Best Website Directory Blog

As we say goodbye to 2010 and prepare to welcome in 2011, you may be wondering how the face of the Internet will change in the coming year. Well, although I would love to blog here about every single change that will happen during 2011, I cannot, as no one really knows how things are going to develop. However, below you will find a few tips about how to prepare to promote your website in 2011, based upon possible future changes.

Where to start? Well I guess I should begin by giving a quick evaluation of three website promotion methods that have been successful in 2010 and then parallel that to how the same methods might work in 2011. As mentioned, please bear in mind that anything written about 2011 is at the moment speculation, so do not take any ‘definitive’ actions based upon the words you see written here, or indeed any other site which predicts the future. So, without any further ado…

2010

#1. Social Bookmarking – Without doubt, the most developed website promotion technique in 2010 was social bookmarking/networking. With sites like Facebook, Twitter and Digg pushing ahead with new features and expanding audiences, new opportunities were made available to webmasters wishing to promote their websites.

#2. Link Building – A long-standing method, and arguably the best way to promote your website is to get links to it. This continued in 2010 with search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo primarily judging popularity by how many links a site had. Although they considered other factors, in 2010, it can be said that the main focus was still on backlinks.

#3. Directory/Article Submission – In 2010, directory and article submission was still prominent as a technique for promoting websites. It is to be said, that directory and article submission is still quite effective at the time of writing, and especially when combined, directory and article submission contributes to any link building strategy (see #2 above).

2011

#1. Social Bookmarking – With social networking not set to retire to the books of history any time soon, social bookmarking too is on the rise. So, my advice is to prepare to invest more time and money into promoting your site through social bookmarking services such as Reddit and Digg in the coming year, as this could be the key to your success.

#2. Link Building – This is one of the areas where I would like to see some change in 2011. Why, you ask? Well, although originally links were the best metric of determining how useful and reliable a site was, it can still be manipulated, to the bigger, more influenceable company’s advantage. What do I mean by this? Well, a company who owns a large network of sites can easily build a million links to their new site, but does this mean that it is more useful? Not really. Search engines are beginning to realise this and are starting to consider many other metrics. I believe that we may come to a point where links, or indeed any other external metric, doesn’t matter any more, and search engines rank sites purely on their content. However that is a long way off, so I would advise to still keep link building through 2011!

#3. Directory/Article Submission – It seems that in 2011, directory and article submission will still be an important part of website promotion, and indeed, it could become even more popular if somehow it is integrated with other website promotion techniques such as social bookmarking. There are some which say that directories are forever on the decline and that it is a waste of time to submit your site to the popular directories, however this is not the case, and indeed I believe that quality directories could be one of the ‘things of the future’, assuming that the quality is maintained through careful moderation of all submissions. I would suggest you make plans for 2011 directory and article submissions, as it seems that it will still be much of use.

There are of course many other ways to promote your site, and there is no doubt that more will appear over the next few years, as technology is updated. For the most part, current evidence suggests that many of these other techniques will continue to be valid in the foreseeable future. For example, PPC (Pay-Per-Click) advertising, and SEO (Search Engine Optimizing) will almost certainly still be a big part of website promotion in 2011. However, we never know how things may change, watch this space for updates as they happen!

At the time of writing, in the run up to Christmas, it’s said that today and tomorrow will be among the most busiest days for online merchants. This is partly due to the laziness of most people – after all, who wants to trudge through shopping centres and crowded malls, when you can click a button and have items delivered straight to your front door within hours? It is also due to the recent heavy snow that has affected many parts of the world, making it difficult and inconvenient to travel. For high-street merchants, this is bad news. However, if you run an online store, or are selling something on your website, this is a great time to take advantage of the increase in Internet-based traffic.

You don’t have to run a website for long before you realise that getting traffic is no easy task, and certainly not a task for the faint-hearted. Studies have shown that a person makes up their mind whether to stay on a site or click the ‘back’ button within a matter of seconds, so if you don’t grab their attention instantly, there’s no hope of getting a sale. Ironically, this is even more the case at this time, when there are more people shopping on the Internet; people are impatient and want to find what they need quickly. Unless your site offers exactly what they are looking for, they will be gone before you know it. In this article, I would like to put forward five tips which will help you grab the attention of your visitors, and ultimately get more sales this Christmas.

Top Tip #1 – Banners – Put a classy banner on your site which promotes the item(s) which you think offer the highest value to your viewers. In this case ‘highest value’ has nothing to do with price, but more to do with quality. First impressions are key, and if you show your viewers your highest quality items, they will be more likely to purchase other things from you. Don’t overdo it with banners though, any more than 2 or 3 on a page and most people will get fed up of your site, as they think it’s spam.

Top Tip #2 – Testimonials – Studies have shown that people are more likely to buy something when it has been positively reviewed or recommended by another person. Put testimonials from your customers on your product page and again not more that 2 clicks away from your purchase page. Make sure the testimonials are varied, and if you do not have any real ones, make them up. Take care to make sure they don’t sound fabricated or over-promotional. Only publish testimonials which favour your products.

Top Tip #3 – Security – Make sure you emphasise how secure your site is, and if you require any details from your customer on your own site (such as credit card details or address), you should have an SSL certificate installed on your site. This certificate encrypts details before they are transmitted over the Internet and establishes trust for your company. Most of the major website hosts provide SSL certificates for reasonable prices.

Top Tip #4 – Discount Coupon Code – The classic favourite of online merchants is the discount coupon code. A sure way to entice visitors and make them buy from you is to do a ‘Christmas Special’ where you offer customers a discount when they enter a special coupon code that you provide. This is great when done through email as people will forward it to their friends to let them have the saving as well. This will promote your site as well as get you sales. I would highly recommend this tip!

Top Tip #5 – Catchy Headlines – Make sure all your headlines are catchy and attention-grabbing, especially the h1 and h2 headlines (the main ones on the page). The headlines should tell the reader exactly what the page is about and should be kept short. Remember what I said earlier about people deciding whether to stay on a site or not within seconds? Well, the headline is normally what influences the decision. So, go ahead and make it short, snappy and enticing and you can buy yourself that extra time for visitors to browse your site.

These tips are just the tip of the iceberg (no pun intended) when it comes to getting more sales from your website. If you really sit down and work out some of your own strategies as well as using the ones presented here, you could be surprised at how your sales rocket over the Christmas period!

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Microsoft launched its search engine, named Bing, on June 3rd 2009, and it was not long before it made its way into the ‘Big 3′ of the search engine world, just under the likes of Yahoo! and the famous Google, in first place with a whopping 69.9% search engine market share (as of April. 2010), compared to the 15.0% held by Yahoo! and the 9.6% which Bing occupied.

On August 24th 2010, Yahoo! publically announced that its search engine results were going to be officially powered by Bing in the very near future. This was an attempt by both Microsoft and Yahoo! to join together in combatting Google’s influence as the biggest and most well-known search engine on the market. This transition has already completed successfully in the U.S. and Canada, with the company stating that other territories will follow soon. What does this mean? Well, in my view, this has effectively taken Yahoo! out of the equation, and strengthened Bing. The only real rival to Google at this point in time, is Bing – whatever incarnation it poses as.

Several new developments have taken place, with both Google and Bing attempting to provide the better experience and results to the greatest audience. As discussed below, users, and more importantly the younger, social-network generation of users are the ones that the search engines are trying their utmost to win over. In this article, I hope to shed some light on the Google vs Bing scenario, and hopefully help you to understand more about the competition that exists between them both.

Bing Hits Out for Round 1… – Facebook & Bing Integration – Bing is integrated into Facebook’s search box, and Facebook has also been feeding out data to Bing, allowing users of Bing search public Facebook postings. Recently, the connection between Facebook and Bing was strengthened, with Bing now showing embedded ‘likes’ within their search results. So, for example, if you search for ‘Nokia N8′, there will be a module in the search results showing related links that your friends have shared on Facebook about that particular phone.

Google Set for Round 2… – Google Me? – Google has tried to get its foot in the social networking scene in the past, namely by introducing Google Buzz. However, it was slow to take off, and hasn’t had the impact the company hoped for. Google may have learnt from its mistakes and there are rumours that the company is working on its own social networking site, dubbed ‘Google Me’. However, neither Google or Facebook have confirmed this. If it was to go ahead though, it would be a major step for Google, and could be a substantial blow to Bing.

A Facebook Search Engine?… – If Facebook had launched its own search engine, this article would have probably been named ‘Google vs Facebook’. It stands to reason that with several million users, Facebook would have a great following for a search engine, that would undoubtedly overpower Bing and certainly rival Google. However, it is very unlikely that there will be a Facebook search engine in the future, as Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, has reportedly said that Facebook is uninterested of providing search itself.

Who’s the stronger competitor then? I’d put my money on Google. Google is still quite ahead of Bing in terms of search engine market share, however Bing is getting scarily closer to Google with every update that Microsoft reveals. Maybe Facebook, the social networking giant, holds the key to who comes out on top of the search engine wars. At the moment, it is fair to say that Facebook is being more open towards Bing, which isn’t really that much of a surprise, considering that Microsoft own a share of Facebook. There is no doubt, however, that Google is a long, long way away from being out of the game.

Who knows? It could all change, and you’re in the right place, because this blog will keep you updated in the future.

As mentioned in a previous article: ‘7 Ways To Promote Your Website This Christmas‘, at this time of year, SEO is incredibly important, as there is a lot of evidence to show that Google and other search engines update their databases and ranking information at the turn of the New Year. One important aspect of SEO is links, in particular, links back to your site from other people’s sites. In this article I hope to show you a few great methods of obtaining relevant, high-quality backlinks to your site.

For those of you who already know about the structure of links, feel free to skip over this paragraph, but for those of you who don’t, or who want to refresh your memory, here’s a bit of information about the format of HTML links. A standard link is in the format: <a href="..url..">anchor</a>. The ‘..url..’ bit is the destination url where the link points to, and the ‘anchor’ is a bit of text describing the website. For example, the code: <a href="http://www.best-website-directory.com/">Best Website Directory</a> creates a link which looks like this: Best Website Directory.

Every time you insert a link on a web page of your site pointing to someone else’s site, Google and other search engines record it in their database as a ‘vote’ for that site. It’s easiest to think of the Internet as a popularity contest. Every site is a person and the person who gets the most ‘votes’ from other people is the most popular. What does this mean then? In theory, the more links (votes) you have from other sites, the better your search engine ranking. However, in practice, that is not the case…

We’ve all heard of the saying: ‘quality not quantity’. Search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing adhere to this principle. What does that mean? Well, ten high-quality, relevant backlinks will be of more benefit to your site than a thousand low-quality backlinks. Taking the example of the popularity contest again, if a person were to get a vote from the King, that would mean more than getting a vote from a normal person. It’s the same on the Internet – a link from a well known site is worth more than one from a normal site or link farm.

So, now on to the main topic of the article – how can you get relevant, high-quality backlinks to your website? Here are my top three tips:

1. High-Quality Web Directories – Submit your site to high-quality large web directories such as Dmoz, Yahoo Directory and smaller ones such as JoeAnt, and Best Website Directory. These links are extremely valued by search engines and are relatively easy to obtain, normally you just have to submit your details on their website and wait until they accept you. Note that some web directories charge a fee for inclusion, but if the directory is high-quality, it will be totally worth paying for a listing there.

2. Target Related Websites – Years of research has shown that the best links to have are from websites with related content to yours. For example, if you ran an online shop selling shoes, it would be of great benefit to have a link from a site for example, selling clothes. The idea is to target high-quality related websites and ask them if they will link to you. Often, they will accept on the condition that you also link back to them (this is called a link exchange). Send out a few emails to the webmasters of these sites complementing them on their website and record the results of how many emails you sent out vs how many successful links you obtained.

3. Get .Edu and .Gov Links – All the major search engines respect links from sites ending in .edu (Schools/Universities) and .gov (Government Authorities) more than other sites. It is quite hard to get links from these sites, however it is possible. Commenting on blogs on these sites is normally the best way to get links. You must make very educated comments though, as they tend to have very high moderation standards. Do a search on google for: ‘site:.edu inurl:blog “post a comment” -”comments closed” -”you must be logged in”’ (without the ‘ ‘ marks). Also try the previous search, replacing .edu with .gov.

Finally, you can always check how many links you have obtained by using free services such as Google Webmaster Tools, or by searching Google for your domain name in quotes and seeing what sites are listed there. For example: “www.example.com”. Overall, just remember that it’s about quality and not quantity, so focus on obtaining links that really matter, as these will pay off in the long run. Make sure you set out a strategy of obtaining links and carry out lots of research into what methods work and what don’t. I hope these tips have been helpful and you have enjoyed reading this article!

With Christmas only a matter of weeks away, you might be wondering what you can do promotion-wise to take advantage of the festive season. Below you will find 7 useful tips which will help you to promote, get sales and traffic to your website this Christmas.

1. Special Offers – If your site sells a product or service, making a special offer for the Christmas season is one of the best ways to get sales and promote your website. For example give 15% off with a special coupon code. People who see the offer might tell their friends about it, who will tell their friends and so on. This is a type of viral marketing, and is sure to get you known!

2. Decorate Your Site – Many people forget to take advantage of Christmas to spice up their website a bit. It’s a sure way to get people interested, because it is something different. For example, take a look at one of my sites, Universal Converter. Normally it is themed dark blue, but with a bit of decoration, it is suddenly very current to the time of year. Even if you just decorate your homepage, it shows people that you care about your site and product/service which makes them more likely to visit it more often.

3. Release a Christmas Update – This one’s more for those who sell computer software or other product. Release a Christmas update of your product and then follow the next tip (#4) on this list, using social networks to tell people about the update. With the example of my site above, a Christmas update has just been released which added lots of new valuable features. Christmas updates are really great because they give your customers something to look forward to, which ultimately makes them recommend you to others. Try it!

4. Social Networks – Christmas is the one time of year that I would advise prioritising social networking above almost all else. Of course, social networking and bookmarking is always important, but at Christmas, you can really get the word out there about the updates you have made to your site, product, service etc, not to mention that a lot of people are normally on social networks around this time of year. Be active on Facebook and Twitter, forums and anywhere where you can chat to people and recommend your site!

5. Blogs – As a bit of a follow on from the point above, blogs are also a great way to promote your site, not just at Christmas, mind, but all throughout the year. Start a blog on any topic you like, preferably something you know about, and write useful articles. Slip in a link here and there to your main site and you could easily get some good traffic. Also, make intelligent comments on other people’s blogs – they normally have a place to enter your website url. This is a good way of getting backlinks and promoting your site.

6. Update Your Content – Nothing pleases the search engines more than fresh, unique content on your site, and it also pleases visitors too, and makes them want to visit your site often. Publish news articles, put blog posts on your home page (like on Best Website Directory), whatever you do, make sure it’s unique, useful and makes sense. The search engine spider bots will visit your site more often if they see that your content is regularly updated, and you could stand to improve in your search engine rank!

7. SEO Big Time – I have always strongly recommended that you spend the last few weeks of the year concentrating on SEO. Why? Well, I have a theory that Google and other search engines perform a bit of an ‘update’ at the turn of the New Year. Not only do they update toolbar pagerank (which isn’t that much of a big deal), but you can really gain in your search engine rank if you concentrate on a few seo techniques before the beginning of 2011. There will be a post next week addressing seo and backlinking techniques. Look out for it!

I hope that these tips have helped you in promoting, getting traffic and sales from your website this Christmas. Don’t miss out – take advantage of the Christmas season to make great progress and stand head and shoulders above the crowd!

Forums are without doubt one of the best ways to get traffic to your website and heaps of backlinks without doing that much work. In this article I hope to show you how to fully utilise the power of forums, and there is a list of dos and don’ts at the end for quick reference.

First of all, what is a forum? Okay, maybe that’s a bit of an easy question to answer, but as with everything in website promotion, we must analyse even simple elements so that we can really use them to our advantage. Back in Roman times, a forum was a ‘public space in the middle of a Roman city’ where people would sell items and meet up to socialise. The word ‘forum’ in its Internet sense, is generally accepted to mean a niche-specific community where people can post and reply to comments about a topic, and interact with each other.

In case you are a bit confused by the term ‘niche-specific’, it just means that it is targeted to a specific topic, such as cars, or cooking. In this case, both ‘cars’ and ‘cooking’ are niches. If you are a webmaster, you may be part of some webmaster forums such as the famous DigitalPoint forum. DigitalPoint will be discussed further later on in this article.

So now we know what a forum is, let’s get into the real stuff of how you can use forums to promote your website. First of all, you must choose a forum that you like and can imagine yourself spending some time on posting. It should also be relevant to your website’s topic. For example, if you are promoting a ‘cooking’ website, don’t think of promoting your website on a ‘cars’ forum. To find forums related to your site do a search on google for “‘…’ + ‘forums’”. Replace ‘…’ with a keyword related to your site such as ‘cooking’.

Once you have picked a forum, you have to sign up to it. The registration process varies depending on the forum, but in general you have to fill out some information and get emailed your login details. Forum registration will be free 99.99% of the time, so don’t worry about having to pay money. After you have logged in successful it’s time to update your profile.

You should now update your profile. Again, this may vary from forum to forum, but your profile normally has space to enter a forum ‘signature’ or your website address. A signature is added onto the end of every message you post on the forum and is the best way of promoting your site on forums. In the signature field you should put a link to your website. If there is a website address field on your profile, then fill that out too.

Note: Some forums require you to have posted a minimum amount of times before you can add a signature. If this is the case, then just read on and come back to this step later.

It’s time to get posting. Remember, don’t spam. Never spam. You’ll get kicked off or banned, and then you’ve wasted all of your time. Make intelligent posts, and hopefully if you’ve chosen a relevant forum, you’ll know the topic pretty well. Don’t focus on promotion at the moment, just answer questions, post comments, anything to try and get up your reputation. If you’ve already got a signature, then that should show up at the end of each of your posts which counts as a backlink each time. If you have yet to get a signature because of minimum post requirements, fill it in when you have reached that number of posts.

If you are stuck choosing a forum, then I would recommend you check out DigitalPoint. You can get a load of traffic through this site and it is very respected in the search engine’s eyes.

Here are a list of forum dos and don’ts:

Do…

• Add a link to your website in your signature
• Post informative/intelligent comments
• Visit the forum often

Don’t…

• Sound artificial/promotional in your comments
• Add a link to your website and then disappear
• Be inactive on the forum

If you have the time, sign up to more than one forum so that you get more chances of getting traffic and backlinks. Post on your chosen forum(s) often, and each time you’ll receive an extra backlink with your post. Also, try and get a good reputation by making informative posts, as this will make people want to check out your site. Always remember, to be successful, promote your website in other ways as well as forums, such as submitting it to web directories such as Best Website Directory. I wish you the best of luck and happy posting!

Keywords are the heart of every SEO campaign, and in my opinion, they aren’t limited to just SEO; keywords are the heart of your whole website itself. Most people think keywords are just for search engines, but in reality keywords reinforce the subject matter of your website in your readers’ minds, so they know exactly what your site is about in a relatively short amount of time. If you don’t target the correct keywords, your site will probably fail to achieve its goal, whatever that may be.

Now, before you go on, please take the time to re-read the paragraph above again. Why, you ask? Well, the concept above is, in my opinion, one of the most important in the whole business of successfully promoting a website, and it is important to understand the importance of keywords fairly soon into website promotion. Keywords are often overlooked as a means to get a higher ranking in search engines, but hopefully by reading this article, you will see that keywords are much more than that, and realise that there is somewhat of an art to choosing the perfect keywords.

If I asked you: ‘What is this blog post about?’, I’m fairly certain your reply would be ‘it’s about keywords’. How do I know that? Well, of course you can tell by looking at the title that the article is obviously going to be about keywords. But let’s disregard the title. If you cast your eyes back over what I’ve said so far, what word keeps being repeated? (it’s key to this article). Yes, you got it – the word ‘keyword’ is repeated fairly often. So we can say that the ‘keyword’ of this article is the word ‘keyword’. I know that’s a bit of a tongue-twister.

A keyword in its essence is just a word that is directly relevant to the content of a site. In general a keyword should be:

1. Direct and to-the-point
2. Relevant to the content of the site
3. Repeated often in the course of normal dialogue

The first two points are discussed in more detail at the bottom of this article, however I do wish to expand now on the third point. There is a reason I put ‘normal dialogue’ instead of something like ‘normal text’. I have always found that the most success of placing keywords strategically in a webpage comes when you think of the text being spoken as if you were talking to someone. When you actually read the text out loud, it will sound odd if you have your keyword repeated every two or so words. For example, if your keyword was ‘crisps’, the wrong way to do it would be to say:

We sell crisps that are crispy and are the best crisps in the world. Our crisps are great and we know you won’t find any better crisps anywhere.

However, this is significantly better:

We sell crisps which taste lovely and are the best in the world. Our crisps are great and we know you won’t find any which are better!

Repeating a keyword once per sentence is almost always enough. Twice at the most. But any more than that and it starts to sound artificial. Remember that keywords are to reinforce the subject matter in the reader’s mind, not only for search engines. So, follow the rule of reading it out loud and if it sounds natural, that’s good, and if it doesn’t, modify the sentence and re-read.

Right, so now to conclude this article I will answer the question I know you’ve been asking all the way through this. How do you choose the perfect keywords? Here are a few tips:

Make sure the keyword(s) are direct and to-the-point – The keywords you choose should be direct and not vague. The more precise the better. So if you are selling summer hats from the 1950s, choose something like ‘summer hat 1950′ as your keywords instead of ‘hats’.

Make sure the keyword(s) are relevant to the site content – This is pretty much common sense. Don’t pick the keyword ‘stationery’ if you are selling package holidays. Make sure the keywords are directly relevant to your site itself.

Target a group of keywords instead of just one – It is always much better to target a group of keywords, not only because that makes the keywords more ‘to-the-point’ and attracts a targeted audience but also, in doing so you automatically target the individual keywords too. For example, by targeting ‘Best Website Directory‘, I am automatically targeting the keywords ‘Best Website Directory’, ‘Website Directory’ and ‘Site Directory’ because they are all part of the words ‘Best Website Directory’. Very useful.

There is an art to picking relevant, direct keywords to target. Don’t be afraid to experiment and see what works and what doesn’t. Remember to target a group of keywords if you can, rather than just one. Three or four words normally works best. I wish you every success in choosing the perfect keywords for your site!

If I were to name the most tedious thing about promoting a website, I would have to say it is directory submissions. Now, it’s common knowledge that submitting your website to various directories is a great way of getting backlinks and traffic to your website, but the problem is – there are literally thousands of directories out there and each submission must be done manually. Well, at least, you used to have to do it manually…

Recently, I stumbled upon a great online tool called EasySubmits, which drastically reduces the amount of time and effort you need to put into submitting your site to web directories. After your enter your information, submitting to directories is as easy as clicking a button. It’s very easy to use, and the process can be broken down into three easy steps:

1. Sign up to the service at EasySubmits.com
2. Enter your website details such as name, url, description, keywords etc.
3. Click on the name of the directory you want to submit to. Your website’s information is already filled in for you and you only have to click ‘Continue’.

Once you have entered the details of your site, you can submit it to each directory and track the progress. EasySubmits will show you the list of directories that you have visited before, directories that you still need to visit, directories that approved your site and other useful information. As mentioned, it will prefill all the information for you, so you never have to type a thing!

There is no doubt that directory submission is a must for all website owners, and never has it been easier than using EasySubmits free directory submission service.

We’ve all seen that little green bar that fills up when you visit different web pages. Have you ever asked yourself ‘what does it really mean’? Does PageRank really matter? Surely the only people that value it are the scammers selling text links? In this article I will try and give my view on Google PageRank and the potential questions it raises. I’ll refer to PageRank from now on as ‘PR’.

Around two years ago, I created a site – Universal Converter which is a typical software retail site, free trial download and purchase etc. As a sort of ‘experiment’ I did not intentionally start link building straight away, all I did was optimise my site SEO-wise for the search engines. Where am I going with this, you ask? Well, I wanted to see what sort of PR this site would get, with (Alexa quote) – 4 links back to it. Yes, just 4, from very unnoticeable sites.

Before I go any further I wish to clarify that there are two types of PageRank. The first type is not visible and is calculated all the time. I’ll call it ‘real PR’. It determines your actual ranking on the google SERPs. The second type is called Toolbar PageRank, which is basically the little green bar on the Google Toolbar that fills up to different levels depending on the site you’re viewing. This can often be months out of date because Toolbar PageRank is updated globally by Google every 3-4 months or so.

Pretty quickly, the site in question got a Toolbar PR of 3. This got me thinking. I was expecting to achieve a PR of maybe 1, after all I’ve seen sites with many more links than I had get less PR. Now, any of you with experience in Link Building or SEO will probably be saying ‘your site had a good link structure so the PR collected on the homepage’ and anyone with no experience in Link Building or SEO will probably be saying ‘only a PR of 3?…’. Well, I took this example to show that maybe links aren’t the only contributor to Toolbar PR. Sound radical? Well, maybe.

Google was founded on the premise that the amount and more importantly the quality of links a site has, the better that site and so the higher the PR. Now, PR, as you may or may not know, flows like a liquid, so that if I link to someone’s site from mine, it’s as if I’m pouring my liquid into another person’s beaker. I lose a bit of PR and the other site gains a bit. What does this mean then? Well basically, it is better to get a link from a site with relatively low PR and few outbound links than a site with relatively high PR and a lot of outbound links. This is because in the latter case the PR will be distributed among a lot of sites so your site will actually not get a lot of that site’s PR.

Earlier, I mentioned something rather strange. I said that there could be ‘other factors’ apart from links that affected PR, specifically Toolbar PR. I invite you to do a test. Try to build a site that has a good rank in the search engines (within the first two pages) for a relatively manageable keyword. Only try to get a few links though. Well now you probably think I’m totally crazy but try it. Given the example of my site earlier, I was ranked about #6 in Google for the keyword ‘Universal Converter’, but had only 4 links. My point is that there is evidence to show that you cannot help but get Toolbar PR if you have a good natural search engine result position. Maybe the ‘other factors’ that affect Toolbar PR are the same ones that affect your natural search position?

Too many people nowadays just focus on getting more Toolbar PR. And who can blame them? It’s the only real visual indicator you have of how well your site is ranking. However, our real focus should be on getting true ranking in the search engines. Scammers and people selling text links often quote their PR to get people to hand over their cash. Beware, they sometimes manipulate the PR. Other times, their sites are ones that have been recently dropped by  previous owners and re-registered, while regaining the PR of before.

So, does Google PageRank matter? Well, the truth is, Toolbar PR doesn’t matter, but real PR does. If you want my advice, ignore the green pixels on the toolbar. Concentrate on getting real PageRank through optimising your site for search engines and promoting your website correctly by for example, submitting it to web directories such as Best Website Directory. Believe me, it’s the best way to go.

According to a survey carried out by Netcraft, as of December 2009 there were approximately 233.8 million websites available on the world wide web. I know what you’re thinking… that’s a hell of a lot of websites. And indeed it is. If you’ve just created a website, you will probably want to know what you can do to get it noticed. The answer lies in promoting your website. Below are 10 great tips which will help you get started.

1) Word-of-Mouth – This is probably one of the easiest ways to promote your website. Word-of-mouth promotion can really help get the traffic flowing. Start with your close friends and family, and tell them to tell other people about your website. Maybe send out a few emails to people in your address book. You may be surprised at the results!

2) Forum Signatures – Forum signatures are a great way to get a free link back to your site and promote it at the same time. Sign up to a forum about a topic related to your website, and spend some time being an ‘active’ poster, for example posting answers to questions. Most modern forums/discussion boards give an option to insert a custom signature. Put a link back to your site here. This way, every time you post a new message, your link will appear at the bottom of your post. This will help your site get a better search engine position!

3) Reciprocal Links – Links back to your site are important and search engines such as Google love them. Look for sites about a topic related to yours. Send an email to the webmasters of the sites asking them if they would like to participate in a link exchange. If they agree, place a link to their site from yours and check that they have done the same. Beware that some may play dirty and remove the link back to your site, so keep checking that they still link back to you often!

4) Write an Article about your Product or Service – Articles are a great way to spread the word about your site and get links. Write a medium length (450-700 word) article about your product or service and look for article distribution services on the Internet. Some services such as Free Traffic System will distribute your article and post it on other people’s blogs. Make sure you include a link back to your site inside your article.

5) Create a Blog – Create a blog about the topic your website is based on. There are free services out there such as Blogger and WordPress which are great for making blogs. Make sure your blog doesn’t look like it’s promoting your product/service directly, but rather make it informative and useful. Write an article a few times a week (or every day if you have the chance) and post it on your blog. You can include a link to your main website inside the blog post. Also, you should tell people about your blog on social networking sites such as Twitter or Facebook. Read #7 on this list for more info.

6) Write a Press Release & Contact Local Press – There are some free services on the Internet which allow you to submit a press release about an event. You can write about the launch of your website. When you have created this press release, look for press release distribution services. Another idea is to contact your local newspaper press and ask them if they would consider writing about your website. Always remember that offline promotion is as important as online promotion!

7) Submit your Website/Blog to Social Bookmarking Sites – Social bookmarking sites such as Digg or Reddit allow you to recommend a website to other people all over the world. If used correctly, social bookmarking can be a great source of traffic. I would highly recommend StumbleUpon, a social bookmarking service which will get you targeted visitors in any niche. By submitting your main website and blog posts to StumbleUpon, you can easily get > 100 visitors to your website/blog each day!

8) Submit your Website to Search Engines – Most of the search engines now have a submission form where you can submit the url of your site to their index. You must be patient though, sometimes it can take a few months for you to be included in their listings. Make sure you’ve covered all of the main ones – Google, Yahoo and Bing, as well as some of the lesser known ones as they can give quite good traffic too. Needless to say, your site should have a good SEO score (this will be talked about in a future blog post).

9) Start a PPC Advertising Campaign – PPC, or pay-per-click advertising is a great way for a new website to gain traffic. With PPC, your website is advertised to people who search using specific keywords and you only pay when someone clicks through to your site. Google Ads is probably the best PPC service out there, and lets you set a budget that you are comfortable with.

10) Submit your Site to Web Directories – Last, but by no means least, you should always submit your website to web directories. These are sites which list your url either for free or for a small cost. They can be a good source of traffic and the backlink will help your PR score. The most famous web directory is Dmoz, and I would recommend submitting your site there as well as other good general directories such as this one – Best Website Directory. Note that with Dmoz, it can take up to 6 months to get indexed, so be patient!

Promoting your website is neither an easy nor a quick task. Persistence is key. Do not be afraid to be creative and devise your own strategies to advertise your site. I hope these tips have been helpful and wish you every success in promoting your website!