing else, it can be helpful to realize that this factor in SE rankings simply takes time, and given time, if all else is in place, your SE rankings will improve.

Backlinking is another important factor in SE rankings. Backlinks are other sites that link to your sites. The more sites that the search engines see linking to yours, the better your SE rankings are apt to be. How can you go about getting backlinks to your sites? In the simplest terms you can trade links with relevant sites, submit your site to online site directories, and use your site in signature files on message boards. All of these will help improve your site rankings. Reviewing search engine optimization resources and message boards will reveal that there are services available to submit your site to a large number of directories, thus providing you with immediate backlinks for an affordable charge.

Keywords are one of the most essential and most common search engine optimization tools. Using keywords in your content is important, but using them in headers and anchor text is especially important. Anchor text is the highlighted text that is clickable, linking to another page on your site or another site entirely. Good use of anchor text will help with your SE rankings. Be certain that your anchor text varies, but is relevant to your keywords and site themes. While good use of anchor text for external links is important, it can be even more helpful when you use internal linking among individual pages on your own site. Limiting your external links to those that are actually useful and relevant is a practical tip when looking at ways to increase your SE rankings.

Overall on-site optimization for modern SE rankings is critical for a good overall ranking in major search engines. SE rankings can change easily, and the algorithms for determining them often change as well. Staying on top of current on-site optimization strategies, including using keywords, backlinking, heading and anchor text, is critical for good SE rankings. Your site will be much more successful if you achieve a first page site ranking, and even more so if you are in the top five listings on a major search engine, such as Google. Good SE rankings will bring traffic to your site. If you are running an ecommerce site, traffic will mean customers. If you rely upon advertising on your blog or informational site to bring in needed revenues, SE rankings are also critical for your overall online success. Taking advantage of practical, modern on-site optimization strategies can help your site rankings improve within just a few months, with minimal work or effort.

Landing page optimization

Landing Page Optimization (LPO, also known as WebPages Optimization) is the process of improving a visitor’s perception of a website by optimizing it’s content and appearance in order to make them more appealing to the target audiences as measured by target goals such as conversion rate or other.

Multivariate Landing Page Optimization (MVLPO) is Landing Page Optimization based on an experimental design.

here are three major types of LPO based on targeting:

• Associative Content Targeting (also called ‘rules-based optimization’ or ‘passive targeting’). Modifies the content with relevant to the visitors information based on the search criteria, source, geo-information of source traffic or other known generic parameters that can be used for explicit non-research based consumer segmentation.
• Predictive Content Targeting (also called ‘active targeting’). Adjusts the content by correlating any known information about the visitors (e.g., prior purchase behavior, personal demographic information, browsing patterns, etc.) to anticipated (desired) future actions based on predictive analytics.

There are two major types of LPO based on experimentation:

• Close-Ended Experimentation exposes consumers to various executions of landing pages and observes their behavior. At the end of the test, an optimal page is selected that permanently replaces the experimental pages. This page is usually the most efficient one in achieving target goals such as conversion rate, etc. It may be one of tested pages or a synthesized one from individual elements never tested together. The methods include simple A/B-split test, multivariate (conjoint) based, Taguchi, Total Experience testing, etc.
• Open-Ended Experimentation is similar to Close-Ended Experimentation with ongoing dynamic adjustment of the page based on continuing experimentation.

This article covers in details only the approaches based on the experimentation. Experimentation based LPO can be achieved using the following most frequently used methodologies: A/B split test, Multivariate LPO and Total Experience Testing. The methodologies are applicable to both – close-ended and open-ended types of experimentation.

A/B Testing

A/B Testing (also called ‘A/B Split Test’): a generic name of testing a limited set (usually 2 or 3) of pre-created executions of a web page without use of experimental design. The typical goal is to try, for example, three versions of the home page or product page or support FAQ page and see which version of the page works better. The outcome in A/B Testing is usually measured as click-thru to next page or conversion, etc. The testing can be conducted sequentially or concurrently. In sequential (the easiest to implement) execution the page executions are placed online one at a time for a specified period. Parallel execution (‘split test’) divides the traffic between the executions.

• Pro’s of doing A/B Testing:
  • Inexpensive since you will use your existing resources and tools
  • Simple –no heavy statistics involved
• Con’s of doing A/B Testing:
  • It is difficult to control all the external factors (campaigns, search traffic, press releases, seasonality) in sequential execution.
  • The approach is very limited, and cannot give reliable answers for pages that combine multiple elements.

MVLPO

MVLPO structurally handles a combination of multiple groups of elements (graphics, text, etc.) on the page. Each group comprises multiple executions (options). For example, a landing page may have n different options of the title, m variations of the featured picture, k options of the company logo, etc.

• Pro’s of doing Multivariate Testing:
  • The most reliable science based approach to understand the customers mind and use it to optimize their experience.
  • It evolved to a quite easy to use approach in which not much IT involvement is needed. In many cases, a few lines of javascript on the page allows the remote servers of the vendors to control the changes, collect the data and analyze the results.
  • It provides a foundation for a continuous learning experience.
• Con’s of doing Multivariate Testing:
  • As with any quantitative consumer research, there is a danger of GIGO (‘garbage in, garbage out’). You still need a clean pool of ideas that are sourced from known customer points or strategic business objectives.
  • With MVLPO, you are usually optimizing one page at a time. Website experiences for most sites are complex multi page affairs. For a e-commerce website it is typical for a entry to a successful purchase to be around 12 to 18 pages, for a support site even more pages.

Total Experience Testing

Total Experience Testing (also called ‘Experience Testing’) is a new and evolving type of experiment based testing in which the entire site experience of the visitor is examined using technical capabilities of the site platform (e.g., ATG, Blue Martini, etc.).^[1]

Instead of actually creating multiple websites, the methodology uses the site platform to create several persistent experiences and monitors which one is preferred by the customers.

• Pro’s of doing Experience Testing:
  • The experiments reflect the total customers experience, not just one page at a time.
• Con’s of doing Experience Testing:
  • You need to have a website platform that supports experience testing, (for example ATG supports this).
  • It takes longer than the other two methodologies.

Multivariate Landing Page Optimization (MVLPO)

The first application of an experimental design to website optimization was done by Moskowitz Jacobs Inc. in 1998 in a simulation demo-project for Lego website (Denmark). MVLPO did not become a mainstream approach until 2003-2004.

Execution Modes

MVLPO can be executed in a Live (production) Environment (e.g., Google website optimizer,^[2] Optimost.com, etc.) or through a Market Research Survey / Simulation (e.g., StyleMap.NET).

Live Environment MVLPO Execution

In Live Environment MVLPO Execution, a special tool makes dynamic changes to the web site, so the visitors are directed to different executions of landing pages created according to an [experimental design]. The system keeps track of the visitors and their behavior (including their conversion rate, time spent on the page, etc.) and with sufficient data accumulated, estimates the impact of individual components on the target measurement (e.g., conversion rate).

• Pro’s of Live Environment MVLPO Execution:
  • This approach is very reliable because it tests the effect of variations as a real life experience, generally transparent to the visitors.
  • It has evolved to a relatively simple and inexpensive to execute approach (e.g., Google Optimizer).
• Con’s of Live Environment MVLPO Execution (applicable mostly to the tools prior to Google Optimizer):
  • High cost
  • Complexity involved in modifying a production-level website
  • Long time it may take to achieve statistically reliable data caused by variations in the amount of traffic, which generates the data necessary for the decision
  • This approach may not be appropriate for low traffic / high importance websites when the site administrators do not want to lose any potential customers.

Many of these drawbacks are reduced or eliminated with the introduction of the Google Website Optimizer – a free DIY MVLPO tool that made the process more democratic and available to the website administrators directly.

Simulation (survey) based MVLPO

Simulation (survey) based MVLPO is built on advanced market research techniques. In the research phase, the respondents are directed to a survey, which presents them with a set of experimentally designed combinations of the landing page executions. The respondents rate each execution (screen) on a rating question (e.g., purchase intent). At the end of the study, regression model(s) are created (either individual or for the total panel). The outcome relates the presence/absence of the elements in the different landing page executions to the respondents’ ratings and can be used to synthesize new pages as combinations of the top-scored elements optimized for subgroups, segments, with or without interactions.

• Pro’s of the Simulation approach:
  • Much faster and easier to prepare and execute (in many cases) compared to the live environment optimization
  • It works for low traffic websites
  • Usually produces more robust and rich data because of a higher control of the design.
• Con’s of the Simulation approach:
  • Possible bias of a simulated environment as opposed to a live one
  • A necessity to recruit and optionally incentivise the respondents.

MVLPO paradigm is based on an experimental design (e.g., conjoint analysis, Taguchi methods, etc.) which tests structured combination of elements. Some vendors use full factorial approach (e.g., Google Optimizer that tests all possible combinations of elements). This approach requires very large sample sizes (typically, many thousands) to achieve statistical importance. Fractional designs typically used in simulation environments require the testing of small subsets of possible combinations. Some critics of the approach raise the question of possible interactions between the elements of the web pages and the inability of most fractional designs to address the issue.

To resolve these limitations, an advanced simulation method based on the Rule Developing Experimentation paradigm (RDE)^[3] has been introduced. RDE creates individual models for each respondent, discovers any and all synergies and suppressions between the elements, uncovers attitudinal segmentation, and allows for databasing across tests and over time.

How Web Search Engines Work

Search engines are the key to finding specific information on the vast expanse of the World Wide Web. Without sophisticated search engines, it would be virtually impossible to locate anything on the Web without knowing a specific URL. But do you know how search engines work? And do you know what makes some search engines more effective than others?

When people use the term search engine in relation to the Web, they are usually referring to the actual search forms that searches through databases of HTML documents, initially gathered by a robot.

There are basically three types of search engines: Those that are powered by robots (called crawlers; ants or spiders) and those that are powered by human submissions; and those that are a hybrid of the two.

Crawler-based search engines are those that use automated software agents (called crawlers) that visit a Web site, read the information on the actual site, read the site’s meta tags and also follow the links that the site connects to performing indexing on all linked Web sites as well. The crawler returns all that information back to a central depository, where the data is indexed. The crawler will periodically return to the sites to check for any information that has changed. The frequency with which this happens is determined by the administrators of the search engine.

Human-powered search engines rely on humans to submit information that is subsequently indexed and catalogued. Only information that is submitted is put into the index.
Key Terms To Understanding Web Search Engines

spider trap
A condition of dynamic Web sites in which a search engine’s spider becomes trapped in an endless loop of code.

search engine
A program that searches documents for specified keywords and returns a list of the documents where the keywords were found.

meta tag
A special HTML tag that provides information about a Web page.
deep link
A hyperlink either on a Web page or in the results of a search engine query to a page on a Web site other than the site’s home page.

robot
A program that runs automatically without human intervention.

In both cases, when you query a search engine to locate information, you’re actually searching through the index that the search engine has created —you are not actually searching the Web. These indices are giant databases of information that is collected and stored and subsequently searched. This explains why sometimes a search on a commercial search engine, such as Yahoo! or Google, will return results that are, in fact, dead links. Since the search results are based on the index, if the index hasn’t been updated since a Web page became invalid the search engine treats the page as still an active link even though it no longer is. It will remain that way until the index is updated.

So why will the same search on different search engines produce different results? Part of the answer to that question is because not all indices are going to be exactly the same. It depends on what the spiders find or what the humans submitted. But more important, not every search engine uses the same algorithm to search through the indices. The algorithm is what the search engines use to determine the relevance of the information in the index to what the user is searching for.

One of the elements that a search engine algorithm scans for is the frequency and location of keywords on a Web page. Those with higher frequency are typically considered more relevant. But search engine technology is becoming sophisticated in its attempt to discourage what is known as keyword stuffing, or spamdexing.

Another common element that algorithms analyze is the way that pages link to other pages in the Web. By analyzing how pages link to each other, an engine can both determine what a page is about (if the keywords of the linked pages are similar to the keywords on the original page) and whether that page is considered “important” and deserving of a boost in ranking. Just as the technology is becoming increasingly sophisticated to ignore keyword stuffing, it is also becoming more savvy to Web masters who build artificial links into their sites in order to build an artificial ranking