Getting your web site listed on directories can be good for search engine optimization (SEO), while increasing direct traffic at the same time. However, not all directories are SEO friendly. When you need to determine if a site can be used for this purpose, please refer to the following SEO Friendly Directory Checklist:

- Do the directory’s links go directly to web sites? Look at one of the categories and see if (point at a link while looking at the status bar) the links go to a redirection/tracking page or directly to the sites they refer to. Directories with direct links are SEO friendly, as search engines can easily identify these links and their destination.

- Does the directory have a Google PageRank level of at least one? You can check this by entering its URL in a web site like checkpr.org. Directories with no/zero PageRank are either too new/obscure to affect SEO, or have been penalized by Google for allowing too much “link spam”. Be careful not to use “FFA” link sites or directories full of miscategorized pages.

- Are web site names used as the titles (anchor text) for links? It is more SEO friendly when directories use the title (or other relevant words) in the text of their links, rather than using a URL, an image, or a generic phrase like “Click Here”. However, gaining links with less desirable anchor text still benefits SEO efforts, just not as much.

- Does the directory not require a reciprocal link? Some directories demand a reciprocal link in return for approval, while others make it optional or don’t ask for it. It is better to gain listings on directories that don’t require reciprocal linking; generally, one-way inbound links to your web site provide greater SEO benefits.

- Is it possible for search engine “spiders” (a.k.a. “robots”) to navigate/crawl the directory and find your link? The majority of directories are search spider friendly. However, if the site can only be navigated using animated/javascript menus (and there is no alternative method like a Site Map), this could be a problem.

There are far too many SEO friendly directories to list here, but they include Yahoo! Directory, URLdirectory.org, DMOZ.org, WebWorldIndex.com, and FreeWebsiteDirectory.com. It is especially important to be listed on DMOZ.org; not only does DMOZ/ODP have an impact upon SEO, but it also provides some of the results for many small search engines.

Social bookmarking, including systems like Reddit and Digg, notably affects SEO (Search Engine Optimization) in a few different ways. Social bookmarking links can help determine which SEO keywords a web page shows up under, increase its Google PageRank, and/or make it appear in search results more quickly.

As a link receives additional votes in its favor, it will appear on more prominent pages of the social bookmarking service. This affects SEO more significantly, while producing an increase in direct traffic. Many web site operators have added links or icons to social bookmarking services at the beginning or end of each web page, thus encouraging their visitors to bookmark the pages.

When search engine “spiders” detect a link, its wording (”anchor text”) affects their identification of the content on the page it links to. Then the linked page becomes more likely to show up in search results for those words or phrases. This is why an inbound link with a vague anchor text phrase like “Amazing New Product” affects SEO less favorably than more descriptive links do.

For example, a social bookmarking link titled “New Operating System Released” would make the page it is linked to more likely to show up in search results for each of these four words. Thus, the more relevant and searchable the words in the link, the more useful it is for SEO purposes.

Most social bookmarking services are classified into categories or “tags”. Links on web pages with related content usually provide more SEO benefits, so the same is likely true for social bookmarking links which are grouped with other links on similar topics. Thus it is probably best to choose “tags” which are relevant, but not obscure.

A difference between social bookmarking and using a search engine is that people generally use search engines to find specific things they are looking for, while a social bookmarking system is more often used to explore new information they might be interested in. It is somewhat like the difference between advertising in the yellow pages and posting an advertisement on a laundromat’s bulletin board.

Basically, social bookmarking affects SEO in the same way that inbound links on other web sites do, but is different in that anyone can post or vote on these links. Their position is also more subject to change than most other links, and new content is generally favored over older material.

A website’s PageRank (or “PR”) on Google can significantly affect how much traffic the site receives from Google search results. However, this is not the only effect the PageRank may have upon a website. Read on to learn more about the true meaning of a site’s PageRank and how Google determines it…

While it is true that a website which is linked to by other sites will generally attain a better PageRank, it is not really this simple. The benefit to a site’s PR is greater as the websites linking to it have higher PageRank levels; thus, if a major website like CNN.com (PR9) were to link to it, there would be a more significant impact.

A site’s rank is also affected by the other webpages it links to; linking to (or getting links from) PR zero sites may have a negative effect. Also, using techniques which Google finds undesirable (selling links, “cloaking”, etc.) can cause the PR to reduce. The higher the rank, the closer to the top of search results (for related keywords) a website will appear, although other factors also play a role in this.

As for the meaning of the rank to a website, it has several implications beyond direct Google search traffic, although it’s true this will often be its most significant effect. The PR determines a site’s placement in several different web directories; additionally, there are some directories which only list sites that exceed a certain PageRank level. Regardless of the true amount of traffic a site receives, the PageRank also plays an important role in determining how much someone will pay for advertising on it, or to purchase the website itself. If the site in question is a directory of some type, people are likely to submit more links and/or articles to it if the PR is high.

Some additional search engines, such as AOL.com and various meta-search sites (like Dogpile.com and Search.com), rely upon Google for some or all of their search results; the PR level will impact the amount of traffic received from these engines as well. If a website participates in reciprocal linking and has a high PR, other sites are also more likely to accept its link exchange requests.

Basically, a high PageRank is gained by obtaining links on other websites with high PRs and avoiding “black hat” methods Google dislikes. A good PageRank level can have significant positive meaning for a website in several different fields, including directories, monetary value, and search engine traffic. At the same time, it is true that a high PR doesn’t automatically give a website traffic, members, or customers.

The search engine Google.com recently updated its PageRanks system, in late October, which affects how high different web sites appear in Google search results. Much attention is paid to changes in pageranks (PR) by web site owners who are interested in improving their sites’ search engine optimization.

Websites which provide news related to internet marketing have reported that many sites now have poorer pageranks than they did before the update, with some dropping multiple points, including a number of well-known mainstream sites. There has been much speculation about how pageranks might have been reduced for web sites which were selling or exchanging links, which Google opposes (unless the “nofollow” tag is used, which eliminates search ranking benefits from the link). According to searchenginejournal.com, Matt Cutts (who works for Google) has confirmed to them that the change to pageranks was “primarily” to penalize web sites that are selling links.

Google’s reasoning for this is that it helps improve the quality of their search results, although it could be argued that this is in conflict with their willingness sell sponsored search result listings which appear above other results. Other theories for changes to the PR of sites which have not been selling links have been suggested on various web sites, blogs, and forums.

The pageranks of some sites did increase, and others stayed the same, so it does not appear to have been an adjustment in the value of different ranking levels. Many sources have reported that the pagerank update hasn’t brought about any noteworthy change in Google search results yet, but this seems likely to change. Updates of their pageranks do not always occur on a clear, regular basis; however, according to wikipedia.org, they are updated approximately every three months. They tend to fluctuate for a few days after some of the updates. Most likely, they are actually updated more frequently in Google’s system, but such updates are not visible to the public. Wikipedia also indicates that the PR has a direct impact on the order in which websites are listed on the Google Directory.

The greatest impact on the pageranks of individual web sites comes from the number of other web pages which link to them, but other factors can also impact pagerank values. Better pageranks can lead to more web site traffic and greater advertising sales. The pagerank of a particular site can be checked on free services such as prchecker.info or with the Google Toolbar.

Content is the king. Search engines love fresh and quality content, since that’s what the users want – more new things to read every day and every hour. When your site changes often – search engine crawlers come back more often as well. Of course by generating new content you raise the chance that more of your pages will be found.

Once you have the content generated, here is what you can do to have your site found more often by new visitors:

1. Use Google Sitemaps to see how Google sees your site, when it was last updated, whether you have any problems on your site, etc. You also want to provide a sitemap for your visitors.
2. Get involved in communities relevant to the content of your site. Visit their forums and mailing lists, and help other people by answering their questions, posting links to your site if they contain information relevant to your replies. Usually you are allowed to have a signature, where you can link to your site. However be aware that more and more sites implement a new link attribute rel="nofollow", which tells Google (MSN, Yahoo and other sites) to not count those links to your site’s ranking credit. This is to avoid comment spam. You can find the details here: Official Google Blog: Preventing comment spam.
3. The head section of the document should include meta entries for keywords and description. Though it’s been said that the keywords meta entry has little or no weight with Google, but is still useful with other search engines. Also make sure that the title of the document includes the most important keywords and phrases, as Google gives a heavy weight to those. The keywords need to be included in the H1 and H2 header entries, and also once in bold, once in italic and if possible in the URL.
4. Spell check your content. Google doesn’t like when misspelled words are used, as it tries to auto-correct search words. Some sites use misspelled words to get more traffic to their site. e.g., “hign paying keywords” instead of “high paying keywords”
5. It’s been said that sites containing valid XHTML are favored by the search engines. But it should at least use valid HTML. One other thing to make sure is that your site is readable by non-graphical browsers, such as Links and Lynx. Blind users use those to browse the Internet and search engines favor sites that are useful to more people. In fact search engines see your site as text, so things like javascript, DHTML and Flash may make it hard for the search engine to crawl your site.
6. Publish articles on other sites relevant to your expertise. Make sure that those articles link back to your site. I’m somewhat weary about submitting my articles to other sites, since then I end up with a duplication problem and a chance that a search engine would penalise duplicated content sites. Hopefully it somehow knows where the content has appeared in first place. But I don’t want to take chances. So may be submitting unique articles which don’t appear on my site is a much safer strategy.
7. Sometimes your site competes with many other sites for the same keywords. Rather than optimising all of your site for the same keywords, try to find less competitive keywords and optimise some of your pages for those keywords. There are both commercial and free programs to help you do that.
8. Learn from your competitors. Go to Google and search for the competing keywords, go to the first few sites with high page rank and analyse those sites, see what they have done differently than your site. Granted the site might be just very popular and linked from many other sites, but more often than not reading through the source code of the site can tip you off how to do better. You can find out which sites link to that site by searching Google for link:yoursite.com and you may want to try to get your site listed on those sites.
9. Since it’s not enough to have a high ranking for your front page (Google gives different page ranks to different pages), once your site is established you should try to get other sites to link to other sections of your site as well. For example if you have a big site and you can identify segments which are different from each, try to raise a page rank for the sub-directories corresponding to those sections.
10. Have each page linking to several other pages on your site (crosslinking). That should be especially helpful for balancing the page ranking across different pages of your site, and of course it should help your visitors to find related content on your site.
11. Try to include a few outbound links to high quality sites in every document. That indicates a quality connection between your document and others sites that Google already considers to be quality sites. When linking to those sites, try to include the important keywords in those links.
12. Analyse your log files and see who refers to you the most. Try to find more similar sites. The referral information also reveals the keywords used to find your site. Often you find new keywords that you haven’t thought of when targeting your site. By using those newly discovered keywords you can create more content that targets the unexpected traffic even better.

(full article here – Your Site’s Google Page Rank)