Directories and Communities
- 09.10.09
- Web Directories
- No Comments
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.














