If you are looking for a way to improve your rankings in search engine result pages (SERPs), take a small break here and look at how I can help you with this.
SEO is an abbreviation of the term Search Engine Optimization and originally it signified just the optimization of the HTML code of web pages, so that these were recognized by search engines as being relevant to the requested search concept.
As long as only a few hundred thousand websites existed, it was enough to prepare for just some easy search words. Today where up to some one billion websites float around in the WWW, it is, unfortunately, different.
If today we speak of SEO, we think of an optimization of web pages and other provisions that put us far in front into the SERPs of the dominant search engine, Google. Since Google decides how web pages have to look, it is now nowhere near enough just to optimize the pages.
In the ideal case your pages are so great that a lot of webmasters of other websites deliver a recommendation to visit your site, specifically by means of a link which refers to your site.
This would be Google’s ideal situation; they feel this is a natural link construction which minimizes manipulation and falsification of search results. To us website operators, this would be also be ideal because this would need the least work by ourselves.
Unfortunately, this does not happen because there are always a few people who push to the front as they actively take care of such links. So sign up on web directories and invite other webmasters to exchange links. One calls this, by the way, "off-page-SEO", in contrast to the above mentioned optimization of webpages, which is in turn called "on-page-SEO". We do not want to deal with it here, however.
As already stated, you possibly will not create a website to which, because it is so fantastic, webmasters of other sites link to it like crazy. If, for example, Coca Cola would publish the recipe for their delightful mixture, they probably would have thousands of links to their website overnight.
If you, noble stranger, have nothing similar to offer, you will probably have to walk on the hard, stony path of off-page-SEO.
Essentially, the aim of off-page-SEO, is to find as many webmasters as possible, who create links from their pages to your site. The fact that there are also differences in quality, you read under "link value". Furthermore, we only want to deal with registrations in web directories and SBMs.
To get as many links as possible in time as short as possible, it adds two possibilities - the registration at
A web directory (often also called a web catalogue) is an ordered listing of links to different websites, thematically organized into categories and sub-categories, mostly even into sub-sub-categories and sub-sub-sub-categories.
You arrive at the start page of such a web directory (the best known example is DMOZ) and find 15 main categories and 3 subcategories. Assume that you are searching for somebody who does web design in your area. You click on "Internet" and on the next page you click on "web design and web development", then, finally, you are at the next page "web design". The next page is "base services", the next page "Austria" (or whatever country) and after you have clicked on "Vienna" and have found us in line 14 with "web design". Troublesome or what!?
This is how one had to search a few years ago. Today this is easier; you just visit Google and enter "web design Vienna" and find us immediately on the first page. But if you enter "search engines optimization Vienna" you’ll find us immediately in position #1! Hip Hip Hooray!
So has it become clear to you now, why web directories are quite meaningless nowadays? In addition, DMOZ (and Yahoo) are by far the biggest web directories but, nevertheless, I cannot remember that I have ever seriously searched even once for something in a web directory during the last few years. It’s probably similar for you!? Google is simply substantially more comfortable, quicker and more precise.
Nevertheless, there are thousands of web directories; there are up to 2,000 German-speaking ones alone. Apart from a few specialized ones, by far the majority have no right to exist for somebody who searches, because he’ll use Google, anyhow.
So what is such a web directory good for?
Even though the value of links coming from web directories has become strongly depreciated by Google, these links are still the easiest and quickest ones to attain.
The first step in off-page-SEO is still to announce one’s site at as many web directories as possible. However, because this can only be done by hand with almost all web directories, one must select categories. There are Captchas to be inserted which makes automatic registration by means of suitable software impossible.
So one sits down and signs up, one after the other. This is very laborious! If one creates 20 entries to web directories in an hour one is moving quite quickly. So for 200 web directories one needs at least 10 hours!
Then, it should be noted, that there are many web directories available which are so bad in quality that any registration is a waste of time.
Some require a so-called "backlink", a link from one of your pages to the web directory. Generally there is no reason not to do this, as long as it is a well-arranged directory and you have intended places for links on your web pages. But indeed, it is more work for you.
In any case, no registration in a web directory is worth any payment at all, even if it’s just a small amount!
Some operators of web directories try to add value by offering the possibility of more extensive descriptions, detail pages, pictures and similar. The down side is that many of these web catalogue operators of more deliberate quality, require that the descriptions are written exclusively only for the respective directory. This is logical in itself because it avoids "duplicate content" which is frowned upon by Google.
On the other hand, this is a huge expenditure which amounts to that of a normal link exchange/article exchange. Nevertheless, I’d go along to a website with a similar subject to mine, and procure for myself a so-called "relevant link" there. But, this is something that everybody can decide for themselves.
The idea behind this is not storing your bookmarks (favorites), this are the links to your favorite web sites, at your own computer, but external, at such a bookmark service. At the same time one provides all interested surfers these his favorite links in public. Because of this its called "Social". Of course my own sites are, are also my favorite sites and of course I would want that the links to it are publicly accessible. Because of this, I submit my bookmarks at all possible SBMs.
The entries at the SBMs have some advantages from the SEO point of view. You are normally public quite fast, also links to sub-domains or subpages are permitted and BIG G. values allegedly particularly highly.
Disadvantages are, that approximately the half of the links is provided with the attribute "noFollow" and further therefore does not pursue of the searchrobots. The entry is also insignificantly more effortful, because one must lay out a user account first.
The decision whether entries shall be carried out in web catalogs or in Social bookmark services turns out clear: in both!