Getting your website listed in web directories is an important part of SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Here are the top ten directories your site should be placed in to gain SEO benefits, in no particular order.:

1.) VLIB.org: The WWW Virtual Library was one of the first websites established in the early ’90s. The process of submitting a site is somewhat complex, but getting sites placed there is quite valuable.

2.) WebWorldIndex.com: A well-established SEO friendly directory with an impressive Alexa.com rank of 32,723. The “Submit Free” link is located near the bottom of each category page.

3.) DMEGS.com: Another one of the top directories, DMEGS.com requires a reciprocal link (or payment) to be listed. It also has a search engine with screenshots next to each listing.

4.) AplusDirectory.net: A+ Web Directory has a Google PageRank of five and allows free site submissions, with or without a reciprocal link. Unlike some directories, it has a fast, uncluttered design.

5.) TheFreeWebsiteDirectory.co.uk: This popular directory offers Featured, Express, and Free listings. The submission form is relatively short and there are a wide variety of categories available.

6.) DirectoryWorld.net: A fast, well-designed directory, DirectoryWorld requires reciprocal links from webmasters who request free listings. It only accepts English-language sites.

7.) AllTheWebsites.org: One of many directories with a Google PageRank of three, AllTheWebsites.org requires registration before users can submit a website to be placed in their index.

8.) NewWebDirectory.com: To submit a link to NewWebDirectory, find the appropriate category and click on “Add Basic Listing” at the top (unless you want to purchase a paid listing).

9.) Internet-Web-Directory.com: Being placed in this top directory is very good for SEO because it has a PageRank of five and it appears in the first page of Google results for Internet Directories.

10.) DMOZ.org: Although it can take a very long time for new listings to gain acceptance, getting placed in this directory is important for SEO; it also ensures placement in the Google Directory and Search.com results.

Each of these top directories has a Google PageRank (PR) of at least three and uses direct HTML links, making them useful for SEO purposes. They don’t require payment from sites placed in their indexes.

Here is a quick list of the best free Press Release websites.  For paid Press Release service, we also recommend PRWeb and PRNewswire.   While SEO can increase visibility and ultimately more views of your press release, we recommend that you write primarily for your audience.

Once the press release is complete, then we recommend using the headline and anchor text to focus on targeted keywords.  The headline should be focused on a primary keyword while one or two strategically placed links should link to the appropriate content on the website using keyword rich anchor text.  The About Us or profile section is a good place for a link to the home page, but you should focus on linking deeper into the site to more relevant content.

Here is our list of best free Press Release websites:

Press Releases can be a good tool for SEO and link building if used properly, if you know of any other good Free Press Release sites for SEO, let us know!

Obtaining links to your web site on other sites is an important part of SEO, or Search Engine Optimization. Links help achieve the success of SEO efforts in several different ways, although the first two are most important:

1. The text used in links will help define relevant search keywords for your site or blog. This is why a link with anchor text (the visible, clickable text in the link) like “Read more” or “Click here” isn’t as valuable to SEO as one with less generic wording. For example, an inbound link titled “Seattle, WA Cleaning Service” would be especially beneficial, because it improves the linked web site’s ranking in search results for each of these words (and the entire phrase).

2. Regardless of their anchor text, links help SEO by improving the search engine rankings of a web site in general. Search engines consider linking to a site as an indication that it is more highly recommended and/or credible. Google’s PageRank (PR) system, which plays a major part in determining the position in results different sites receive, is largely based upon the quantity and type of links to each site. Other major engines use similar criteria in determining rankings.

3. Obtaining a link on a popular site often enables a web page to get indexed by search engines more quickly than it would otherwise. This will particularly help SEO efforts when time-sensitive material must be promoted, such as a news article or short term special pricing. One way this is accomplished is when a link is posted to a social bookmarking service, and is highly rated by users to the point that it appears on one of the main pages.

4. Links also help SEO indirectly by increasing traffic to web sites (when people click on them). As more people use a web site and see links to it elsewhere, there is a better chance that more voluntary linking to it will occur on other pages, directories, blogs, and social bookmarking systems. This will additionally help SEO efforts, reducing the need to buy links or manually request that they be added. This factor is more relevant to entertaining or informational sites.

Basically, links help SEO by increasing the speed of search engine indexing, defining keywords which are related to the sites they link to, improving search engine rankings in general, and encouraging the creation of additional links.

When it comes to build links targeted to specific keywords, you need to keep in mind the relevance of the overall keyword phrase.  For example, let’s talk about a keyword phrase like ‘Credit Card Offers”

The Google ranking algorithm does use relevancy for its search results.  There are 3 main components – Technical, Content, and Links.  The first two items – Technical and Content – are primarily based on your website.  The third – Links – is the basis for Google PageRank, which is collective the most dominant of the 3 components.

You can find more information regarding PageRank here – > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank

In this example, I might build links for “Credit Cards” and “Credit Card Offers”, but not “Offers”  This is because you can build relevance for ‘Keyword Phrase 1′ and ‘Keyword Phrase 2′, if both are relevant to your website.  However, the content and the linking will be harder to establish relevancy for “Offers” as a stand-alone phrase.

In addition, once you rank for a particular keyword like “Credit Cards”…Google will watch the behavior of its users to see if they like to visit your site after typing this keyword and it if seems like a majority of users are happy with the result, this also confirms relevance.  All of this is done by algorithms, Google states in several public releases and their methodology supports that ‘hand-editing’ doesn’t occur for top rankings.

http://www.seobook.com/seo-spring-clean
Aaron Wall of SEOBook.com discusses a Spring Clean for SEO, even though it’s winter where he reviews 8 items that you should review as you do an SEO audit.

http://www.copyscape.com
One of Aaron’s 8 tips discusses Duplicate Content. I have made it regular practice to check for duplicate content on every site continuously by either searching an exact long phrase with Google directly or using the Copyscape service.

http://www.majesticseo.com/search.php
This tool was recommended by Aaron Wall in the previous blog post. It is an interesting tool to check for backlink patterns of anchor text, deep links, and unique ip addresses.  You initially only get basic information, but you receive a full report once you verify your site.

http://www.SEMRush.com
A new competitive research tool by the same guys that did SEO Digger.  It seems to compete directly against SpyFU and Compete.com.  I will check it out in more detail later this week as I don’t like the SpyFu.com interface and Compete.com is a little expensive for my tastes.

http://www.ViralConverstions.com
Micheal Gray – Graywolf has launched a new website that connects business owners with bloggers who want to do product reviews. The difference is that bloggers are not paid for links but might possibly get free products like a free book or other interesting offers. Interesting concept as it is definitely a way around ‘paid links’; will ‘bartered links’ be next on the horizon for the big G?

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/seomoz/~3/445594376/whiteboard-friday-whats-pagerank-got-to-do-with-it
SEOMoz Whiteboard Friday covers Page Rank and What It Has To Do With SEO.

http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/onetime-or-ongoing-seo-is-it-a-yes-or-no-question
An interesting SEO Strategy post by IgniteMedia about whether One Time or Ongoing SEO Is Best? User contribution from http://www.ignite-media.com/

http://wiep.net/talk/link-building/smx-london/
Powerpoint presentation from “Blow Your Mind Link Building Techniques at SMX London.

http://weblogs.hitwise.com/bill-tancer/2008/11/sizing_up_the_long_tail_of_sea.html
Dustin Woodard does a guest post at the Hitwise blog which shows that the Long Tail of Search could actually be 90+ % of natural search traffic–meaning the tail could be without much of a head or body.

Google Webmaster Tools now makes the process of tracking down the causes of “Not found” errors a piece of cake. Before, you could only watch the number of 404’s increase and decrease in Google Webmaster Tools, now you can actually use GWT to take action and turn these external links into new inbound links.  Here is a quick overview of where to look for this information in GWT:

Watch Video Here

You can get more information at Google Webmaster Blog Post.   We are glad to see the constant improvements by Google on the webmaster tools and we avidly monitor and manage the information in the Google Webmaster Tool interface.

If you want to take advantage of this new feature to not only reduce 404’s but increase links, here is a sample email you could send to those sites with 404 links to your site to increase both your link count and your anchor text relevance:

(Person),

This is (clients name) from (client) and we noticed through our Google Webmaster Tools that you have a link to our site. First off, I would like to say thank you for linking to (client website) as we believe it is a valuable resources for your website visitors. However, we did find that there is an issue with the link that is pointing to our site. The issue is that the page you linking to no longer exists on our site and we would really appreciate it if you could update this link to an active page. To help you find the page that is linking to our site we have included a screen shot below that contains this information. Right below this information is the link to the new page we would like you to point this link to with the anchor text. We would like you to replace the broken link with this new information.

Broken Link:
(Put bad link here)

New Link:
(Put new link here with optional description if page allows it)

Please let me know if you have any questions and I can help you work through those.

Thank you ,
(Clients Name)

There is quite a bit of debate in the SEO world on whether no follow links matter or not. If you are unfamiliar with the concept, a “no follow” is an HTML attribute value that is used to instruct some search engines that a hyperlink should not influence the link target’s ranking in the search engine’s index.  Many people think this type of link shouldn’t help your site rank better in search engine results. Sites such as Wikipedia use them to reduce the effectiveness of certain types of search engine spam. This is thought to improve the quality of search engine results and to help prevent spamdexing.

But, there are two main reasons why no follow links are important. First no one really knows search engine algorithms work exactly. Google, Yahoo and the other search engines keep their rating algorithm a secret so even if they tell us that the links don’t pass authority there is no definite way to know how they impact ratings.

Secondly, Google spiders do follow a no follow link. This is evidenced because Traffic Marks reports only what Google gives it. However, we don’t know how important the link is to Google, only that they are indeed following it.

Finally, if there is a term that you want to rank for you should perform a search for it. If you find in those results that they all have a backlink in common, it makes sense to try and get the same links as the market leaders. Besides this links are some of the easiest to obtain. Ignoring them could be a big mistake if it’s done without any thought put into the decision.

SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is an effective way to increase website traffic. As with any promotional technique, there are certain mistakes which people should be careful to avoid in SEO. Here is a list of some of the more common mistakes.

1. Paying for a website submission service which claims to submit your site to hundreds of thousands (or millions) of directories and/or search engines: These “directories” are typically long link pages that don’t manually screen their links; they offer no SEO benefit or cause your website to be penalized by search engines. It is best to avoid submission services of this type. However, services which submit sites to dozens or hundreds of directories are often legitimate.

2. Buying links from completely unrelated websites is another one of the common mistakes. While purchasing links on sites about similar topics can be good for search engine optimization, other links offer less or possibly no benefit. Particularly with regard to Google, they might be detected as paid links and additionally penalized. Either way, links on sites about relevant subjects are usually better for SEO and less risky. It is also preferable to buy a few high-quality links than to purchase many of low quality.

3. Completely designing a website and then thinking about SEO: Some web designers and site owners lack understanding of SEO, so they create the designs and content of websites without any thought to it. Only when there are too few hits do they realize the need for SEO. These mistakes can lead to a lot of wasted time and money. It is better to avoid this by taking SEO into account during the initial design process, obtain search optimized content for the site, and start SEO promotional efforts from the beginning.

4. Using manipulative techniques like redirecting one web page to another unrelated page, or putting lots of keywords at the end of the page in very small text: Methods like these may provide some temporary SEO benefits to the website operator, but search engines eventually recognize and crack down on them. When this happens, the search result rankings of websites using such methods are often penalized. It is better avoid these mistakes and instead put effort into long-term, legitimate techniques.

Other possible mistakes to avoid include trading links with disreputable sites, submitting individual pages of a site to search engines or directories, and using repetitious phrases in the site’s META tags.

Once seen as a flawless way to enhance search rankings and traffic, reciprocal linking now has the potential to affect a website in both good and bad ways. The following list of “pros and cons” will help determine whether reciprocal linking is right for your website, while providing some tips on how to trade links more effectively.

PROS

1. Reciprocal linking increases the direct traffic between both websites involved, especially if they are about related subjects. This decreases reliance upon search engines and/or paid advertising, which is good for saving money and maintaining a more stable flow of traffic. It is best to avoid trading links with sites on completely different topics.

2. It may still improve search result rankings, particularly when the two sites are relevant to each other, it isn’t obvious that the linking is reciprocal, and both sites have good PageRank levels. Sometimes one site will receive more benefit than the other, based upon these factors – such as when a popular PR5 site exchanges links with a new PR0 or PR1 site.

CONS

The potentially bad effect of reciprocal linking is largely associated with search engine rankings, and has become more problematic in recent years. Website operators may want to specifically agree beforehand about what sort of links (”nofollow”, link text, etc.) they will use.

1. Some search engines, especially Google, now disapprove of reciprocal linking and may penalize the search rankings of sites that are involved (if detected) – unless the “nofollow” attribute is used in the links, which eliminates any good or bad impact upon rankings. Any linking (reciprocal or not) to sites that have been “banned” by the engines will have a bad effect on search rankings.

2. Linking to other web pages can distract visitors from your site, possibly causing them to forget about it. Using links that open in new windows can help limit this bad aspect of reciprocal linking. A link also “endorses” the other site to some extent, so you will want to examine it for offensive content, viruses, or other material which may reflect badly upon anyone who links to it.

The ability to increase traffic among the linked websites remains an undoubtedly good aspect of reciprocal linking, but its benefits regarding the search engines are no longer as clear. Regardless of this, links should only be traded with high-quality relevant websites, and it is best not to exchange them excessively.

Rank Sense is an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) software package. It features tools for researching SEO keywords, creating progress reports, analyzing links, creating sitemaps, and optimizing individual pages or blogs. The developers of Rank Sense emphasize that the software is easy to use and up-to-date.

According to the Rank Sense web site, this software applies methods which follow search engine guidelines, rather than employing “black hat” or otherwise questionable techniques. One method it uses is to analyze other relevant web sites with high rankings, then make suggestions on how the user’s site could be adjusted to improve its rank accordingly. The software can operate in either “Smart” or “Classic” mode; the “Smart” option provides the user with assistance and goes from one step to the next, while the “Classic” mode lets users choose which tool to use. It also includes web site editing tools and support for the major blogging systems, including Blogger, Wordpress, Typepad, and LiveJournal.

The software does not concern itself with minor search engines; its tools are designed to improve rankings on the major engines like Yahoo, Google, Live/MSN, and Ask.com. At the same time, Rank Sense encourages users to focus upon individual search engines and keywords separately, rather than trying to simultaneously gain high rankings on every search engine for the same keyword. As part of its aim to be convenient and easy to use, the Rank Sense software stores information from previous sessions so that users don’t have to re-enter details.

Rank Sense software is available on a subscription basis at four different levels, ranging from a free option for bloggers who have a single blog to a professional version with additional features and more support. A fourteen day free trial version of the software can be downloaded as well, either at the Rank Sense site or Download.com. The system requirements are fairly high, so make sure it will work on your computer before downloading or purchasing it. A form including some personal information (telephone, address) must be completed before using the free trial software. It can be easily removed using the “Add or Remove Programs” feature in Control Panel; you will still have to delete its directory/folder manually.

The company which produces Rank Sense, NEMedia S.A., was founded six years ago and is based in the Dominican Republic’s capitol. It has an office in the U.S. state of New Jersey as well.