Some SEO experts and online marketeers think web directories are dead. That may be right for general web directories that have been penalised by Google for selling links, but niche directories can still provide a good quality link to your site because they actually offer a web surfer useful information and provide a relevant link to your site.

Bloggings Most Wanted is a blog directory that lists and categorises a wide range of blogs from Travel Blogs to movie and video blogs, and the ever popular Make Money Online Blogs. Is a link from a directory like this worth the money? Well, that depends on your site and how well it fits in with the other sites in it’s category. That’s the benefit of a niche directory - the other sites listed are more likely to be relevant to yours.

Niche directories like this are a useful resource, for both surfers and bloggers looking to promote their blog.

Building links to a site is the most critical factor if you are looking to rank highly in the search engines. A great place to get these links is from blogs. Links within blog posts have several advantages over other links types such as text-link ads.

• The links are often found quickly by the search engines because blogs tend to be indexed quickly.
• The links appear more ‘natural’ because they are embeded within text and don’t look like paid link.
• If the whole post is about your site, the links are in context and can naturally use keyword-rich anchor text.
• If the whole blog is about the same theme as your site, the link becomes even more powerful.
• Posts appear on the front page first, so your link is initially on the page which is viewed the most has the highest PageRank.
• Posts are often archived in categories, which means it will be on the same page as lots of related content and links.
• Finally, a post usually has it’s own page, where the links to your site will remain forever.

So where do you find blogs willing to review your site? One source is the brokerage sites that act as middlemen between bloggers and advertisers. Examples include reviewme.com and payperpost.com. You pay a premium for this service, but the blogs are usually of good quality and often provide traffic as well as link popularity.

Site review blogs and web master blogs are another good source. They are usually cheaper and some even allow you to write your own post. Good ones have a number of categories for posts, which keeps a post alongside relevant content once they are off the home page.  Crea-futur.com is one that has categories ranging from automobiles to mobile phones.

Probably the best, but most time consuming method is to search for relevant blogs and directly approach the blogger. It may be neccessary to be more flexible about your requirements, i.e. the number of links to your site, the anchor text used and deadlines, but it could be worth it for a very natural link back from a highly relevant site.

Search engine optimisation (SEO)  is all about helping a site to rank highly in search engines such as Google, Yahoo! and MS Live by targeting the keywords that are going to attract the right customers. A good SEO company can help analyse your market and determine which are the best keywords for your site.

Traffic from MS live, Yahoo! and  the numerous other search engines is usually tiny compared to Google, so most online businesses and site owners want to improve Google ranking above everything else. How do you do this? Well, the most important factor is the number of links pointing at a site (backlinks).

Links are seen as votes for a site and basically, the more links the better. One of the easiest ways to get these links is from directories - you submit your site to them and they list it in categorised pages. Some directories require a fee to review your site but there are also thousands of free directory sites. IF you are going to submit to them in a big way, a directory submission service or software can save you time and money.

A lot has been written about web directories and their usefulness for Search Engine Optimisation. Recent efforts by Google to crack down on the link selling market have hit directories hard - especially the big boys. But there are still quaility small directories out there that offer good value.

Directory-King has a very simple, clean layout (maybe even unique - at least I haven’t seen it before!) making it easy to navigate. There are a wide range of categories to choose from and the categories are supplemented by articles and news feeds, which helps to keep the content fresh and unique. Features like this help to make a directory stand out from the crowd for visitors and search engines.

And, as well as the standard directory listings, the site offers a variety of frontpage & sitewide advertising options.

Good features and good value make this directory well worth a look.

Best of The Web Directory is offering a massive 25% off advertising.

The offer includes all new submissions and sponsorship advertising in their general web directory and blog directory.

Just submit before the end of March and use the promotional code: SAVEBIG

Here’s the submit page. It’s one of the oldest and most trusted directories so it is well worth getting a listing there (even Google still likes it - it has a PR of 6).

Just a reminder, you could win $10000 by submitting your site to Best of the Web directory before the end of November.

Find out more here, or use the following promotional code:

WIN10K

You will also get $15 off whatever you purchase.

This is available on any new directory submission or sponsorship advertising

(You have to be a resident of the US to be eligible for the prize draw)

Up until the end of November, you could win $10000 by submitting your site to Best of the Web directory.

Just use the following promotional code for any new directory submission or sponsorship advertising:

WIN10K

You will also get $15 off whatever you purchase.
BTW, you have to be a resident of the US to be eligible for the prize draw.

There are many things to consider when looking to market a website online; keyword research, link building, copy writing and creating a site that converts visitors into customers. Datadial is a UK based web development company that was established in 1998 and provides an complete web marketing solution.

Datadial’s site is well designed and clearly explains their search engine optimisation services in easy to understand language. This is unlike some internet marketing websites which use complicated technical terminology and are over optimised. They also provide several detailed case-studies to help you understand what they do and to show you some of the sites they have optimised.

Most importantly, Datadial.net emphasize that the service they offer based on results and targets - a very important factor when you are spending a significant sum on a long term internet marketing campaign.

The Best of the Web Directory offer of 25% throughout August will end in a few days.

Use the promo code: SIZZLE25 when ordering directory submissions, sponsorship ads and blog advertising to get your saving.

The earnings that a webmaster receives through a website depends on hosting costs, volume of traffic and converting visitors into customers. 3FN.net can help with all the important parts of running an online business, whether it involves selling products or services such as advertising.

To increase the visitors to a site a webmaster needs to either buy traffic through pay per click advertising or rank highly in the search engines through online marketing. 3FN.net has the tools and expertise to use both of these approaches to increase the traffic, using proven keyword research, PPC advertising and search engine optimization techniques.

3NF also provide partnership networks and targeted contextual advertising programmes to help webmasters generate income from the visitors they attract to their site.

And don’t forget the hosting for your site. A dedicated server provider can have a big impact on an online business. Good quality cheap hosting reduces your overheads and helps to increase your profit margin.

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is the process used to get higher search engine results. It involves optimising a website so it is ’search engine friendly’, which means it is easy for the search engines to crawl, and building it’s popularity, so that search engines rank it higher than competing websites.

SEO can be broken down into five steps:

Step 1 Keyword Research

The first step in search engine optimisation (SEO) for any website is keyword research.

What is your target audience going to type in to a search engine? Remember, we are not just talking about single words but two, three and four word phrases. The longer the phrase, the more specific it is and the less competitive it will be to rank for.

Ranking highly for a longer keyword phrase will result in less traffic, but is likely to lead to more conversions, so go after those long, specific search terms. Provided, of course, that they are relevant to your site!

Try the free Digital Point Solutions keyword suggestion tool: http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/. This tool accesses the two main providers of search data, Wordtracker and Overture.

You need to find keywords that are not only going to send lots of traffic to your website, but also traffic that is going to convert into sales and clients, traffic relevant to what your site offers.

Step 2 Incorporating Keywords into Your Web Pages

Search engines analyse all the text on a web page, but the text in some parts of a page are more important than others, such as the titles. This is pretty obvious really since a title should neatly summarize what a page is about.

So, once you have the right keywords, they need to be added to the right places within your pages. This is ‘on-site’ or ‘on-page’ search engine optimisation.

Some of the most important parts of a page where keywords should be are:

• The title meta tag.
• The description meta tag.
• The H1 tag.
• The content on the page.
• The anchor text of internal links.
• The filenames of pages.
• The filenames of images.

Step 3 Search Engine Submission

Search engine submission used to be a very important part of SEO, but since links between websites became an important factor in the ranking of sites, and the main way search engines find new sites, submitting to search engines is not really essential.

That said, there are many more search engines, portals and directories other than the big three (Google, MS Live and Yahoo), so an automatic submission tool can be a big help. Do a search for ’search engine submission tools’ for a selection.

You should be able to find a free tool that does the job well, don’t pay silly money for submission services - it is not worth it any more.

Step 4 Build Links

Increasing the number of links to a website is the most important part of SEO. Search engines interpret a link from another website as a ‘vote’ for a site, so the more links you can get to your website, the better.

Quality is just as important as the quantity of links. A link from a page or, even better, a whole site about the same subject as yours carries more weight.

The text of the links pointing to a site (the anchor text) is also important. If the anchor text includes your targeted keywords, the link is an even better ‘vote’ for your site.

A few of the main ways you can get links to your site are:

• Submitting your site to web directories.
• Exchanging links with other websites with similar or related content (reciprocal linking).
• Writing and submitting articles.

The best (and cheapest) way to get links to your site is to create great content that other sites will want to link to.

Step 5 Monitor Rankings and Visitors

During the process of optimising a website, it is important to check how well a site is ranking in the search engines and how many visitors it is receiving.

The easiest way to check a site’s rankings is to use an online tool or specialised SEO software to automatically check many keywords and phrases on several different search engines at the same time. It can also be useful to check your competitors rankings.

Checking once every couple of weeks should give you a good picture of how well your site is doing and show you the effects of your SEO efforts over time.

To see how many visitors have found your site and the search phrases they have used, check your website traffic statistics. This will help you see if you are targeting the right keywords.

These are the basic steps involved in optimising a site so it will rank in the search engines, but Search Engine Optimisation  is an ongoing process. You need to continue to build links to your site, add new content and monitor your own, and you competitors rankings.