When ComScore originally reported its numbers, there was an outcry that Microsoft and Yahoo had used various gimmicks to give their own search engines an apparently larger slice of the search market. So ComScore made sure that its new numbers for July measured only “explicit” searches. The company no longer counted automated searches or “hovers” or anything but a user actually typing a term into a search window and hitting “search.”

ComScore refers to this new metric as “explicit core search” and defines it as “user engagement with a search service with the intent to retrieve search results.” It matters because it means that ComScore is no longer counting “incidental” searches that Yahoo and Bing caused to be set off when a visitor interacted with certain slide shows or clicked on links that led to search queries. So now they’re comparing apples to apples.

And with this change in methodology, Google’s market share is still down. When you look at the percentages, it isn’t down by much, but with this large a market, even a fraction of a percentage point counts for many thousands of searches. It’s worth keeping in mind, however, that this is still an expanding market, and its growth is accelerating. The US explicit core search volume increased 15.1 percent year over year in July, which is up from 10.8 percent growth in June.

So let’s look at the search engines. Google’s US explicit core search market share was 65.8 percent in July, down from 66.2 percent in June. Despite the fall from the previous month, Google’s search volume is still 16.9 percent higher than this time last year.

Yahoo, on the other hand, saw its US explicit core search market share increase to 17.1 percent in July, up from 16.7 percent in June – and nearly two percentage points higher than this time last year. That may not sound like much, but it’s a major reversal considering that it had actually declined 5.5 percent in June. Given that Google’s share of the search market is down slightly, Yahoo might actually be starting to turn a corner. One can only hope; these numbers are still among the lowest in the venerable search engine’s history.

Microsoft’s search share, interestingly enough, stayed flat at 11 percent in July, showing no growth over its June numbers. However, when we compare those searches to this time last year, Microsoft’s share of the search market grew nearly 44 percent.

For what it’s worth, Ask’s share of the search market also stayed flat, and AOL’s share actually dropped slightly.

So what does this mean? Many observers thought that Google would have a smooth path to 90 percent dominance of the search market. These numbers show that it ain’t necessarily so. It’s hardly a stampede, but it does show that Google might not want to risk resting on its laurels.

For more information, check out the link: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2010/08/16/businessinsider-july-search-share-google-loses-yahoo-gains-bing-hits-wall-2010-8.DTL    

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Terri

The post Google Market Share Hits Turning Point? appeared first on SEO Chat.

Polite Bots

There have been quite a number of articles on the Robots.txt primer. All have explained the basics of the robots exclusion protocols. Recently while working on removing some pages from Google’s archives, I browsed through Google’s Webmaster Central Blog over at blogspot and saw some posts by Dan Crow and Vanessa Fox. These posts explained how the Googlebot worked in detail. 

Apart from explaining the robots exclusion protocol in detail, Google has new tools which allow the removal of cached pages using the Webmaster Dashboard — we will only cover that briefly in this piece since I go into detail about it in a different article. This article will look at the specifics of the robots.txt primer specifically for the Googlebot, quoting Dan Crow, Google product manager. Google’s bot is incredibly polite when it is indexing pages; we will compare its behavior to that of some malicious scraper bots.

Googlebot has several quirks to it, as all bots do. We will look at a few of these quirks before we discuss the basics of search engine bots. For example if you have your web site down temporarily and you want Googlebot to come back you can use an HTTP 503 command to tell the bot (and your users) that your network is temporarily unavailable. Without this command it is probable that Googlebot will index your "this website is down for maintenance" page. You can get more information on the HTTP 503 status code at askapache.com.

Also note that if the Googlebot is crawling your site too frequently (and hence grabbing all your bandwidth), you can contact Google Support; they should work with you to ensure that the bots don’t overload your servers. According to Vanessa Fox, there probably will be a tool that allows you to adjust the crawl rate of the Googlebot on your site. 

Googlebot is Google’s primary agent in crawling and indexing pages on the web; it’s incredibly large, truly living up to the name World Wide Web. As Dan Crow puts it, it’s "really, really big." And not every one on the public web wants particular pages crawled. There are pages containing client information or inflammatory material. Some don’t mind the crawling but don’t want to be cached on Google’s database for whatever reason.

You need to be able to control what gets seen and what does not get seen on your web site. Some pages on your site will contain sensitive information or content which has to be paid for by the visitor before viewing. There also may be some pieces of personal information which you simply don’t want to be archived on the search engines. The most common way to handle this is by using the robots exclusion protocol. The basic form of the robots.txt file for Googlebot is this:

User-Agent: Googlebot

Disallow: /logs/

Apart from this form of the exclusion protocols (which is done by you saving the above command in notepad as robots.txt and uploading the file into your root directory), you can put in the meta tags a command disallowing a certain bot from indexing a certain page

<html>
<head>
<meta name="googlebot" content="noindex">

…

This covers the basics. Now we will delve into some details of the robots exclusion protocols. Note that we are dealing specifically with the Googlebot; for a list of other bots from other search engines you can go to http://www.robotstxt.org/, but this article simply deals with the robots exclusion protocols as explained over at the Google Webmaster Blog (hopefully in a much simpler manner).

Why bother with another robots exclusion protocols article? This one is all about Googlebot from those at the Googleplex, should clarify a few interesting questions such as issues webmasters have over "conflicting values" and answer questions about how exactly search engines handle meta tags (especially Google).

According to Vanessa Fox, if you stuff your meta tags with conflicting values, such as putting index and no index, Google always follow the most restrictive value.

<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX">

<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="INDEX">

In the above, the "noindex" value will be followed (the most restrictive). Also if the above meta tag is written as

<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX" CONTENT="INDEX">

Google still follows the most restrictive value. Vanessa Fox also mentioned that Google "recommends" that you place all content values in one meta tag. This makes it easier for the Googlebot to read the values and reduces "chances of conflict." However, whether you have one meta tag containing your content values or you have two, Google aggregates and reads them alike.

Conflict Resolution

If the meta tag and the robots.txt clash, as they would in situations where you don’t exclude a file in the robots.txt file but then exclude it in a meta tag in the file, Google still follows the most restrictive value. In this case, that would be the meta tag, so note that once a file is blocked in robots.txt it is never crawled by the Googlebot. Some valid meta tag values are:

• NOINDEX - Prevents a file in a website from being indexed.
• NOFOLLOW - Prevents the Googlebot from following any links on the page. (Note that this is different from the link-level NOFOLLOW attribute, which prevents Googlebot from following an individual link).
• NOARCHIVE - Prevents the web page from being cached.
• NOSNIPPET - Prevents any description from appearing below the page listing in the SERPs; also prevents the page from being cached.
• NOODP - Prevents the Open Directory Project description of the page from being used in the description that appears below the page listing in the search results.
• NONE - Equivalent to "NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW."

Note that the "NONE" content value means "NOINDEX", "NOFOLLOW" and that if it is included in your meta tags, your page won’t get crawled at all.

<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NONE">

You pretty much exclude ALL the bots when you put the "none" value in your Meta tags. So much for exclusion protocols; let’s see if there are ways to get the Googlebot to come over.

If you check most of the top bots of Google, Yahoo, MSN and then the alternative search engines, Ask and Snap, you will discover that the ones you will see the least of in your server logs are Ask’s and Snap’s. Ask is notoriously hard to trigger if you are an obscure site in fact. Google Is pretty much "all over the place," and the same is true for MSN and Yahoo. 

ODP listings or using Adsense on your site will bring Googlebot over. Google will almost always index your site; maybe I am a bit relaxed over this because I have never had issues getting my pages indexed. But, if all fails, put a line of Adsense on your page, or create a blog on Blogspot and link to your web page; the robot will follow.

Malicious Bots

Robots are created by humans, so a robot simply does what its human programmer wants it to do. Some humans beings are more immoral than others, and write impolite scraper bots. Scraper bots are programs which crawl the hyper text structure of the web, looking for security flaws in order to access sensitive files.

I have had a fascination with protecting web sites against malicious bots, especially on sites where access to the content is restricted to members. Someday, when I have perfected a good system to keep scraper bots away I will write a piece on it. A good way to protect your files is to put them in a file which requires a user name and password (and which sets cookies on the user’s PC) every time a request is made to it. Another way to protect your super sensitive information is to have a directory with a dynamically changing password, whose password changes with each request (apart from your own admin password).

Make sure you track your users’ behavior and if you notice any such malicious bot, you can list it on http://www.robotstxt.org/ or check to see if you can make a complaint about a malicious program hacking your site (don’t forget to note the host and the IP address!). If you don’t keep an eye on your server logs you may never notice that you have been crawled by a malicious bot.

Note that you don’t need to go to these levels to protect your files against the search engine bots. They are extremely polite and will definitely back off at the first sign of a restriction.

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AkinolaAkintomide

The post Polite Bots appeared first on SEO Chat.

A site map should be one of the most important and best maintained pages on your site; it can help visitors to navigate your site effectively and quickly find the information that they are looking for, and it shows your visitors that you care about their surfing experience. A site map is also required to meet W3C accessibility standards. An easy to use and carefully designed site will help to ensure that visitors return to your site instead of getting frustrated and forgetting it.

A site map will also find favor with search engines as it is basically a list of all of the pages in your site. But in addition to your human-readable site map (well, browser-readable at least), there is also another type of Sitemap that you should consider using. This is known as a Google Sitemap and is a way for you to complement your existing site map for humans with something to make finding and indexing your site easier for bots and spiders.

While your human-digestible site map will generally be written in a language easily interpreted and rendered by browsers, a Google Sitemap will be written in a language designed to be understood by the automated trawlers that traverse the web discovering URLs. The language used is based upon the universal language of data transfer, which is XML. It is called the Sitemap Protocol and was created by Google to help facilitate and aid existing URL discovery methods.

It has also been designed to be interoperable between different search engines, not just Google, so once you have created your Google Sitemap, there may well be other search engines that you can submit it to. It was recently announced that both Yahoo! and MSN will support the protocol. Other than the Sitemap Protocol, you could also use the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting, an RSS feed or a plain text file, but for the duration of this article we’ll be looking only at the open-source Sitemap Protocol.

One thing Google Sitemaps are not intended for is as a method of replacing traditional URL harvesting methods. Your Google Sitemap file is not meant to be used in place of any existing HTML site maps you may already have in place and it is not Google’s new way of indexing websites. The idea is that you submit information to Google (through your Google account) which tells them that you have a Sitemap file and where this file is located. Google will then send a crawler to your site to find the Sitemap file and use it to thoroughly index your whole site (or at least that part of it covered in the file). Google Sitemaps are also not a way of guaranteeing that your site is indexed at all, or a way of improving SERPs listings or Page Rank or anything else.

You may be asking yourself that if you can’t increase your rankings or guarantee a speedy indexing, "what is the point of using a Google Sitemap?" Using Google Sitemaps allows you to provide additional information about your pages, including when they were last updated, so if it has not been updated since it was last indexed, the crawler knows it does not need to be indexed again, saving both time and bandwidth. It is also useful for websites that use content which may otherwise be ignored, such as Flash-based navigation interfaces, the pages they link to being otherwise invisible to search engines. All in all, it is a good way of telling Google about your site and its URLs.

There are several different ways that you could create the sitemap file. You could download and configure the Google Sitemap Generator, use a third-party software application or create the file yourself manually. The Google Sitemap Generator is a Python script which utilizes a specially configured XML file to index your web site, create the Sitemap file and send the results directly to Google. This is a very quick and easy way of doing things, provided you have full access to running scripts from the web server that is hosting the site you’re making the Sitemap file for, which unless you run your very own web server, is unlikely.

There are also applications that can do the same thing for you and much more. Some will generate an HTML sitemap at the same time as the XML Sitemap file to save your having to do this. These third-party applications often require a paid-for license to use, so they may not be the best option for everyone. Finally, you can create your Sitemap file manually, which is the technique we are going to be looking at in this article.

All that you need to do to create a Google Sitemap file can be done with just a simple text editor, so open the one that you use and we’ll look at the code that is required. The Sitemap Protocol is written using XML, and as all valid XML files must begin with the XML declaration, this is what we start with:

  <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

This just states the XML version in use and the type of encoding. Google Sitemap files must use UTF-8. The next element to appear must be the <urlset> element which describes the schema that the file must confirm to:

  <urlset
xmlns=http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap/0.84>

The namespace (xmlns) is a unique resource in the format of a URL that states the structure you are using when you create your Sitemap file. The next element is the <url> element and acts as a container element for other areas of your site. The child elements of the <url> element provide additional information about your pages. The first child element of the <url> element is the <loc> or location element, which defines each page with a unique identifier, namely its URL:

  <loc>http://www.yourdomain.com/</loc>

The data within the <loc> element must start with the protocol in use (HTTP in this case) and must end in a trailing slash if an individual page isn’t specified. You could specify your root directory, sub directories, or individual pages. So you could also use something like this:

  <loc>http://www.yourdomain.com/todaysnews.htm</loc>

Dynamically generated URLs can also be used but any entity characters (& < > ‘ and ") must be escaped correctly. The maximum size of any data in the <url> is 2048 characters which should be more than enough for most dynamic URLs. The following URL would be considered valid:

  <loc>http://www.yourdomain.com/todaysfavourites?
category=fun&amp;type=pics</loc>

As you can see, the & character has been escaped using &amp; other escape codes are &apos; for ‘, &quot; for ", &gt; for > and &lt; for <.

The <loc> element is the only required element in any <url> element, but the optional elements, of which any or all can be used, are as follows:

  <lastmod>2006-12-06</lastmod>
  <changefreq>daily</changefreq>
  <priority>0.9</priority>

The <lastmod> date must be in the W3C Datetime format and can include the time if desired. Valid date and time fragments for the Datetime format are:

  Year – YYYY
  Year and Month – YYYY-MM
  Complete Date – YYYY-MM-DD
  Complete Date, Hours and minutes – YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MMTZD

You can also include seconds and fractions of seconds if necessary. The date and time are separated by a literal T and the TZD stands for Time Zone Difference, which is the hours and minutes plus or minus from GMT. A full date and time could be:

  2006-12-06T18:00+00:00

The <changefreq> element can be any of the following values: always, hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly or never. This value is just a guide to Google spiders. If you set the <changefreq> of every page to hourly, this doesn’t mean that a spider will be sent hourly to crawl your site.

The default priority, if this element is not specified, is 0.5. It can be any value between 0.0 and 1.0. This element is really only necessary on very large websites that visiting crawlers may not have time to index in full. The <priority> element is relative only to URLs in your domain, so marking all of your URLs with a priority of 1.0 means only that each page in your domain is of equal value, not that your URLs are more important than URLs in someone else’s Google Sitemap with a priority of 0.6. The pages with the highest priority in your domain will be indexed before pages with a lower priority.

A complete Sitemap file, from the examples above, would be as follows:

  <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
  <urlset
xmlns=http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap/0.84>
    <url>
      <loc>http://www.yourdomain.com/</loc>
      <lastmod>2006-12-06</lastmod>
      <changefreq>daily</changefreq>
      <priority>0.9</priority>
    </url>
  </urlset>

Once your sitemap is created, you should upload it to the highest level directory to which you have access. It can be compressed using gzip to save on bandwidth and should be less that 10 MB in its uncompressed state. If your site is so big that 10 MB is not enough, you can create multiple sitemaps, but to do this you will also need to create a Sitemap Index file. This file follows a very similar format to the Sitemap files:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<sitemapindex
xmlns=http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap/0.84>
  <sitemap>
    <loc>http://www.yourdomain.com/sitemap1.xml</loc>
  </sitemap>
  <sitemap>
    <loc>http://www.yourdomain.com/sitemap2.xml</loc>
  </sitemap>
</sitemapindex>

It’s very similar as you can see, except the <urlset> is replaced by <sitemap index> and <sitemap> is used instead of <url>. The only optional tag is the <lastmod> tag, which follows the same date and time format as before.

Finally, you need to tell Google and the other supporting search engines that the Sitemap file exists. You can do this easily and quickly for Google using the Webmaster Tools section of the Submit Content section of Google’s Webmaster Central: www.google.com/webmasters/tools/. Once your site appears in the Site column, select the Add a Sitemap link, choose Add General Web Sitemap from the combo box and enter the URL of the Sitemap file. Your sitemap will then appear in the Sitemaps section of your website information and details are provided on its current status, when it was submitted and the URLs that were submitted. If there are any problems with your Sitemap file, they will be reported.

The methods for submitting to MSN and Yahoo! may vary considerably; in fact, a cursory check of both of these sites reveals no immediately apparent way to submit information relating to the location of your sitemap protocol file. Yahoo! does have a page where you can submit a plain text file to help with indexing your site, so perhaps this will be expanded soon to take in a URL leading to your sitemap file.

The Sitemap Protocol was released in July last year but has grown since then. For example, you can also specify Mobile Sitemaps for providing information on a site created for viewing on PDAs or mobile phones, and at the tail end of November last year, Google announced that if your English-language news site appeared in Google News, you could specify additional publication information using the News Sitemaps XML Definition. There’s no telling what else will be available in the future and which other search engines will take up support.

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DanWellman

The post Put Your Site on the Map with Google Sitemaps appeared first on SEO Chat.

What is the Open Directory Project?

The Open Directory Project http://www.dmoz.org, better known as DMOZ, is probably the single most important directory on the Internet. Submissions are accepted free of charge. Sites are considered for inclusion by volunteer editors who review the sites offered for consideration in their very specific categories. The number of different categories is very large, and covers most of the topics found on the Internet as a whole.

Why is DMOZ important?

DMOZ listings are important for several reasons. The listing is given considerable weight in the Google algorithm because DMOZ is a human edited directory. Not every site submitted is included. Inclusion in DMOZ is about the only way to get into the Google Directory. Many smaller directories, and even minor search engines, use DMOZ listings as the basis for their own categorized sites. The link popularity value in the search engines is quite high as a result of a DMOZ listing, both directly from the directory itself, and from the subsequent addition to many small dirctories.

How is DMOZ different from a search engine like Google?

The Open Directory Project is, as its name implies, an Internet directory. As such, it requires submission to the appropriate category for indexing from a volunteer editor. There is no other source of entry to DMOZ except through the human editing process. Google, Yahoo Search, MSN Search, and Ask Jeeves are search engines which add sites for indexing into their database electronically. Submission of a site to a search engine is not required, or even recommended.

What types of websites are included in the directory?

There are almost 600,000 categories and sub-categories included in the Open Directory Project index. As such, there is room for almost any website or blog that includes unique and interesting content for its visitors. Not all sites are included, however, as they might not contain the necessary unique content. Affiliate sites often fail to be included for not having enough original content.

How do I get my site listed in DMOZ?

To get into DMOZ, you must submit your site for consideration. The first step is to go to the DMOZ site, and search through the relevant categories where your site might fit. When you have narrowed your target to the most appropriate category, go to it, and click on “add URL.” Be absolutely certain to read the instructions very carefully. They are not merely a suggestion. They are an absolute requirement. Be sure to submit just your home page to only one category. Multiple page or category submissions will likely be treated as spam, and your site will be rejected.

Are blogs eligible for inclusion?

Because blogs are another form of dynamic website, they are eligible for inclusion in DMOZ. In fact, the directory has created an entire category for blogs alone. In many cases, niche blogs are also found in the main directory categories, along with other traditional websites. DMOZ is now very friendly to blogs.

DMOZ is an entirely volunteer edited directory. Each directory category has editors, as do most directory sub-categories. When a category is lacking an editor, submissions are considered by editors higher up the category scale. The inclusion of any website is based on a thorough review of a site and its content.

I heard some editors are not honest or fair. Is that true?

The overwhelming majority of DMOZ editors are dedicated people, working to provide the best possible Internet directory. While a few editors might be construed as having ulterior motives, they are in the tiniest minority. The main category editors work hard to make certain the site selections are fair and reasonable. As with any human activity, however, some problem individuals will slip through the cracks. Unfair and self serving editors are corrected in their techniques – or are removed entirely.

How do I decide on the proper submission category?

The first step to doing a listing is to check the various directory categories, and find the appropriate one for your site. As mentioned above, there are a lot of categories, and sub-categories, and sub-sub- categories. Be very thorough here, because submitting your site to the wrong category can result in very long waits, and possibly even rejection. Don’t be afraid to spend a little time searching through the various options. You must submit to the correct category for your site. One way to ensure you are in the right one is to search through it. If you don’t see any similar sites to yours, it’s time to check out another category.

How do I write a site description?

A site description should be written as objectively as possible. The best technique for writing a successful description is to write about the site as a visitor would view it. An honest and objective description is most likely to be accepted, and not changed by an editor. It’s also thought that an objective description, free of blatant marketing and keyword stuffing, will help a site to become indexed faster.

How long do I have to wait for inclusion in the directory?

Inclusion time can vary from as little as a few days in some heavily edited categories to as long as a year or more. In general, however, the average length of time for a submission to be approved is about two months.

If I am accepted or rejected, will I hear from the editors?

The editors do not notify website owners as to whether the site was accepted or rejected. The reason for this apparent omission is to discourage spammers from submitting the same sites over and over again.

Since the website submissions are accepted by some editors on a first come first served basis, and by type of site by other editors, you wait. The waiting period can last anywhere from one week to six long agonizing months. Whatever you do, don’t decide to resubmit your site. At best, your submission will be moved to the back of the line, where the waiting period starts all over again. At worst, your site may even be rejected for spamming.

Should I submit to several categories just to be sure of being in one category?

Resist the urge to resubmit your site to more than one category, as you could be rejected for spamming the directory. While the waiting period can seem like an eternity, you simply have to wait it out. Some categories have a huge backlog of submitted sites. Others lack editors to keep up with the volume of new sites. By having carefully selected your category, you are at least certain you don’t have to worry about being in the wrong one.

What are some possible reasons for rejecting my site?

Your site could be rejected for any number of reasons. The most common reason for delays and rejections is not being submitted to the correct category. Another possibility is that you submitted a site that is not eligible for directory inclusion. Badly designed sites, lack of original and unique content, and sites still under construction are other reasons for rejection. Spamming the directory editors with the same site on numerous occasions will almost certainly result in rejection.

How do I contact the editors?

Editors can be accessed directly through their Feedback link. Be sure you made an accurate record of the submission date and category when the site was submitted. They will ask for that information. They want to be sure you submitted to the proper category, and that you have given their volunteers sufficient time to look over your website.

How do I find out the current status of my submission?

The best idea is to ask a polite question on the DMOZ public forum, located at http://www.resource-zone.com. You don’t have to be registered to read the forum, but you must register (free) to post a question. As always, be sure to read and follow the posting guidelines. Once again, you will be asked for the date of submission, category submitted to, and the category editor. While at the DMOZ forum, you can also ask some questions about their requirements and regulations. The editors will try to help you in every way they can. While they can’t specifically give you a date for your inclusion, they can let you know if you are in the proper category.

Can I change my site description or category?

To request an update, you must complete an “Update URL” form. Follow the rules and requirements carefully, as you would with any other submission. If you believe your site was included in the wrong category, you can send an  email to one of the category editors, and explain your disagreement. Politely request a change of categories for your website, and provide good reasons for the change. Paying attention to the original description, and applying to the correct category in the first place, is the best technique. Changes to DMOZ listings happen very slowly.

A regional listing is for businesses and websites marketing to a specific geographical area. A local hardware store, for example, would fall under this category. When you apply for a regional listing, be sure that your site has a clearly marked physical address, displayed prominently on your site. It almost certainly has to be easily seen on the home page of your site, and preferably on the inside pages as well. That doesn’t mean you can get away with your address written in tiny print at the bottom of the page. Display it prominently. If your site does a lot of locally based business, your site should qualify for a regional listing.

Is a DMOZ regional listing less important?

Don’t fall into the trap of thinking a regional is listing is less important. The people living in the area think the region is important. You should consider the area important as well, by providing a lot of content, specifically for local visitor traffic. With enough local and regional content on your site, you can be included in the DMOZ Regional Listings. A second regional listing is certainly worth having for your website.

Can I add a second listing for my site?

It’s very important to note that if you are seeking a second DMOZ listing for your site, it should contain enough important and useful content to be included in a second category. The information provided by your site must almost amount to a second website. A few articles on the subject will not qualify. The content must be substantial and unique, and in keeping with the policies of DMOZ.

I have an affiliate site, so how do I avoid rejection?

You must distinguish your affiliate site from the thousands of other affiliate sites out there. The way to do that is to add content. DMOZ requires original content. A single sales page doesn’t qualify. To add content, you could write reviews of the products you offer. You might want to discuss the problems your products and services address. Writing about industry news related to your products and services will also be helpful to your submission.

How can I make my site more acceptable to DMOZ?

Be sure you have no pages “under construction,” because the editors will reject any sites that aren’t ready for prime time. If you still have pages that are not completed, either remove them until they are ready for the public, or finish adding their content. Whatever you do, get rid of any “under construction” or similar red flag pages that indicate your site is not fully operational.

Does having a professional looking site help?

An important thing to do is to check over your site content for typos. While some keyboarding errors might not doom your site to rejection, having a professional looking site will certainly enhance your chances of success. Good professionally done sites, that feature a lot of original and useful content, are almost always accepted.

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PeterLavin

The post Open Directory Project: DMOZ: Frequently Asked Questions appeared first on SEO Chat.

Author information

PeterLavin

The post DMOZ: Advanced submissions and listings appeared first on SEO Chat.

Some search engines and directories make it virtually impossible to be included except by manual submission. The two best examples are perhaps Google and DMOZ. While no sites actually seem to encourage automated submission, it is certainly actively discouraged at a number of sites. This does not mean that there is something inherently wrong with automated submission. After all it’s just an easy way to fill out a form. While Google does not allow automated submissions, they implicitly admit the legitimacy of doing so by providing an “autofill” button on their plug-in toolbar.

The aversion to automated submissions has varied causes but some obvious reasons can be identified. Automated submissions can lead to server overload and vulnerability to denial of service attacks. Inappropriate submissions, for example submitting a general interest URL to a specialty engine, can happen much more easily when submission is automated. Finally, manually maintained directories are particularly sensitive to inappropriate categorisation and trivial requests for inclusion. For them manual submissions separate the wheat from the chaff.

If we accept that automated submissions are legitimate, the question still remains as to whether it is worthwhile. Even with the recent changes at Yahoo, the dominance of Google tends to overshadow all other search engine. While estimates of Google’s importance vary, a significant number of searches do originate with other engines. Certainly there can be no denying the usefulness of specialized search engines.

With these issues aside, let’s get to the heart of the matter. Automated submissions can be done in a couple of ways. You can purchase a software package or find a website that performs this function. We are primarily concerned with the former since this has more appeal for the web developer because it provides an inexpensive way of making multiple submissions for different sites. These packages may be dedicated engine-submission tools or part of an integrated suite of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) tools. What I propose to do here is develop some general guidelines to help you determine what to look for if you are in the market for this kind of software.

User Friendly Interface

While it is a truism to say that a user-friendly interface is important, it is especially critical for automated submission software because this is a task that the user can choose to do manually. Most people won’t use an automated tool if significant savings in time are not immediately evident and if using software is more confusing than doing it manually.

On the other hand, if the software allows you to set up your site and begin submissions very quickly, then it probably will not do a good job for you. Different engines/directories have different requirements from the most basic that want only an URL, to those that want a very specialised category selection. In particular, submissions for directories require careful choices regarding categories and subcategories. When setting up a site for automated submission be prepared for a fair bit of data entry. Automation can relieve some of the tedium involved, but proper set-up will still require patience.

Organization

In order to be really useful, engines and directories need to be sorted in a variety of ways. First off, engines should be categorized according to their status. Certainly major and minor engines should be distinguished.

While there are various ways of categorizing information, it is important that the user have enough information to make a sensible judgment about whether or not to submit to a specific engine. For instance, in some cases you will find the “Femina” Engine listed as a general search engine. By their own definition Femina consider themselves a specialized site. Submitting a general site to this engine is probably a waste of time for all concerned.

Submissions should probably also be sorted by both country and language. Some packages seem fairly sloppy in this regard. It is not very helpful when a site such as “Canadopedia” is  designated as a U.S. site especially when it is self-described as “made in Canada by Canadians for all Canadians”.

Good organization will also help you keep track of your submissions and thus avoid multiple submissions to the same site. Some sites will assume you are spamming them if you submit more than once, and you could end up achieving the exact opposite of what you intend.

In any case, I think we can conclude that the better organized and the more information that a software tool supplies the more useful it is to the web developer.

Beware of claims such as, “We’ll submit your website to 1000+ major search engines”. At best this statement is misleading. There aren’t a thousand major search engines out there.

You should check out some of the engines listed for automated submission especially if the software does not provide a link directly to an engine’s site. It was with this in mind that I tried to locate a search engine called “Pete’s Internet Links”. A search on Google turns up over ten pages of sites with references to this “engine” but the engine itself is nowhere to be found. Perhaps it once existed but there’s no reason for it to appear in current versions of autosubmission software other than to bloat numbers and mislead buyers. Where extravagant claims are made about the number of engines submitted to, further investigation will doubtless turn up other “vapour engines”.

For this reason an active link to the home page of an engine is a must-have feature of any submission software. Clicking the link should open the search engine page in your default browser or within the software itself. This will help verify the nature and existence of the site.

Another way of assessing the engines you are submitting to is by checking their popularity. To form some idea of the ranking of different search engines go to http://www.freewebsubmission.com. You’ll find a listing of search engines and directories ranked by their popularity on Alexa’s engine.

Alternately, you can go to the Alexa site itself and check out their ranking of different sites. You will have to sort out the information for yourself though. For instance, directories and engines are not listed together.

And, yes, cozycabin.com does exist, but have a look at the site before you decide to make a submission.

In view of what has been said above, it is important to ask “What kind of confirmation do you get when you make a submission to a site?” Does the software show you the page returned by the engine when a successful submission has been made? If not you might quite rightly be suspicious that your page has not been properly submitted or that you’ve made a submission to a “vapour engine”.

For an individual who is doing a one-time submission of his site to search engines, updates are not a major issue. For the web developer who makes submissions on a regular basis for different clients, it is quite a different matter. We all know how frequently websites change, so if you are purchasing software it is important to know how frequently the database is updated and how long the updates are supplied for free.

The situation is analogous to using anti-virus software. It doesn’t matter how good the anti-virus software is if the virus database is outdated. Changes to the database of engines may become necessary for a variety of reasons but primarily because of changes to submission requirements. Most packages allow you to download updates as they become available, again in much the same way as you would update a virus definition file. The better software packages will inform you of the changes made.

Most software packages will allow you to print a report of submissions made. Forwarding this information to your clients is good customer relations but only if the information is reliable and up-to-date.

A Word of Caution

As a result of automated submissions you will doubtless receive some unwanted email. I won’t dwell on the irony of this situation other than to say “He who lives by the sword…”

As part of the submission process, many sites require a valid email address. In some cases, a site will not be added if there is no response to a confirming email. An awkward situation can develop if you are adding a listing on behalf of a client and this client starts receiving spam. One solution is to set up a temporary email address that is used for the short term or an address that redirects emails to one of your own accounts. In this way legitimate confirmations can be handled and spam need not reach your client.

For individuals trying to promote their own websites, manual submission might well be the best option. Specialty engines can be identified and categorization can be carefully tailored so that one’s site appears exactly where it ought to in a directory. For exactly the same reasons, submission for any specialty website might best be handled by manual submission.

On the other hand, for the web professional regularly making submissions on behalf of clients, an automated tool is an invaluable assistant. Submissions can be made quickly and be automatically documented. However, careful choice of software is very important.

Look for submission software that documents engines, provides information about them and links to them. Look for software that is regularly updated and that removes engines as well as adds them. Any submission should show the confirmation page generated by a successful submission. Do not look at total number of engines as a sign of quality software. In fact, beware extravagant claims about number of engines – these probably include “vapour engines”.

Submission software should carefully document what submissions have been made and to what sites. In this way you can avoid making multiple submissions. This is something that some sites will interpret as spamming and they will penalise you for it. You need to protect your own and your clients’ interests and not achieve the opposite to your desired effect.

Many companies provide free trial or “lite” versions of submission software often as part of an integrated suite of tools. To locate these packages check the DMOZ listing under the category, “Computers: Software: Internet: Website Promotion”. After all, any company in the Search Engine business should be listed here!

Test drive these packages carefully and you’ll be able to make the right purchasing decision.

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PeterLavin

The post Search Engine and Directory Submission: Automated, Manual, or Not at All? appeared first on SEO Chat.

Internet weblogs, better known as blogs, are fast becoming a very important category of Internet websites. As more and more companies add a blog component to their existing website, or as a cross linked stand alone site, blogs become part of the web mainstream.

As part of that Internet mainstream, blogs are now finding entry into most of the popular Internet directories. The Open Directory Project, better known as DMOZ, has a special category for weblogs. Topic specific blogs are found under traditional website categories as well. The Yahoo! Directory has also proven to be very receptive to adding blogs to its listings. Because blogs are mainly non-profit sites, bloggers are able to use Yahoo’s free submission option.

Other smaller Internet directories, including JoeAnt, Skaffe, Zeal/Looksmart, GoGuides, and Gimpsy also have blogs in their regular category listings. Blogs are readily accepted into the major Internet directories alongside traditional websites.

The blog advantage doesn’t stop there. Blogs have an entire array of blog-only free Internet directories available for inclusion. In fact, as incoming links, the various blog directories alone can propel a blog very high in the search engine results pages (SERPs). As an added bonus, the many free all-blog directories provide a strong injection of Google PageRank, into every blog in the listings.

The various blog directories have specific requirements for inclusion. As with all directory submissions, it is very important to follow the submission guidelines very carefully. Blogs are admitted to the most important major Internet directories, including DMOZ and the Yahoo! Directory. As alternative websites, blogs have special requirements for inclusion in the major directories.

Submitting your business blog to the various mainstream and blog specific Internet directories will pay dividends for your business. You want to be sure your blog is included in the directory listings.

Blog Specific Internet Directories

One of the benefits that blogs enjoy is the number of free, strong PageRank directories that are exclusively for blog directories. If it’s not a blog, it isn’t included in the blog directory listings.

By submitting your blog to the many blog directories, it is not unusual to be listed in them within a week or less. Inclusion in the directories, provides almost immediate indexing by Google, and by the other major search engines.

The solid PageRanks offered by the blog directories help to seed the blog with a PageRank of 4 or 5, almost from the beginning of the blog. Note that the internal category pages of most blog directories carry a PR4, PR5, or even a PR6. The added PageRank boost and the one-way incoming link provided (usually one way) give the blog a leg up in the search engine results pages (SERPs) for the blog’s most important keywords. Along with the search engine benefits, blog directories provide a surprisingly steady flow of new visitor traffic.

Let’s take a closer look at the many free blog-specific directories and their value for your blog.

Blog Search Engine http://www.blogsearchengine.com

Blogwise http://www.blogwise.com

Eatonweb portal http://www.portal.eatonweb.com

Blog Universe http://www.bloguniverse.com

Popdex http://www.popdex.com

Blogarama http://www.blogarama.com

Blogdex http://www.blogdex.com

Blo.gs http://www.blo.gs/

Globe of Blogs http://www.globeofblogs.com

Blizg http://www.blizg.com

Online Marketing Links http://www.onlinemarketinglinks.com

There are many more blog-only directories as well. You get the picture. There is no shortage of great directories to list your new business blog.

There are three important requirements for most blog directories.

One is having a good short description of your blog content. It shouldn’t exceed 150 characters. Any longer and it may get cut – or even ignored. Description input boxes for most blog directory submissions are small. Some are capped at 150 characters. In any case, a short concise description is better than a long one.

Blog directories rarely change your choice of description. That lets you utilize a few more keywords than the mainstream directories would allow. Don’t go overboard with the keywords or your blog might be rejected as spam.

A second requirement is a good list of keywords that you expect people to enter into the search box. A list of about ten to twelve search terms is ideal. Any more and you are either redundant, or keyword spamming.

Blog directories are usually hand edited. Most blog directory editors take great pride in the quality of the blogs included in their various categories. Spamming the directories will only get your blog excluded, as with any other reputable directory. Most do not accept automated submissions either. Hand submission is required.

A third, and often surprising requirement of a few blog directories, is meta tags. Most search engines and directories now ignore meta tags to some degree, or even entirely. Some blog directories, however, still place importance on them. Be sure to have some keywords included in your blog meta tags, as they will be needed for your blog submissions.

All directories require your blog title, URL, and an active email address.

Some directories will request additional indexing information, including your name and geographical location. Often the added information will place your blog in additional sub-categories, providing an extra listing for your blog.

They may also require a link back to the directory itself. Give them the link. It often results in some preferential category listing, promotion, or placement. That superior placement means more traffic for your blog. Note that not all blog directories require a reciprocal link.

Make certain that you apply to be included in the proper blog category. Most directories will move your blog, to their choice of category, if they don’t believe your selection is appropriate. The last thing you want, for your business blog, is to be grouped in a category with some teenagers’ personal diaries. Be sure to check over the categories very carefully, and you will have no problems.

You can find many other blogs to share reciprocal links right there in your blog category. They share your interest, and are not likely competitors either. Remember that bloggers are very generous linkers compared to many traditional webmasters.

Inclusion in a blog directory is surprisingly fast as well. It is not uncommon to be listed in your category within a few days to a week. Virtually every blog directory that considers your blog worthy of inclusion in its pages will have your blog indexed in less than a month. That is much quicker than some of the mainstream directories, most notably DMOZ.

Blogs are eligible for inclusion in most of the major mainstream Internet directories, including The Open Directory Project (DMOZ) http://www.dmoz.org and the Yahoo! Directory http://dir.yahoo.com/.

DMOZ has become very friendly to blogs and has opened up an entirely new blog category http://www.dmoz.org/Computers/Internet/On_the_Web/Weblogs/

Within that main blogging category are numerous sub-categories, covering most of the major classes of blogs. There are also a number of blogs, covering specific topic areas, included in the main DMOZ listings.

Blogs are well received by the volunteer editors of DMOZ because of the constantly updated content contained within the weblog. DMOZ tends to favor websites that are content driven, and that is one of the hallmarks of blogs.

By acknowledging the growing influence of blogs, in all areas of the Internet, the DMOZ directory is including an expanding classification of websites. The number of blogs included in the DMOZ listings will only continue to grow over time as more and more blogs are included in the index.

As with any website submission to the DMOZ directory, it is essential that you follow the guidelines for submission very carefully. They are not merely a suggestion. They are an absolute requirement.

As with DMOZ, the Yahoo! Directory includes a major section exclusively for blogs: http://dir.yahoo.com/Computers_and_Internet/Internet/World_Wide_Web/Weblogs

Within the overall blogging section of the directory are numerous sub-categories for the many blog subject areas.

Because blogs tend to be informational, and not overtly commercial, most blogs are admitted to the Yahoo! Directory under the free inclusion system. Submission of blogs to the directory, through the Suggest A Site link, often leads to inclusion in just a matter of a few weeks. A well-written objective blog description is likely to be used almost unchanged as well.

The many other mainstream Internet directories are also very blog friendly. JoeAnt, Skaffe, Zeal/Looksmart, GoGuides, and Gimpsy all welcome blogs to their listings. Many of these secondary directories place blogs directly into the main topic categories and not into a separate blog section.

As with all directory submissions, be certain to follow the recommended guidelines very carefully. A properly completed submission is far more likely to be accepted than one filled with errors, keyword stuffing, and hype.

Submitting your business-related blog for inclusion in the various exclusively blog and mainstream Internet directories is a good idea.

The addition of Google PageRank from the various blog directories provides a solid jump start to a blog’s early PageRank. After a few months in the search engine indexes, your blog will find a boost in the SERPs as a result of the added incoming links.

Blog directories provide a steady stream of visitors to your blog, creating a potential customer and client base for the future.

As with all Internet directories, make certain that you follow all of the recommended submission guidelines. While most blog directories will include your blog, it is still important for you to make certain you submit to the proper category.

Blogs are also eligible for inclusion in the mainstream Internet directories, including DMOZ and Yahoo! Directory. Blogs are welcomed in the secondary Internet directories as well.

If you currently maintain a business blog, or are considering one for the future, be certain to submit it to the various Internet directories. The benefits will help your blog tremendously.

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seo_admin

The post Blogs and Internet Directories: The Same and Different appeared first on SEO Chat.

Directories: Then and Now

It now seems to be lost in the mist of time, but way back in 1995 (and for several good years since) the first site most users turned to when trying to find anything on the net was a directory — Yahoo! Supported by such popularity, Yahoo grew from strength to strength and became the ‘definitive’ guide to the web. A site that wasn’t listed there was as good as non-existent. The phenomenal success of Yahoo provided a blue print for many sites. Hundreds, if not thousands, of directory sites were created, copying the basic formula: Human editors that scout the Internet, find sites and categorize them.

The situation now cannot be more different. Search Engines, and not Directories, rule the web. Although some of the better known are still thriving (like dmoz.org), many have closed (like goto.com). The rest are valiantly trying to find their place in the virtual world and fight for visitors and recognition. The decline of Directories led some commentators to maintain that they are, at best, complimentary to Search Engines. Other would go as far as claiming that they are just relics of the past, better left alone and ignored.

On that background, it is with some amazement that one hears every so often of yet another directory being launched. It seems that the enormity of the challenge to categorize millions upon millions of sites has an irresistible attraction for some people… From the site owner and webmaster perspective, we need to be absolutely clear about the benefits we can derive from being listed in a Directory.

There are two major reasons for submitting to Directories:

• Targeted traffic
• Link popularity

Clearly, the same benefits can be derived from a link from just about any site — not just from a directory. However, there are some significant differences between the two link sources:

• Directories have only one ‘purpose in life’: to provide links to other sites.
  
  
• Directories are an established source of ‘authority’ in regard to various subject matters. Being listed in them serves as testimony to the site’s ‘worth’.
  
  
• It is much easier and simpler to be listed in directories than in subject specific sites (not forgetting the fact that there may be a conflict of interest issue!).

Perhaps we should first review the concept of ‘Directory’, understand the exact difference from Search Engine and get to know the various types of directories – and what advantages each one has.

What is a Directory?

Many users don’t know the difference between a Directory and a Search Engine, and (quite frankly) they actually don’t care. This is not surprising, as most sites that started as a Directory, incorporate Search Engine results (like Yahoo) and most Search Engines also use data from directories (like Google). To the uninitiated, it all looks the same. However, for web masters and site owners understanding the distinction between the two is vital.

In my opinion, the only difference nowadays is what I call ‘the building block’: Search Engines use a web page as their building block, while directories use the web site. To illustrate, if the web was a library, then Directories would be a catalog of books, while the Search Engines would be the index of the books.

Much like catalogs, there are many ways to organize or categorize web sites. Although many sites have adopted the Yahoo method, others have pioneered different approaches.

Human Edited (categories)

This is the ‘traditional’ directory. It is the most prestigious, as each listed site is ‘hand picked’ and reviewed by a human editor. The assumption is that the editor is an ‘expert’ in his/her field and will select for inclusion only appropriate sites. Such directories usually have very clear and stringent acceptance rules, which ensure the quality of the search results. Invariably, the Directory is comprised of categories to which sites are ‘assigned’. This type of Directory is relatively hard to maintain, as it is labor intensive and hence expensive. That also explains why many such directories are using volunteers to do the work. Notable examples of Human Edited Directories are Yahoo, Dmoz, Joeant and Gimpsy, but there are many more. There is no doubt that this is the most important type to submit your site to. Only the scrutiny of an independent human reviewer can ensure the quality and suitability of a web site to a given category.

User categorized

The Directory is structured in a very similar way as the Edited Directory, but it is the user’s decision as to the best category to place the site in. While this is quite attractive for the Directory Owner (the users do the ‘hard work’) as well as the Site Owner (freedom to place the site in any category), the search results may be far from satisfactory. One such Directory is Websquash. You may get benefits from registering in such a directory, but make sure you consider all the relevant aspects, as outlined in the next chapters.

User classified

Sites are classified by keywords, entered by the Site Owner in the Meta Tags of the home page. The attraction here is that the site is classified (potentially) by many keywords and the process is fully automatic (low maintenance). While easy to register, the sorting algorithm has very little to go by, hence the position of the site in the search results doesn’t mean much. Moreover, should you choose popular keywords you have little chance of being found due to the number of sites competing with you. On the other hand, selecting a rare combination of keywords suffers from the obvious problem of the minuscule number of searchers using that combination. One of the better known examples is ExactSeek, which enjoys significant popularity. It’s attraction may be related to the use of the Alexa ranking, which measures the site’s popularity, as a primary sorting criterion of the search results.

Independently classified

Instead of letting the Site Owner decide which keywords to use for finding his site, this type of directory allows every user to determine the relevancy of keywords. This latest addition to the Directory family harnesses the public vote to examine and determine relevancy of keywords to sites. Each user may choose to rate a (random) site and voice his/her opinion of the suitability of specific keywords to that site. The best example for such a site is Netnose. Due to the democratic process, it is highly likely that relevancy will be good. However, for such a site to achieve prominence requires a larger number of users willing to donate their time and effort to that rating activity. So far, that doesn’t seem to have happened.

Pay Per Click (PPC)

While technically PPC Directories are of the User Classified type, their business model implies some significant characteristics that Site Owners should be aware of:

• A link from a PPC is never a direct or simple link. Hence, being listed in a PPC Directory will never help to increase Link Popularity with Search Engines.
  
  
• A link from a PPC Directory remains in place only as long as the user’s account is cash positive.
  
  
• PPC Directories try to maximize their revenues by encouraging Site Owners to bid for as many keywords as they can, even those that are only remotely related to their site’s business.

In short, you are welcome to use PPC Directories and buy traffic to your site via that route, but for the purpose of a link campaign, PPC Directories cannot be relied on at all!

What is ‘targeted traffic’?

As mentioned in the preface, Directories are no longer a primary source of traffic. They are, however, an excellent source of targeted traffic.

Even with the advancement of Search Engine technology, the keyword based search method, common to all search engines, is still far from perfect. That is – many search results do not actually match the user’s requirements. Thus, although Search Engines are bound to be higher in the web site logs when counting ‘referrals’, many of those visitors will NOT become ‘customers’, as they had a different requirement when they conducted the search. In the SEO terminology, the ratio between customers and visitors is known as the ‘conversion rate’. Ideally, a site would aspire to have a conversion rate of 1.0 (every visitor becomes a customer), but this is obviously never achieved.

Thus, it is not enough to simply ‘count’ the number of visitors. One must also look at the ‘conversion rate’. For example, if one source of traffic sends 1000 visitors/day with a conversion rate of 1% and another sends only 100 visitors/day with a conversion rate of 20% – the latter provides TWICE as many ‘customers’ as the former. We can say that the second source provides better ‘targeted traffic’.

As classification is the critical activity and purpose of every Directory, a lot of effort and thought is directed to the creation, maintenance and updates of the category ‘tree’. The purpose, obviously, is to provide an intuitive and precise category structure. Are you in any doubt as to the nature of sites found in this DMOZ category?

Top: Games: Role playing: World Building: Created Worlds: Science Fiction

Or the following Gimpsy category?

I want to > Play > games > role playing > Sci-Fi

It is therefore safe to assume that users who trail through either Directory structure will have a very clear idea of what to expect from sites found there. Such matching of content with user expectation guarantees that the conversion rate of visitors from Directories will be significantly better than standard Search Engines.

In summary: Even though Directories provide a far lower level of traffic compared to Search Engines, the quality of that traffic is superior. If ‘conversion rate’ is a meaningful concept for your site, you would be wise to consider Directories as traffic source.

Don’t take their word for it

Traditionally, Directories do not publish traffic generated by them. What little data is published suffers from two main problems:

• It is NOT independently verified
• It relates only to traffic the directory has received – not traffic it has generated

While the first point is self-explanatory, the second needs further clarification. To illustrate, one often hears Directories declaring that they has so and so many thousands or millions of searches. Even if it is true, which we cannot verify, what does it mean in terms of clicks? If the search results are particularly bad, only a small fraction of the searches will result in a click to a listed site.

If not PPC based, there is little incentive for the Directory to develop the elaborate and time consuming programs and database structures that will allow it to correctly record all outgoing traffic. Thus, even if they were willing to publish such data – they may simply not have it available! In short, the Directories themselves cannot be relied on for relevant and independently verified information.

Alexa ranking

Site owners and webmasters have therefore no alternative but to resort to second hand inference. The widely cited Alexa index is the most notable attempt to measure ‘traffic level’. Alexa ‘knows’ about user’s activity only if the user has downloaded and installed the Alexa toolbar. The ‘self selecting’ nature of the user population sample, which uses the toolbar, led many people to argue that the results are biased. Although Alexa registered many millions of downloads of its toolbar, there is no way of knowing how many of them are being used. It is also fairly easy to show that some of the sites that rank very high cannot possibly be truly that popular. (See list of top 100 sites here.)

It is worth noting that Alexa provides historical data too, of up to 2 years back. You may wish to consult that information, as it can be a real eye opener. For example, you may discover that a low ranking site is simply very new — and the last month shows a remarkable increase in traffic. On the other hand, you may also find sites that while still ranking high have lost market share in the last few months, and may be on the decline slope. As an illustration, see the DMOZ graph.

It is common knowledge that it takes very little effort to pull a site into the 100,000 and better ranking range. It is also acknowledged that it is practically impossible to artificially boost a site’s ranking below the 1000 mark. To make it easy, we’ll divide the Alexa rank to ‘bands’. Please remember that a ‘high rank’ is represented by lower numbers, and vice versa!

• 1 – 1000: Heavy weight, highly visible and influential, with excellent traffic generating potential.
  
  
• 1,001 – 10,000: Solid presence and good traffic generating potential.
  
  
• 10,001 – 100,000: Site has some presence, but is relatively a minor player.
  
  
• 100,001 and lower: Site is virtually an unknown. Unlikely to generate any traffic at all.

Please note – those bands are artificial. It is imperative not to be ‘mesmerized’ by the Alexa ranking and to attach too much significance to what may be, in reality, just a reflection of ‘sampling error’. To overcome this ‘myopic’ view of the Alexa ranking, you are highly advised to use 25% as the margins of error. In other words, a site with an Alexa rank of 10,000 is indistinguishable from sites ranking from 7,500 to 12,500 and a site which ranks 5,000 is effectively equivalent to a site anywhere in the 3,750 to 6,250 rank range.

Secondary Reference

There is another way to gage potential for traffic, which we will call here ‘secondary reference’. A ‘secondary reference’ is when a user looks up a term in a Search Engine, say Google, and finds an entry of a Directory page indexed under that term. Should the user click on that entry and visit the Directory, he/she would be faced with several sites listed there, and if appropriate, the user may well click on the Directory listed site and visit it. In other words, the user did not go to the Directory in the first place, but was ‘directed’ to it from a search engine.

There is no simple way to determine the likelihood of ‘secondary reference’ traffic from a Directory. But the following factors are bound to play a role:

1. To be found in a Search Engine, the pages of the Directory must first be indexed by it. This is sometimes referred to as ‘Search Engine Saturation’. The more pages indexed – the greater the likelihood of being found.
   
   
2. The higher the PR of the home page of the Directory, the bigger the chance of pages from it ranking highly in search results (at least in Google).
   
   
3. The larger the number of back links the Directory has, the higher the likelihood of users arriving at the Directory for searching purposes from other sites.

In contrast with the simplicity offered by the Alexa ranking, ‘secondary reference’ cannot be easily quantified, and must therefore remain mostly intuitive and indicative.

Site’s rank

The final element you should consider relates to the site’s position (or rank) in its category. Most people are aware that the position of a site in the Search Engine results pages is critical. That is — if your site is not found in the first 2-3 pages (say 30 sites), you will not get any traffic from that search phrase. Few people are aware that the same logic also applies to Directories. For example, Gimpsy claims that nearly 70% of all the click-throughs were generated by the first 10 sites in each category (see their FAQ). Indeed, there is no reason to believe that users will visit page after page of the same category, unless they are looking for something really unique.

Thus, you are more likely to get traffic from a Directory if your site is among the first in its category. If a Directory gives you no control over your position, you are at the mercy of their sorting method. Whenever you are given some freedom (in return for payment, reciprocal promotion or other arrangement), it may be well worth your time to investigate, and if appropriate, take further action.

The magic of Link Popularity

While traditional Directories are edited by humans, Search Engines are pure computational sites. The billions of pages now held in the Search Engines database render human intervention impractical. From the gathering of web pages using ‘robots’ or ‘crawlers’, through their indexing of that information and finally the ranking of those pages in the search results — is all done by software and computation.

The first two stages (assembling and indexing) are relatively simple, but the third (ranking) presents a much higher challenge. How would the Search Engine determine which one of the many million pages that contain a particular word or phrase should be shown first? Get it right – and people will be using it time and again. Get it wrong – you will be dropped like a hot potato.

The one engine that seemed to consistently ‘get it right’ was Google. Its secret was the addition of one ingredient that was not used by any other Search Engine before — links. According to Google, a link is considered a ‘vote of confidence’ from one page to another. The more links – the more votes. Moreover, links from ‘important’ pages are valued higher than votes from ‘non important’ pages. What’s an ‘important’ page? Well, a page that has a lot of other pages voting for it, in other words — is heavily linked to. Google’s founders coined the term PageRank to describe the numerical value of the page’s Link Popularity. As soon as Google introduced Link Popularity in its ranking algorithm, users found the results to be amazingly accurate. Other Search Engines were quick to follow suit. It would be safe to assume that Link Popularity now plays a significant role in the ranking algorithm of all the major Search Engines.

The challenge for site owners and web masters is to increase Link Popularity, which in turn increases the likelihood of pages from their sites appearing high in the search results. One of the best ways to start a link campaign is to get links from Directories. If you put the right amount of effort (and money) into it, you can see your Link Popularity increase significantly in a short space of time. The question is: How to judge the relative merits of Directories? Which ones are worth paying for? What elements do you need to look for to help you make an educated decision?

Link Types

The first and most important consideration is the link type. There are two types of links: Simple Link and a Redirected Link. You cannot discover the difference by clicking on them — the results are absolutely identical, but from the perspective of a link campaign – the difference is fundamental. As far as Link Popularity is concerned, the Redirected Link is absolutely worthless. Here is why:

A Simple Link is a link that contains the target URL of the site and directly points to it, as in this link: http://www.target-site.com. On the other hand, a Redirected Link points to a URL inside the current site, usually to a script file, and the address of the target site is passed to the script as a parameter, like this: http://www.this-site.com/jump.php?www.target-site.com. You can check the type of links used by a Directory by observing the ‘Status bar’ while hovering your mouse over the links.

When a Search Engine visits a Directory that uses Redirected Links, it does not get from it the ‘vote of confidence’ for the linked sites — as they do not show up as links at all! If anything, such links only ‘strengthen’ the internal script page, as there may be thousands of links pointing to it. Your site, if listed in such a Directory, will not see any of it.

Page visibility

This is another obvious and logical consideration. To gain Link Popularity, the Search Engine must ‘know’ that you are listed in the Directory. In other words, the Search Engine must capture the pages of the Directory and index them. Only then can it add the link from the Directory to your site – to your link popularity. This measurement is also known sometimes as ‘Search Engine Saturation’. You can check the Search Engine Saturation of any site by using the appropriate search command in the Search Engines themselves, or you can take advantage of one of the freely provided tools such as Market Leap.

When examining the results, do not just look for the highest total figure. As mentioned above, Link Popularity is now used by most (if not all) Search Engines. Find out if the Directory has good ‘presence’ in all the Search Engines. You will soon discover that some Search Engines are notoriously difficult to get indexed by, while others are relatively easy. A good ‘spread’ of Page Visibility among several Search Engines increases the chances of your site being picked up and indexed by them too. Thus, not only will you gain in Link Popularity, but also your site will be present in their index!

Not all links are created equal – some are more important than other. If you have the Google toolbar installed, it will give you a rough estimate on the page’s ‘importance’, or PageRank (PR), on a scale of 0 to 10. A Directory with a high PR is more important than a Directory with a low PR. A Directory with many sites linking to it (back links) is more important than a Directory with just a few. Here, too, you can query the Search Engines themselves to find out or you can use the Market Leap tools) to get all the information easily and in a nicely presented format.

The devil, as always, is in the details, so it pays to pay attention to them. Invariably, the Home Page of the directory will have the highest PR, but very few (if any) sites will be listed there. You should try to examine the PR of the specific Category in which your site will be listed to get an idea of the ‘strength’ of vote you are likely to receive from it. For example, although DMOZ has an exceptionally high PR of 9 on its home page, the deep category of Top: Business: Consumer Goods and Services: Sporting Goods: Fitness Equipment: Pilates Method is just PR 4. There is nothing wrong with a PR of 4, quite to the contrary, but it is not exceptional.

Last but not least, be wary of Directories that show a ‘grey bar’ in Google’s toolbar. This could mean that the site is very new, and Google has simply not visited it yet, but it could also mean that the site was banned from Google, and a link from it may be more harmful than helpful. As in real life, you may be judged by the company you keep – and not just by who you are.

And in return…

While some Directories provide a totally free, no-strings-attached, submission option, many Directories expect or require something in return. In most cases – it’s simply money, ranging from a few dollars to several hundred. Few require an annual subscription to keep your site listed, but most are satisfied with a one-off payment. After all, your site will not be reviewed annually…

In addition to (or instead of) payment, some Directories insist on getting a link from you before they agree to list your site. Others may require you to agree to get periodic emails that include promotion material for various products. Still others suggest that your site will only be listed if you join them and become an editor. There are many variations and some Directories offer several options to Site Owners.

How can you make a good decision when faced with so many options and considerations? The answer lies, perhaps, in limiting your options and dealing with just a few directories. First, you must establish your goals for this link campaign. Is it traffic, Link popularity or both? Then, compare the sites that meet your requirements and rank them according to how closely they match. You may wish to consult freely available comparison tables, such as the one provided by Strongest Links. Finally, introduce the payment or condition imposed by the Directory. If you did it properly, the answer will simply unfold naturally. You are likely to discover that some Directories provide excellent value for money, others may be good value and some may be poor or very poor. The final arbiter on this question is you.

Few points worth remembering:

• Every statistical measurement merely reflects the current status of a site. Some Directories may grow and become world leaders and some may disappear altogether.
  
  
• Editors are humans too. You are much more likely to get a favorable response from them if you conduct yourself with dignity and integrity, and show consideration and courtesy to the Editors you contact.
  
  
• Almost all Directories provide guidelines and instructions for site submission. Study them carefully – this is time well spent as it may save you future aggravation and mismatch expectations.
  
  
• A very comprehensive and accurate source of information about Directories can be found here. Most of the major Directories are mentioned there, and all the important measurements that were discussed in this article

Best of luck in your Directory Submission campaign!

MC is the CEO of Gimpsy (http://www.gimpsy.com), a unique directory that classifies interactive sites according to the online activity provided by them. Submitting a site to Gimpsy entitles the user to a special extended free trial of the Strongest Links (http://www.strongestlinks.com) facilities.

If you wish to include this article on your website or e-zine, it must be used in its entirety, including the credit text and this copyright notice.

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Google considers the Open Directory Project to be so important, that inclusion in their influential Google Directory depends on it. Inclusion in DMOZ is almost a requirement for high rankings in the Google search results as well.

What is So Special About the Open Directory Project (DMOZ), Anyway?

DMOZ is an entirely volunteer edited directory, where every site is examined by an editor for suitability. To get a listing in DMOZ, is to have several legs up, in the race to the top of the search results. While there are a number of other important directories that are volunteer run, including JoeAnt, Gimpsy, GoGuides, and Zeal, Google places special emphasis on DMOZ.

You simply must get your site included in the Open Directory Project.
To begin your inclusion quest, go to the DMOZ web site, found at http://www.dmoz.org.

Finding the Right DMOZ Directory Category

The first step to a listing, is to check the various directory categories, and find the appropriate one for your site. As you can see, there are a lot of categories, and sub-categories, and sub-sub- categories. Be very thorough here, as submitting your site to the wrong category can result in very long waits, and possibly even rejection.

Don’t be afraid to spend a little time searching through the various options. I can’t stress this enough. You have to submit to the correct category for your site. One way to ensure you are in the right one, is to search through it. Look at the other sites listed there. If you don’t see any similar sites to yours, it’s time to check out another category. If you see some of your main competitors in that section, you will know you have found the right one. The time spent searching for the proper submission category will pay off for you. You are already well on your way.

Making Your DMOZ Directory Submission

When you have narrowed your target to the most appropriate category, go to it, and click on “add URL”. Be absolutely certain to read the instructions very carefully. They are not merely a suggestion. They are an absolute requirement.

Be sure to submit just your home page to only one category. Multiple page or category submissions will likely be treated as spam, and your site rejected. While there are occasional and exceptional sites and categories, that will accept your site more than once, they are rare. Don’t worry about it. It’s best to concentrate on one category, and get included, than attempt multiple submissions and find yourself rejected.

Avoid Automated Submission Software

Don’t even consider using any automated submission software for DMOZ submissions. Automated submissions are expressly against DMOZ policy. They will always be rejected. Continued use of automated submissions may get your site permanently banned from the directory. All category submissions must be done by hand!

Writing your website description

You will be asked to write a brief description of your website. This is not the place to be flowery and biased. Words like “best ever.” “greatest,” “finest site,” and so on, will be removed and your description rewritten. Be as objective as possible. Don’t fall for the temptation to pack your descriptions full of keywords. The editors will spot that transparent attempt at keyword stuffing immediately. If the editors think your description is too promotional, they will certainly change it on you. You can be sure of one thing: you probably won’t like their description. Your site may even be rejected entirely.

One way to be sure your site description will be accepted as written is to treat it objectively. Write your description the way an outsider would word it. Simply describe the content of the site and some features that benefit the user. A straightforward and honest description will find the most success. A good description is much less likely to be changed. Take your time here, as it will take a lot longer to get a bad description changed, than to write a good one from the start!

Completing Your DMOZ Directory Submission

Once you have found the proper category, and have written a good useful description, it’s time to submit your site. Before you press the Add URL button, make sure you have checked and double checked your submission for typos in the URL and description. A tiny error there could get your site removed from the lineup, or sent back to you for revision. That means a return to the back of the line too!

Be sure to write down the name of the category that received your submission. Take note of the category editor’s name and the date you submitted your site. You will need that information a lot later, if you have to check on the status of your site submission. The editors will expect it. If the category you submitted to has no editor listed, don’t despair. Your submission will still be examined by a more senior category editor

Your site has finally been submitted. Now what?

Since the website submissions are accepted on a first come, first served basis, you wait. The waiting period can last anywhere from one week to six long agonizing months. Whatever you do, don’t decide to resubmit your site. At best, your submission will be moved to the back of the line, where the waiting period starts all over again. At worst, your site may even be rejected for spamming.

Resist the urge to resubmit your site. While the waiting period can seem like an eternity, you simply have to wait it out. Some categories have a huge backlog of submitted sites. Others lack editors to keep up with the volume of new sites. By having carefully selected your category, you are at least certain you don’t have to worry about being in the wrong one.

Improve Your Site and Content While You Wait

In the meantime, you won’t hear from DMOZ one way or the other. Keep checking their site each week for results. Keep updating and adding content to your website. The more original content your site contains, the more useful it will be viewed by the volunteers. The purpose of the DMOZ Directory is to be a high quality resource for the user. The editors will like your site a lot better, if you have a lot of pages of information. Your chances of approval will go way up.

Be sure you have no pages “under construction,” as the editors will reject any sites that aren’t ready for prime time. If you still have pages that are not completed, either remove them until they are ready for the public, or finish adding their content. Whatever you do, get rid of any “under construction” or similar red flag pages, that indicate your site is not fully operational.

Another important thing to do is to check over your site content for typos. While some keyboarding errors might not doom your site to rejection, having a professional looking site will certainly enhance your chances of success. Good professionally done sites, that feature a lot of original and useful content, are almost always accepted.

Help for Affiliate Site Aubmissions to DMOZ

If you have an “affiliate sales” website, be absolutely certain your site contains several pages of useful articles for your visitors. A site simply consisting of links and banners will almost always be rejected. Good relevant content is a must.

You must distinguish your affiliate site from the thousands of other affiliate sites out there. The way to do that is to add content. DMOZ requires original content. A single sales page doesn’t qualify. To add content, you could write reviews of the products you offer. You might want to discuss the problems your products and services address. Writing about industry news related to your products and services will also be helpful to your submission.

Followup with DMOZ Editors

If you sent your submission a few months ago, and can’t stand the wait, you can contact the category editor about your site’s status. Editors can be accessed directly through their Feedback link. Be sure to have that submission date and category information you wrote down handy. They will ask for it. They want to be sure you submitted to the proper category, and that you have given their volunteers sufficient time to look over your website.

A better route, however, is to ask a polite question on the DMOZ public forum.

You don’t have to be registered to read the forum, but you must register (free) to post a question. As always, be sure to read and follow the posting guidelines. Once again, you will be asked for the date of submission, category submitted to, and the category editor. Are you seeing a trend here’ Good records of your contact with DMOZ are a must.

While at the DMOZ forum, you can also ask some questions about their requirements and regulations. The editors will try to help you in every way they can. While they can’t specifically give you a date for your inclusion, they can let you know if you are in the proper category.

If you followed all of the proper steps, your site will appear in the DMOZ Directory. As an added bonus, the DMOZ listings are collected into the prestigious Google Directory. They are also found in many smaller directories around the internet, providing your website with some much needed backlinks.

Your site might just get a boost in PageRank, and in searches for your most important keywords as well.

Happy submitting. It’s well worth the effort!

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Wayne Hurlbert provides information about marketing, promotions, and public relations for websites and business blogs on Blog Business World. Wayne also writes daily roller derby commentary, from a business perspective, on Wayne’s Derby World. He can be contacted at blogbusinessworld@yahoo.com.

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