Archive for the ‘Whitehat SEO’ Category

Can You Rank Higher Getting Listed on DMOZ, Yahoo Directory and Such?

September 1st, 2010 Asep Onde

This is a classic question but still drive everybody nuts trying to figure it out: Can you really rank your sites higher if you can get it to DMOZ, Yahoo Directory, and the likes?

Some say yes, some say no. Here’s my view and opinion:

My view on DMOZ

URL suggestion on DMOZ is free – one problem though: Getting your site listed on DMOZ is a tough job. It’s said that you need to know a DMOZ editor to help your site getting listed on it. As we know, DMOZ power some major directories, such as Google Directory – so listing your site in it commands quality.

By “quality” I mean that your site is getting powerful backlinks from the category page, and this contributes to the overall ranking of your site in search engines.

My view on Yahoo Directory (and the other paid directory listings)

Yahoo Directory is probably the most well-sought after paid directory listing of all. First off, it’s Yahoo’s. Second, it can help your site to rank well, not only on Yahoo! SERPs, but also on Google SERPs.

The problem is suggesting your site on Yahoo Directory will cost you $299 – and to worsen things, it’s non-refundable. On top of that, if your site is accepted, you are required to pay $299 annually to keep your listing.

Quite expensive, indeed – but is it worthwhile?

I have read a testimonial on this (sorry – I forgot the source) – 2 days after getting his site listed on Yahoo, he received a boost on a target keyword from #200 to #80-ish and a top keyword from #9 to #3. Not only that, he got his site’s indexed page numbers on both Yahoo and Google increased significantly. Please note, I’m not sure whether this testimonial is still relevant or not, due to the regular changes on the search engines’ algorithm.

Some others who have their sites listed on Yahoo Directory testify that their sites do receive a boost in SERP, but not really in term of traffic.

Bottom line…

If you have the budget to list your site on Yahoo Directory, do it – it’s good for your SERP. If not, it’s better for you to use the fund to list yours elsewhere (or even buying links) for link building purpose.

If you are after traffic from directory listing, just forget about it. In another testimonial I’ve read, the site listed on top of a Yahoo Directory category is receiving 100-200 visitors a month – quite an insignificant figure, really.

How about DMOZ? I’m not really sure – some said that it is dead and no longer accepting new links; some other said they have got their site listed, months – even years – after site submission date. Ouch.

Bottom line – I don’t have plenty of SEO/link building budget – so, I’ll definitely stay away from Yahoo Directory, BOTW, and such; I better use the $300 to get links from good quality directories offering $10-20 lifetime listing.

In the other hand, if you have thousands or tens of thousands of dollars in your link building budget, I recommend you to go for it.

Posted in Whitehat SEO Tags: , , , No Comments »

Google Ranking Algorithms: The Latest Official Announcement from Google Webmaster Central Blog

August 26th, 2010 Asep Onde

Google ranking algorithms are changing on regular basis. But when the change is officially announced, I think webmasters and SEO specialists should pay more attention to it.

You can read regarding the latest Google ranking algorithms change from Google Webmaster Central blog.

Here’s the announcement is all about:

“Today (Aug 20, 2010 – ed) we’ve launched a change to our ranking algorithm that will make it much easier for users to find a large number of results from a single site. For queries that indicate a strong user interest in a particular domain, …we’ll now show more results from the relevant site…”

What this means to search result pages?

The first search results page – the place where we are all want to rank our site in – will display more result from the most relevant domain. So, if your site is darn relevant to a visitor search, your site could display, for instance, 7 pages on the first search results page.

Using the above example, it means that only 3 more pages displayed on the first page – at mercy of Google ranking algorithms. More from the official announcement:

“We expect today’s improvement will help users find deeper results from a single site, while still providing diversity on the results page.”

In other words, it’s darn lucky for the rest of us to get placement on the first page for the particular keywords.

Nevertheless, this development brings both good and bad for webmasters.

In the positive side, this new development could very well mean that sites with plenty of quality articles – such as blogs – will have a chance to display more pages on the first search results page, while pushing competing sites further down below.

In the negative side, coupled with the recent algorithms changes – Google’s favoritism toward big brand names, local search’s high rank on SERP (e.g. Google place’s listing,) and real-time pages’ high rank on SERP (e.g. Twitter status updates,) it’s almost impossible for us to do SEO for higher ranking on Google SERP.

Could this very well mean that Google is enforcing its official suggestion to create unique and quality content as link baiting method, instead of using SEO techniques to achieve higher SERP position?

I think so. What do you think?

Posted in Blogging Tips, Whitehat SEO Tags: , , No Comments »

Free SEO Analytical Tool for Your Sites

August 19th, 2010 Asep Onde

You implement all on-site optimization tips you can get to achieve higher search engine ranking. You even hire SEO specialists to rank your site better. But quite often, practicing those tips and hiring those guys are actually hurting your site’s reputation on search engine. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, one possible answer to your question is that because your site is using illegal SEO techniques (excessively) that will cause your site’s search engine ranking penalized, even blacklisted.

Now, instead of hiring those spammy, scammy and dangerous SEO services, why don’t you try using a web tool that can help you analyze what’s wrong with your site. One of such SEO web tool is SEOENG.

As catchy as the name, what SEOENG can offer you is unique – you can explore a site’s SEO effort by scoring it according to the once-obscure and closely-guarded search engines’ criteria to rank a site.

For instance, did you know that it’s not harmful to have dofollow links on your site, as long as they are located in a sentence within your content with a specific arrangement? On the other hand, having dofollow outbound links listed in your blog’s Blogroll section as a list could raise search engines’ red flag, accusing you to do paid linking / link sales; your site could be penalized doing so.

You can explore and evaluate your site’s SEO using this “search” form – free of charge:

Search Engine Optimization

So, whats your site’s SEO score?

Posted in Whitehat SEO Tags: , , , No Comments »

10 Secrets to Achieve High Ranking in Google

August 15th, 2010 Asep Onde

Forget the alchemy surrounding Google ranking algorithms. Achieving high ranking in Google is actually simple. The secrets are actually lying on the simplicity of the techniques.

Here are how to achieve high ranking in Google search engine result pages:

  1. Write quality content (d-uh!) on regular basis, preferably those that bait for backlinks, and promote your content to as many people as you can – Digg it, Stumble it, Mixx it, etc.
  2. Write lots of articles and submit them (along with your link on the ‘resource box’) to top article directories like Ezinearticles.com and ArticlesBase.com (spoiler: Your unique article on EzineArticles.com vs. the copy of it on ArticlesBase.com: The copy could rank higher than the original!)
  3. Do occasional link exchanges with quality, related sites – be careful, do this excessively can backfire. 3-way (Site A to Site B to Site C) or 4-way link exchange is even better.
  4. Occasionally link out to related, authority sites – dofollow the links (yes – having dofollow outbound links on your sites is actually beneficial.)
  5. Nofollow affiliate links – better yet, cloak the links, preferably with your domain name hosted link cloaking – e.g. YourSite.com/Afflinks
  6. Earn your backlink: Do guest posting on other, high quality blogs; do blog commenting, forum commenting, and any other kind of commenting that enable you to have links back – preferably dofollow – to your target site.
  7. Get quality – authority if possible – backlinks; even buy links – no matter how Google Team try to convince you that buying and selling links are against TOS, big businesses do it all the time, sparingly.
  8. Do on-site or on-content SEO; fill your content with highly related keywords, while limiting target keyword’s density – e.g. if your target keyword is “cheap hotel rooms”, your article should contains related keywords, such as “affordable hotel room,” “cheap hotel,” “cheap hotel room rates,” “budget hotel” etc.
  9. Directory submission – despite the fact that web directories are no longer effective as link building tools, the quality ones (a.k.a. those that have high Google PageRank and which pages are indexed quickly by Google Bots) are still delivering results.
  10. Join link building clubs – such clubs are usually private and invitation-only (or require you to pay for membership;) you can work as a team to build each other sites by strategically linking out to certain sites in certain ways to achieve maximum impact on search engines.

Of course, doing is harder that the theories. You can’t hire someone to guarantee you high ranking or such, either (it’s against Google and other search engines’ TOS, anyway.)

Ranking high requires you to invest in either money or time – sometimes both – on regular basis. You need to spend lots of time if you want to go frugal in link building. In trade, you can pay SEO specialists to do link building for you, spending from tens to thousands of dollars a month to rank better in search engines.

Posted in Blogging Tips, Whitehat SEO Tags: , , , , No Comments »

Why Listing Your Site on 3,000 Web Directories Won’t Give You 3,000 Backlinks

August 9th, 2010 Asep Onde

Well, it’s actually not only on web directories, but on any kind of sites. This is a link building basic, but surprisingly, not many recognize the importance: Search engine indexed pages.

I myself have a misconception about this before. I am not an SEO specialist, but I do SEO and link building for my sites and also my clients’ sites.

I used to think that submitting my site to 3,000 web directories will give me 3,000 backlink. Here is some logic why you will get less than 3,000 backlink, even far less:

Approval rates

Chances are, your link submissions won’t be accepted to all web directories you submit to. Even a 70% to 80% rate is considered to be very good.

Just remember, the more web directories you submit your site to, the bigger chance your link submission won’t approved for some reasons, such as submitting your links to wrong categories, poor link description/anchor, poor site quality, etc. One more reason: Some web directories are “zombies” – they are exist, but the owners are rarely approve links, or even abandon link approval altogether.

Indexed pages

Of that 70% to 80%, there will be a HUGE chance that you won’t get all backlinks from your link pages – why? Because not all of your link pages will be indexed by the search engines.

And believe me, plenty of web directories are having difficulty in indexing their pages in search engine for one reason or another, such as lack of SEO / link building, poor reputation (e.g. approving spammy links, building a link farm instead of a web directory, etc.) and some other reasons.

One bad case study: My own site

I buy a directory submission service to submit one of my sites to 3,000 web directories, with 80% approval rate. Nice approval rate, but that doesn’t mean anything if the link pages in which my link resides are not indexed by the search engines.

And that’s exactly the case: Of about 2,400 successful link submissions, I only get 135 Yahoo! backlinks, 100-ish AltaVista backlinks, and zero Google backlink – all in 2 months after the completed directory submission.

What the…?

How to get the most of your web directory submission

Lessons learned. To get the most of your web directory submission, you need to:

  • Buy a directory submission service that submits your link to web directories owned by the service provider – this allow you to get 100% approval rate.
  • Better yet, buy a reputable directory submission service, preferably a service that submit to pre-screened web directory list, which members have a reputation of being loved by the search engines (more pages indexed, and they are indexed quickly.)
  • Instead of general directories, submit to niche web directories – laser targeted link submissions have better chances of getting picked up by the search engines.
  • Buy a slow directory submission service that submits your sites in a longer period of time, not all at once.
  • Submit to a small list of web directories, instead of a list containing thousands of web directories – chances are, the small list consists of better quality, hand-picked, free web directories.

I have purchased a slow directory submission service to niche directories and the result is stunning – great approval rate (100%) and the link pages are getting indexed quickly by the search engines.

I suggest you to take this route in directory submission.

Forget hiring freelancers to do directory submission for you: I recommend SubmitEdge for better directory submission service.

Posted in Whitehat SEO Tags: , , , , , No Comments »

Is Google Pushing Us to Do Blackhat SEO?

August 6th, 2010 Asep Onde

Many SEO experts suggest that Whitehat SEO is the way to go. However, it seems that Google doesn’t really want us to go whitehat anymore. Here’s why.

Google changes its ranking algorithm on regular basis. No problem. Google hates web directories. No worries. Google faves quality content. A-okay.

Now, the thing is, Google wants to keep us ‘honest’ by controlling what can and what can’t in search engine optimization and link building.

Exercising control, to a certain extent, is actually necessary. But limiting website owners’ movement in doing SEO and link building is like Google trying hard to make our lives miserable, especially in making money online.

Some evidences:

Google favoritism toward big brands

This webpreneurship article on Google’s love for big brands explains it all – brand reputation is emphasized by Google in determining importance in its search engine result pages.

Now, the question is: If you own a tech site news, how to compete with, say, TechCrunch with whitehat methods?

TechCrunch has the money; it also has the authority; it has humongous numbers of backlinks – both in quality and quantity. How to compete with it?

Google says that the best way to get ranked high in search engine result pages is by creating quality content that attracts backlink from other sites referring to the content.

Right. Now suppose I can create top-notch content that is even better than those in TechCrunch, will my article page rank higher than those of TechCrunch? No.

Again, TechCrunch shouts authority. MyOneAndOnlyTechBlogThatContainsQualityContent.com is not (yet) – and to compete with TechCrunch, we have 2 choices:

  1. Secure million of dollars in venture capital money
  2. Go blackhat

Let’s be honest here – we need time and money to compete with the big guys in search engine result pages; unfortunately, not many of us have plenty of either or both.

Google is slapping web directories and affiliate sites

There goes the glorious days of web directories and affiliate sites.

Google slaps web directories – reducing their value and ranking in the process, and eventually reducing web directory owners’ income in such a way that they need to find other ways to make a living. Web directory submissions are also no longer effective, making link building a more challenging task. Article directory submissions? Expect the same in the near future.

The same story goes for affiliate sites – Google slaps sites containing affiliate links – if those links are not there, how on earth affiliate marketers can make money? The consequence: Landing pages are no longer effective; this equals less money for Internet marketers.

There always be ways to comply with Google. But Google fed many of us up – it’s another reason for some of us to go blackhat.

Many left Google – for good.

For those who are honest and are not willing to go blackhat, they left Google, even abandoned make money online/online business/internet marketing arena.

The resilient website owners are pushed to be creative. They left Google for PPV (pay per view) strategy implementation; they forget SEO/link building and start focusing on getting web traffic, and focusing on the traffic strategy to build a business and make a living.

The big question: Should I do blackhat?

I can’t help you on this (if I suggest blackhat, I risk myself to be banned by Google – oops!)

But consider what the webmasters say in consensus: The money lies in the blackhat techniques.

Even successful Internet marketers are resorting to blackhat (or at least, greyhat) to help them grow their business empire.

If you are in doubt regarding blackhat techniques, never get involve in it. It’s clearly not for everyone. There are still plenty opportunities in doing whitehat – all you need to do is to be patience (and hopefully you can secure that investment to build yourself a nice web business.)

Any views to share?

Posted in Blackhat SEO, Make Money Online, Whitehat SEO Tags: , , , , No Comments »

Why You Should Start to Optimize for Bing

July 27th, 2010 Asep Onde

Bing’s move in search engine market is pretty aggressive these days. Here are some reasons why you should start to optimize for Bing:

1. Bing has an eye-candy front end design and user-friendly features

You know what it is: the fine background that keeps changing on regular basis. Bing loves its background so much, it is launching a gallery for its background. The good look itself sparks interest to many web surfers and search engine users.

Not only that, Bing dedicates Yahoo-like special section on popular search categories, such as Bing’s Entertainment Hub.

2. Bing is growing fast and increasingly popular

In the US, Bing is getting bigger market share> along the time, growing 7% from May 2010 to June 2010; compare this to Google’s -1%, Yahoo’s 0% and Ask’s 2%.

That’s partly due to Bing’s aggressive marketing campaign, such as Bing as Apple iPhone 4 default search engine. It also launched the rather controversial Bing Education: Bing will donate $3 to schools each time you set it as your default search engine.

3. Bing is a friend to the big guys

Bing search results are displayed on Yahoo! search result pages now.

What’s more, Bing partners with Facebook to power Facebook’s web search – as more people use social media to do web search, this is a darn smart move.

4. Bing makes other search engine scrambles to avoid losing market share

Google WAS a trend setter in search engines. Today, Bing is the haute couture of search engines.

Google even recently redesign its image search result pages’ design to be more Bing-like. Not only that, every time Google update something in term of design and aesthetic feature, it looks more and more like Bing.

Are you ready for Bing?

I overlooked Bing, but not anymore. Sure, Google is still THE search engine to optimize for, but as Bing is getting more and more market share, it’s a crime not to do search engine optimization for Bing.

Posted in Blogging Tips, Whitehat SEO Tags: , , , No Comments »

Is Reciprocal Link Exchange Dangerous?

July 23rd, 2010 Asep Onde

There is enough confusion surrounding what’s acceptable SEO and link building practices according to Google. However, if you look at it closely, Big G’s principles are actually easy to follow despite being ambiguous at best.

One of the ambiguous principles is Google’s reciprocal link exchange policy. How ambiguous? Just check out Google’s explanation regarding reciprocal link exchange that violates Google’s webmaster guidelines:

Excessive reciprocal links or excessive link exchanging (“Link to me and I’ll link to you.”)

The number one question regarding the violation: How excessive is excessive?

Only Google knows how to measure and quantify ‘excessive.’ But we can definitely use our common sense to ‘classify’ what ‘excessive-ness’ of reciprocal link exchange:

  • Avoid reciprocal link exchange with unrelated sites and/or sites that are in bad neighborhood.
  • Avoid making your reciprocal linking the majority of your link building activities.
  • Avoid using automated system to do bulk reciprocal link exchanging.

What if I insist to do any of the above? Well, you’ll increase your likelihood to be penalized, even banned by Google.

Here are a couple of ideas for a better link exchange campaign:

  • Do inner-page link exchange – for instance: Suppose Site A and Site B exchanging links; Site A’s URL is on Site B’s page 123, Site B’s URL is on Site A’s page 789. This looks more natural than the conventional Site A – Site B top level domain link exchange.
  • Do 3-way (or 4-way, even more) link exchange – for instance: Suppose Site A and Site B exchanging links; Site A’s URL is on Site B, but instead of Site B’s URL on Site A, it is placed on Site C.

Be cautious, though – even doing inner-page or 3-way link exchanging could trigger a red flag by Googlebot. Again, use your common sense – do this occasionally, and be sure to mix-and-match in backlinking – links from forums, directories, social networks and other related sites.

Posted in Blogging Tips, Whitehat SEO Tags: , , , 1 Comment »

Web Directories as Web Guides: Are They Dead?

July 17th, 2010 Asep Onde

For Webmasters and SEO Specialists, web directories are considered as a link building tools (directory submission for backlinks) rather than what directories should be: Web guides.

An ‘old-school’ or classic Web Guide is a place where you can find useful and quality sites or pages listed under specific categories. For some authority directories, this ‘art’ is not gone, yet. Web directories such as DMOZ, Yahoo! Directory, BOTW, DirJournal, CannyLink, and many more can present you with both quality backlink, as well as great exposure in term of traffic to your listed sites.

A quality web directory listing can lead you to the right direction, in term of SEO and web traffic:

SEO

For example, getting your sites listed in DMOZ can get you a high-quality one-way backlink. Compare that to a listing on a web directory with hard-to-spell, let alone meaningful domain name – the former will rank you high, the latter is useless. Google also agree to this: Despite directory submissions are regarded as short-term low-quality ways in getting backlinks, submitting yours to quality web directories still have some value.

Web traffic

Getting listed in web guides a.k.a. web directories mean more highly targeted traffic coming into your site. If your site is selling or promoting something, this means more business for you. Again, compare the listing on, say, BOTW.com with the listing on, say, krgyxzgwzky.com; the former will get you highly targeted traffic, while the latter will get you nothing in term of traffic (and insignificant in term of SEO.)

If you are web directory owner, you might want to develop Web Guide instead of a mere directory of links, because that’s just the way it is: old school prevails. Adding a blog, a news section and other informational material could do the trick.

Posted in Traffic Building, Whitehat SEO Tags: , , , , No Comments »

How to Get 347 Free Backlinks

July 15th, 2010 Asep Onde

It seems that backlink quality is favoured over quantity these days. But for those of you who are still care about getting tons of lower quality backlink to your site, I do have a site to recommend you: Backlinks.iTamer.com.

How it works

In essence, what the site does is automatically submit your URL to 347 (updated from previously 120) sites, such as website valuation sites, WHOIS checking sites, and other stats sites. Submitting yours to those sites will offer you 2 things: Some valuation or stats of your sites and free backlinks to your sites.

Regardless of what people say about the value of automatically generated backlinks, the upside for this is quick, simple and they won’t hurt your ranking because these site valuation sites tend to be neutral in the eyes of search engines – even considerably better and safer than submitting your URLs to search engines using automated submission tools.

Some backlinks from the 347 sites are either nofollow or need another manual step to complete. Sure, the nofollow links may have little value to Google (yes – nofollow links are still having value with Google!) but this might not be the case to other search engines.

All you need to do is to add your URL and watch yours submitted automatically – neat!

Get the 347 free backlinks »

Posted in Whitehat SEO Tags: , , , No Comments »
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