I do not necessarily have the best answer for that question. If you are building a
site for temporary profits, then even most of the low-quality ones can help you
build links that will be effective for ranking in MSN or Yahoo!. The problem
comes about when some of those links that help you in less sophisticated
algorithms end up hurting your Google ranking.
From the above picture, you can see that search algorithms are reliant upon linkage
data. If you look at a site’s inbound links (I will explain how to do this later on)
and find few links from quality sites, few or no related sites, and many low-quality
links, that is not a good sign for the long-term potential of the link.
When you look through the listings in your category and throughout the directory,
there should be, in general, many high-quality sites that were added for free by an
editor for each site that paid for a listing. You do not need to view the whole
directory to figure out if it is good or bad, just a few categories that you know well.
Are quality sites listed there? If mostly junk sites are listed there, then you probably
do not want to pay for a submission.
If the categories are almost all blank, then wait to see if an editor will be making it
useful. If the directory consists only of paid listings or blank pages it is probably
not worth paying to be listed. Directories with many empty categories often get
flagged by duplicate content filters for having too much similar content, since there
is little content on most of their pages beyond the directory structure.
Another thing to look out for is site-wide or home page ads to high margin sites in
areas like casino, prescription, or debt consolidation. Avoid those types of
directories as well, since they are more likely to be above radar and search engineers
would be more likely to want to discount links from those sites.
I believe TrustRank is not implemented to the point where you get large negative
scores for just a few bad links, as scraper sites virtually guarantee all top-ranked
sites gain a few bad links, but perhaps it could be used to help figure out the good
link to bad link ratio and flag high PageRank sites with low trust scores for human
review.

Directories Worth Getting Links In
The two most popular directories are DMOZ and the Yahoo! Directory. Just
about any quality search algorithm should trust and place weight on links from
those two sources.
The Open Directory Project
The Open Directory Project (DMOZ) is free, but sometimes it can take a while to
get listed. DMOZ editors work free of charge and are under no obligation to list
your website.
Ensure that you take the time to submit your site to the right category and follow
their directory guidelines. If your site is not in English, make sure you submit it to
the world category. Regional sites should be submitted to their respective regional
category

With DMOZ, you do not need to keep resubmitting over and over. In the past,
they allowed webmasters to ask for status checks on submissions, but they
discontinued that in May 2005. If you do not get accepted, it is not worth losing
sleep over. Submit and forget it.
If you have general questions about DMOZ, you may want to ask at Resource
Zone.

Become a DMOZ Editor

You may want to apply to become an editor if you really enjoy your category. You
should take your time when applying to become an editor. It is easier to become
an editor for a small, non-commercial category than a large, highly commercial one.
After you become an editor and do a good job, you can gain editing privileges over
other categories as well. Also, it is best if you do not disclose that you are
interested in SEO. They would prefer to hear you say you want to help organize
the web and make it a better place. Saying you are a hobbyist, enthusiast, academic,
or retired person is far better off than telling them you are the CEO of a company
in your field.

The Value of a DMOZ Listing

The Open Directory Project is syndicated by many other sites and inclusion into it
often provides your site with dozens of inbound links. Many people are quick to
state that the Open Directory is worthless or that it is super important.
The fact is, it is fairly important for some sites and fairly unimportant for others. It
really depends on how many other good places there are that may be willing to link
to your site and how creative you are in making things they would want to link at.
There are many variables that go into the value of a listing. I usually just submit
and forget about it. I do not find that it helps to be preoccupied with a DMOZ
listing. Many high ranking sites are listed in DMOZ and many high ranking sites
are not. Most of my original useful sites were accepted into DMOZ. Most of my
spam sites were not.

No ODP Meta Tag

It is easy to create a compelling meta description tag that emphasizes your brand
strengths, but if a website is listed in the Open Directory Project, search engines
may prefer to use your ODP listing information over your meta description or
page content when displaying your site in the search results. If you do not like the
ODP listing information, you can prevent search engines from displaying it when
your site appears in search results by using the following meta tag:
<meta name=“robots” content=“noodp”>

The Yahoo! Directory

Your site will still list in Yahoo! powered search results even if you do not submit
your site to their directory, but their directory is well worth its cost for most
commercial sites. Yahoo! charges a $299 recurring annual fee for commercial sites
(double that for adult sites), which is a bit expensive for small-time webmasters, but
not a large fee if you are serious about making and marketing a quality website with
a legitimate business model.
A number of people I know have changed their credit card details and found that
their Yahoo! Directory listings still stayed even though they did not re-pay their
recurring annual review fee.
Unlike most directories, Yahoo! shifted their directory to list sites in order of
popularity, instead of alphabetically. They also paginate the results, so if your site is
new and there are 300 sites listed in your category, your site will not be appearing
on the first page of the category unless you also pay a monthly directory category
sponsorship fee, build significant link popularity from a variety of sources, or find a
more niche category to which you can submit.
Non-commercial sites can list in the Yahoo! Directory for free, and I can attest to
the fact that they have listed multiple sites I own for free. I have also submitted
dozens of paid listings and they have yet to reject any of them.
When a site gets submitted to the Yahoo! Directory, an editor checks the quality of
the site. Since Yahoo! controls their own directory, it would be logical for them to
place extra weighting on a Yahoo! Directory-listed site. Many top SEOs have told
me that they have seen significant increases in their Yahoo! Search rankings after
submitting a site to the Yahoo! Directory, and a Yahoo! Directory link seems to be
trusted fairly well in Google as well.
If you submit your site for free, make sure you submit to the most relevant
category. If you pay the Yahoo! Directory review fee, it might be worth it to try to
submit to a somewhat authoritative category. They may place your site in a
different category than that to which you have submitted, but it is worth a shot.
To give you an example, in the Yahoo! Search guidelines, they link to a SEO
resources category. Thus, I decided to submit my site to the authoritative SEO
resources category instead of submitting to the SEO services category. Why?
Because they link to the SEO resources category in their search guidelines, there
are fewer sites in that category, and the co-citation is associated with higher quality
sites.

Regional Yahoo! Directories
Yahoo! has depreciated the value of many of their own regional directories. They
still accept free submissions, but do not guarantee a review time.
Second Tier Directories
Although more expensive than many other second tier directories, BOTW is one
of the better general directories. Directories such as Gimpsy, GoGuides,

RubberStamped, Uncover the Net, JoeAnt, and Skaffe all cost less than $50 each
for submission.
JoeAnt is free if you become an editor, and it only takes a couple minutes to sign
up. Gimpsy is free if you are willing to wait many months. Skaffe is free for
editors. GoGuides has a bulk submission discount program.
If you are going to list your sites in many directories, you may be able to save time
by using RoboForm to save some of your submission details, but make sure you
modify it to make your listings unique at each location.

Mix Things Up!

When links and citations occur naturally, there is no easily definable pattern. If
something is easy for a search engine to do and it will improve search quality, they
probably will do it. As a result, make sure you mix up your anchor text and your
site descriptions so that there is no easily identifiable unnatural pattern.
If you start directories yourself and you use common default directory software,
you may want to remove the common footprints the script leaves. If other sites
using this script are abusing it, you do not want to cause your site to be filtered as
well if a search engine decides to penalize sites that are using a commonly abused
script.
Junk General Directories
On the web, links are a currency. The problem is, many webmasters want any link
they can get to improve their link popularity. Some webmasters take advantage of
this situation by creating low-quality, general web directories that will link to
anyone willing to give them some money.
This leads to a couple problems, both of which essentially boil down to an
unnatural linkage profile. If a directory is not useful to humans, then the inbound
links are likely going to lack linkage data from many trusted sites. To build up a
high PageRank, the directory will often build lots of links from many low-quality
sites.
Additionally, many of these directory owners are lazy and have no desire to create
any legitimate value. In not employing editors to add any useful sites, most of the
listed sites in the directories are of low quality.

Most pages that get submitted to search engines are of low-quality. There is no
guarantee that your site will get included for free just by submitting it. The best
way to get listed in search engines is to get other people to link to your site.
Yahoo! is currently the only major search engine to offer a paid inclusion program.
Yahoo! Search Submit Basic lists sites in all of the Yahoo search properties. You
don’t need to use paid inclusion to get listed in search engines. Most useful and
original websites will get included in the search indexes for free if they build
a few links.

Search Engines versus Directories

Search engines are operated by scripts and machine code. Some of them have
human editors, but, by and large, search engines are run by automated relevancy
algorithms.
Directories are human-compiled lists of sites organized by categories. Since
directories are entirely human-edited, they take time and effort to maintain.
Whenever I create a new site and I am happy with it, I submit it to a about a half
dozen or a dozen directories. A few of the larger directories are listed in the next
section. In addition, you can find a relationship chart that clearly shows how the
largest search engines and directories interact here:

http://www.bruceclay.com/searchenginerelationshipchart.htm

When submitting to directories, it is worth it to spend the extra time to ensure you
are in the correct category and are following the directory guidelines. For example,
the DMOZ guidelines can be found here: http://dmoz.org/add.html.

Submitting Your Site
Submitting to Search Engines

The best way to get your site indexed is through having a search engine follow
a link from another site. This section will focus on how to maximize the speed
and efficiency of this process. I will address paid inclusion (mentioned above) in
more depth toward the end of this book.
Social Interaction and Links

Where to Get Links
• Create content or ideas that important people can identify with and
would likely link to.
• Directories may link to sites you submit.
• You can exchange links with similar websites. If you can afford to, it is
better to create legitimate business partnerships and friendships rather
than just to trade links with whoever is willing.
• Writing articles about your topic and placing them on other websites
can give you inbound links via the article signature. If you submit
articles to other sites, you may want to create unique content just for
the article submission sites, or have a longer or different version of the
article on your site so that you are not fighting against duplicate
content issues when others syndicate your articles.
• Writing press releases can give you inbound links.
• You can participate in forums that provide signature links. If you
participate in communities and leave relevant, useful comments, then
eventually people may want to link to you if they start to like you.
• Buy links or rent advertising space.
• Donate to charities for links.
• People interested in your site may eventually link to you without you
asking. Generally, this is where SEO battles are either won or lost in
competitive markets.
Generally, the easier and cheaper the link is to get, the less a search engine will want
to trust it. Getting other people to want to talk about you or your business (and
link to you) is the golden egg of SEO.
Search engines want to count legitimate editorial citations. They would prefer not
to count other types of links as votes. Some engines, such as Google, have
advanced algorithms to find and discount many artificial links.

How often do Search Engines Crawl?
Search engines constantly crawl the web. Pages that frequently update with strong
link popularity may get crawled many times each day. Pages that do not change
that often, are associated with spammy sections of the web, and/or have little link
popularity may get crawled only once or twice a month.

Sites like CNN are crawled hundreds or thousands of times each day. Since search
engines are constantly adding content to their index, they are in a constant state of
flux.

How Search Engines Evaluate Links
Through the “eyes” of a search engine, you usually cannot control who links to
you, but you can control to whom you link.. In most cases, if bad sites link to you,
it does not hurt you. If you link back, it does. So in essence, it usually does not
hurt you to get inbound links. You should be rather selective with whom you
are willing to link out.
Start With Trust
Some search algorithms may look at the good link to bad link ratio as well. If your
site has few well-trusted links and many low-quality ones, they may filter out your
site if they suspect it of overt ranking manipulation.
When you get quality links, you are not only getting the boost those links may give
you, but you are also lowering your risk profile and naturalizing your link profile.
Some links are a sure sign of quality. For example, if you are listed in the Yahoo!
Directory, search engines know that at some point in time an editor working at a
search company reviewed your website.
If you are trying to replicate the success of a competing site, it is important to start
by trying to get a number of higher quality links before getting too many lowquality
links.
If you are unsure if something is a quality link or not, ask yourself if you were a
search engineer would you want to trust that link. If the answer is “yes,” then it is a
quality link. It is still okay to get some low-quality links, as automated scraper sites
and other junk sites give practically all well-ranked sites a bunch of low-quality
links, but the key to doing well in the long term is to try to create a reason why
people would want to give you quality links

Blogs and Weblog Comment Spam
I recommend viewing the web as a social medium. Find blogs with posts about
topics you are interested in and participate in the community. The whole point of
weblogs is community discussion, so it is not spam to add something useful and
link to your website from it.
Don’t expect the link to help you rank better in the search engines, but if you
participate in your community and leave useful comments, it will make some
people more likely to link to your site or pay attention to you.
An even better way to get noticed with blogs is to comment about what other
blogs say on your own blog.

On some occasions I have seen mainstream media outlets quote blogs or contact
people who left comments on blogs. If you are actively engaged in the
conversation, you will gain authority much quicker than if you are not.

Chat, Google Groups & Forums

In forums, people asking and answering questions creates free content for the
person who owns the site. This automated content creation allows the forum
owner to sell advertising space against the work of others.
In exchange for the posts, many SEO forums allow signature links that point to
your website. Since forums change rapidly, they often get indexed frequently. Your
site will get indexed quickly if you ask a few questions at a few of the various SEO
forums.

Of course, the goal of forums is to have meaningful conversations, but if you are
reading this e-book, odds are that you may still have some SEO questions.
Forum links are easy to get and forums have many links on the pages though, so
the links probably do not have a large effect on SEO. Forum sig links from
relevant. useful posts have far more direct value in driving sales and building
friendships than in effecting search results directly.
I have found that some search engines such as Yahoo! look at word patterns on
web pages to find what words relate to others. I have the username “seobook” on
many forums. On many forums, there is a button to private message users next to
their username.

By helping others by participating in web communities, you become more
linkworthy and work your name and your brand into the language representative of
your topic. Plus, if you know what people in your community are talking about, it
is much easier to create things they would be interested in and market them to their
needs and wants.

Sometimes it is worth it to spend a little money to help build your site up. Many
people can find college students or people from Craigslist and pay them about $10-
$12 an hour to create content for their sites.
Find a copywriter for hire at a site such as Elance or have a more expensive
copywriter ghost write an article for you. Make sure you get the exclusive rights to
the article if you do not want them to use it on other sites or newsletters later.
Some sites like Constant Content make it quick, cheap, and easy to buy articles,
tutorials, and reviews.
You can buy content from various sites that specifically create content for sale by
finding out who creates news in your industry or by searching for syndicated
content providers from a search engine or directory.

Automated Content Creation
Use of, or improper use of, any of the following tools can drastically increase the
chances your site will be removed from search indexes. If you are new to the web
and are running a limited number of websites, it is recommended that you avoid
using these types of tools—especially on any site that is a main source of income.
Most automated content creation tools create content that reads like rubbish.
Some tools such as Traffic Equalizer scrape search results and publish the results as
web pages on your site.
RSS Equalizer can be used to create pages from related RSS feeds. Some people
mix this data to create well-themed and useful web pages. In some regions the web
pages created by RSS Equalizer and Traffic Equalizer may be illegal due to
copyright laws.
ArticleBot is a tool that creates many semantically sound articles from a single
article.
I have not yet used any of the automated content creation tools, but some of my
friends have stated positive things about them. They are usually used on temporary
websites.

Content Costs, Attention, and Quality
If you have a high attention portion of your site, you may want to undermonetize it
such that you do not lose your attention. But if that portion of your site is building
great authority, you can leverage that authority through the rest of your site.
Create some expensive, high-quality content and view those content costs as a
marketing expense. From the leverage that content provides, you can feed off that

authority using dozens or hundreds of decent quality articles that are more
aggressively monetized.