Archive for 2012

Home Archive for 2012

This will always be a point of discussion that what is ethical and what is unethical in SEO. I am also presenting my views on these two clans namely, White Hat SEO and Black Hat SEO. I would say, Ethical SEO is related to techniques, not to SEO professionals. There is a need to make a clear distinction between these two, maybe they behave ethically but their SEO techniques and practices are not ethical.

There are a whole lot of techniques available that are unethical and even market giant Google can penalize your website for that. So what is ethical SEO?? As per my understanding, ethical SEO is the one that:

Leverages mostly from good and does the least harm
Helps all participate more fully in the goods we share as a community and a society
Respects the rights of all stakeholders

So who are the stakeholders in search marketing?

Anybody who searches the web, who owns a site are the major stakeholders because these people are directly connected with the web. Now searchers have something to search if they get their desired search results then it is ethical and if they are unable to find it then it is unethical from their point-of-view. I would like to quote an incident here which I came across few days before. I was surfing a popular social networking site and on a certain page the discussion was going on about a person who was in desperate need of blood (This is the beauty of social media; you can discuss and share these things as well). Then there was a comment in this discussion: “We are looking for ***** professionals, if interested, please contact on this number.”

Here this particular comment is unethical in context of that discussion. Some great soul is struggling for his/her life and you are posting these senseless comments. This is what I say strongly unethical.

Now, coming back to site owners, they are also major stakeholders in search marketing. When we evaluate the ethics of SEO techniques then every person who is associated with a site like employees and agents also come under this stakeholder category. What a site owner wants? Profit or gain in monetary terms. To achieve this sometimes site owners make attractive ads and banners with some false promises as well. The whole idea is to get traffic to the website. Here in this scenario, the site owners may also go for unethical practices by making false promises on their websites. This is everybody’s responsibility to act or follow fair and ethical SEO practices.

Please comment on this post; every comment would be a welcome!!!

Do you really want to increase the presence of your website on search engines? So in this post I am going to throw some light on important directories that you would never wish to miss. Some of these directories would automatically submit your website to other local directories as well. That means more exposure more visitors more customers. Sounds great, I knew that. By the time you start reading this article I want you to submit your website simultaneously because the sooner you will list your website and the better are the chances of you getting listed in these directories.

Search engine marketing and social media marketing have added a new dimension to the marketing strategies of companies. There was a time when strategists used to make advertisements for print and electronic media but when internet comes into scene, it changed everything, not only the ways of marketing but also the profits and budgets have increased.

Without discussing much the pros and cons of social media marketing and search engine marketing, here is one more list of local directories. It goes like this…

· www.scrubtheweb.com
· www.submitexpress.com
· www.freeaddurl.org
· www.whatuseek.com
· hotbot.lycos.com
· websitespromotiondirectory.com
· www.exactseek.com
· www.addurl.nu
· www.addurlfree.com
· www.bestyellow.com
· www.uswebsites.com
· www.entireweb.com
· www.softwaresubmit.net
· www.addurlpro.com
· www.addyoururl.org
· www.addwebsitefree.com
· www.webworldindex.com
· www.joeant.com
· www.goguides.org
· www.gimpsy.com
· www.directory-free.com

This list has only few directories, there are hundreds of these directories on the net. In my coming posts I’ll be adding more directories to this list as I am working seriously to find these directories as much as I can. Any addition is welcome…please share your views and comments…

Approach an SEO professional and that person will tell you ‘n’ number of things that can’t be missed but sometimes even SEO people also missed this important aspect of search engine optimization and that is a sitemap. Sitemap, as the name suggests, is a map of a website (literally speaking). Technically speaking, sitemap is a page where you show the structure of your site, its pages with sub pages, if any, links between these pages, etc. A sitemap make navigation of site easier and it must be updated from time to time to keep it search engine friendly. Search engine spiders and bots easily understand the site structure and pages with the help of sitemap. There are billions of web pages that are stored in the search engine database and you can easily calculate how much time crawler gets to read new pages and changes in each and every existed webpage. I would say a couple of seconds. You can also add robots.txt file to tell search engines which part of your site to index, to follow and to archive.

Sometimes sitemaps are not taken seriously. However, submitting a sitemap has always been part of white hat techniques. It is important to note that you cannot go with conventional sitemap because from SEO point of view, an XML sitemap must be there in your website and from user point of view, and HTML based sitemap is important. An XML sitemap is search engine friendly and HTML sitemap is user friendly comprised of plain text links easy to understand.

Yahoo! and MSN still support the HTML format while XML format is friendlier for Google bots. Now the question arises why two sitemaps? The answer is obvious- one for humans and the other for spiders and bots. I mean to say HTML format for human visitors and XML format for spiders and bots. Having two sitemaps is not regarded as duplicate content.

Having sitemap is always a win-win situation; it not only offers easier navigation and better visibility by search engines but also offer the opportunity to inform search engines immediately about any update on your site. I mean to say the indexing will be faster than the routine indexing. During Google dance and deep crawling, with the help of sitemap the crawler can index up to secondary and tertiary levels of your website.

There are two ways to generate a sitemap- to download and install a sitemap generator or to use an online sitemap generation tool. The first is more difficult but it is in your control and the second option is a bit difficult as you’ll download the software first then install it and plug-ins will also be there. Comparably, the second is easier in case if you do not know the coding. There are lots of online sitemap generating software available on World Wide Web which will do the rest for you. Once you create the sitemap, you need to upload it to your site and notify the search engines about its existence. That is the most important step of the whole process.

Please add your valuable suggestions and comments because knowledge sharing is always helpful for everyone...

As I promised earlier, I am again posting the most wanted list of local directories. I would say one can’t miss these local directories to list down their website because everyone who is out there to sell a product or a service must look up to these directories because these are the most sought after local directories. What I feel is that promoting your business locally is as important as globally is. If you are promoting your business then definitely it should start from local level then comes the international level. The bigger the level the harder the competition, so you can score over your competitors by promoting your business locally and globally both.

Gone were the days when people used to turn up those traditional yellow pages to find local businesses. In today’s time everyone turns up towards internet as a way to find local businesses and getting listed in local directories is one way to get found before your competitors by your future prospects. The point here I am trying to make is that if you are listed in a few directories then you are really missing an edge over your competitors so why wait get listed in each and every directory that you come to know. However, it will increase your marketing budget which is painful for every businessman but it will definitely be fruitful for you in the long run.

Every submission to these directories will increase your chance to get found by your customers. So here is the list of these local directories that you should never miss. In this list I am not including those directories which I posted in my previous post. The directories are as follows:

· www.judysbook.com
· www.citysquares.com
· www.magicyellow.com
· www.genieknows.com
· www.myhuckleberry.com
· www.yellowassistance.com
· www.infignos.com
· www.acxiom.com
· www.infousa.com
· www.localsitesubmit.com
· www.uscity.net
· www.localeze.com
· www.twibs.com
· www.metrobot.com
· www.discoverourtown.com
· www.justclicklocal.com
· www.bizjournals.com
· www.outside.in
· www.thinklocal.com
· www.foursquare.com/business
· www.local.com
· www.biznik.com
· www.citysearch.com
· www.yellowbook.com
· www.supermedia.com
· www.whitepages.com
· www.yelp.com

I have tried to include as much as possible local directories here. If I missed, please let me know it would be a welcome addition.

Before I discuss whether adding social media to your business in good or bad for a business. I would like to throw some light on what is social media? And why social media is so important for businesses especially local businesses.

Social media is a way to interact with your future prospects that means customers and it is not necessary for every local business to be found out on every social network out there. Most local businesses neither have the time or resources to make use of social web in that way. However, it is important to be on the social networks that interest and appeal to you and your customers. It is also important to monitor the social web.

Getting started in the social media marketing is very simple. You create an account, build an audience, and share with a community of people. Followers on Twitter become friends. Each like on a Facebook page adds to the relevance of your page. But you should also be aware about your customers and how do they use the social media?

Well, in my opinion if someone needs a product or a service, he/she will more likely to ask his/her friends on Twitter/Facebook about where they should get a particular product/service. Here your online reputation matters. You want to be fresh in their minds when a request comes through.

Now the new customer would go for Google searches, seek out reviews and will try to find out your online presence and reputation. Here the social presence becomes handy if you are out there in social media for a quite decent time then you may have a chance to get the deal and if your competitor is present more strongly in social media then your competitor will win that deal.

The idea is to get into social media networking as soon as possible and social media should play to your strength. For instance, if you are a photographer then you should be on Pinerest and Flickr. If you are into video then you should be on Youtube. If you love writing then you must be on Twitter and on any respective blog. If you want to socialize then go to Facebook and Google+.

The advantage of adding social media to your business is that your future buyers can involve with you in real time and can compare your products and services with your competitors again in real time. In last couple of years these social networking sites have transformed themselves as one of the biggest marketing platforms. Social media has badly affected the shopping websites; even shopping sites are marketing themselves on these social networking sites. What a transformation!!! Hats off to social media marketing!!!

Every human being or professional related with internet business in any aspect wants more and more traffic for their website. Because this is the only thing that drives a website’s popularity, page rank and one cannot under estimate the website traffic. Let me suggest the best solution for driving this local traffic to your website. The solution is to get your website listed in free local directories and this will for sure drive the local traffic to your site. But the thing is which local directories to approach for this? I am covering some of the important local directories of the World Wide Web and submitting a website to these local directories is completely free. These local directories are described here and are not ranked as per their popularity. Actually I have to start from something so let get into it:

1) www.brownbook.net: Brownbook is one of the free directories and covers all the local businesses around in your city. You can not only list your website here but also you can avail other services for free like choosing your own keywords for website. I would say it’s mandatory to submit your website to this directory.

2) www.mojopages.com: Mojopages is there to submit your website for free. It’s more like yellow pages. However this directory concentrates more on US market. So if you are looking to penetrate into US market then go ahead and submit your site. Actually there is no harm in submitting a link to this directory because it’s free.

3) www.manta.com: Manta is an also a good directory to submit your link for free. It serves US market and worldwide market as well. Once you’ll be listed there you can be found easily on the net, you can connect with prospects and can grow your referrals.

4) www.merchantcircle.com: Merchantcircle is an excellent directory to add your link there. But it concentrates more on US markets.

5) www.kudzu.com: Want to list your website to local directory? Try Kudzu it is for US markets.

6) www.hotfrog.in: Finally a good local directory for India is here. Go for Hotfrog, it is there in the web scene for a long time to serve Indian sellers and buyers. Really great to have this directory on the web for free.

7) www.yellowbot.com: YellowBot offers premium listing advantage to site owners. Once listed then you have the control on your profile. You can also interact with customers through social networks.

8) www.bridgat.com: It offers a good listing service to business owners. Get listed and get traffic to your website for sure.

9) www.startlocal.in: A fine local directory to submit your link for free. This is a must have directory to add your link.

10) www.indianyellowpages.com: Get your site listed at indianyellowpages and attract more and more local traffic to your site for free.

11) www.dialindia.com: Dialindia is an excellent directory to submit your site for free. Get listed here and get loads of local traffic. This directory provides yellow pages and B2B directory as well.

In my coming posts I will try to cover more topics to get more & more traffic. Please add your valuable comments so that I can add more value to my posts.