• Blogging
  • Technology News
  • How To
  • Webmaster Tips

The Web Files

Web site promotion and marketing info, Helpful Tips, Latest Gadgets, News and Webdesign Services

  • Home
  • Blog
  • Archives
  • Links
  • About
  • Contact

You are here: Home / 2006 / Archives for September 2006

Archives for September 2006

Promoting your website

September 28, 2006 by Tricia

Which sites should you be sure to get listed in so that you will gain more visitors? Well, everyone wants visitors and being listed in the search engines won’t guarantee more visitors if you don’t have some half decent quality on your site, but it will certainly help.

Whenever I create a new website I go around to all of these sites and submit my url:


Google: This link takes you directly to the Google add your url page. You only need to submit the index page of your site. If you’ve set up your navigation on your page, created a sitemap on your site or by using Google Sitemaps, Google’s spiders will eventually crawl your whole site.

Yahoo: This link should take you directly to Yahoo’s free submit site page. You’ll need to sign in with your Yahoo I.D. in order to submit your site. Again, you only need to submit the top level page of your site to get Yahoo to begin spidering your site. Alta Vista, and All the Web pull their results from Yahoo’s Overture listings.

Yahoo Site Explorer – I’ve also listed all of my websites and Blogs on Yahoo Site explorer. You can list your site url and your site’s RSS feed in the explorer.

MSN Live Search URL Submission – I’ve found that sites get listed fairly quickly on the MSN search engines when I submit there.

DMOZ – Open Directory Project – A number of search engines pull their search results directly from the listings on DMOZ. Netscape, and AOL are among the popular search engines that now use the Open Directory Project. You’ll need to scroll through the DMOZ directory until you find an area that suits your site, and then submit or suggest your url in that area. It can take a long long time to get listed in DMOZ, but don’t give up hope.

MSN Submit It – get your site listed on MSN as well. I’ve found that when I submit my new sites to MSN they get picked up quickly.

If you have a blog you should submit to these sites as well:


Technorati
– If you want visitors this site is one of the best to get listed on if you have a blog. Sign up for an account at Technorati, and then select “Claim Blog” and follow the directions to get your site listed.

The Truth Laid Bare – Another important site to be listed on. Register for an account, and then add your blog. You’ll have to put some code on your site so that the Truth laid Bare site can track your blogs popularity and links in and out.

There are plenty more search engines and blog directories to list your sites in, but these are the ones to begin with, and in my opinion are the ones that are most important if you want to begin getting visitors.




Filed Under: Site Promotion Tagged With: DMOZ, Google, MSN, Open Directory, Promote site, search engine, Site Promotion, submit, Technorati, Truth Laid Bare, Yahoo, Yahoo Site Explorer

Increasing your link popularity

September 21, 2006 by Tricia

Why is increasing link popularity important when it comes to promoting your blog or website? Well, link popularity basically means that you have several people linking to your site. The more sites that link to your own, then the more popular your site is seen as being in the eyes of the search engines- particularly Google.

Understanding how Google works helps to some degree. Google has a very complex algorithm – and I don’t think anyone has managed to figure out exactly how it works, but people watching how Google works have come up with some pieces of the puzzle over time.

Of all the search engines Google tends to drive the most traffic to our websites. This is more than likely because it is one of the most popular search engines in use world wide.

Google looks at a websites on and off site factors in order to determine how the website should rank. Page Rank plays a part in how Google rates our sites, and page rank is basically how important Google thinks your page is on the internet as a whole. Page rank is not the be all and end all of Search engine optimization but some still consider it to be important even though it is much less important than it used to be.

What Google considers important these days is the links pointing to your site, what types of sources they come from and how many sites link to your own. Another part of Google’s algorithm that we’re still trying to understand is the quality of the page that the link is on relative your your website or the page that it’s directed to. By this we mean- is the site or page that links to your own similar in topic or genre to your own? We believe that Google considers this very important. Also -is the page a list of links, or is the link to your site contained within the text of the site.

So how do you get sites that are similar or complimentary to your own to link to you?

Some methods that people have used are to distribute press releases, purchase links from link brokers or to trade links with other websites. It’s said that the press release is the most effective way of increasing your link popularity but it can be difficult because the content of your press release or article must be interesting enough for others to want to write about your press release and thus your site.

Purchasing links is quick and easy but the links are usually listed on a page on a website and not within the text of the site so they don’t work quite as well. Also, Google apparently automatically removes the value of links when they are placed at the bottom of websites with a whole list of outbound links.

Trading links with other sites used to be the best method of gaining link popularity, and it can still be a very good method but you need to get links from sites with similar context as your own. Also, if your reciprocal link is on a page that lists a number of links it still won’t be of that much value. You need to try to exchange links with other sites in a manner that gets them to mention your site or pages of your site within an article on that site for the best value.

As has been said hundreds or thousands of times before the very best way to gain link popularity is to work on your sites content. Create content that makes people want to come back to your site for more.

It is also important that when other sites link to you that they use descriptive text in their links. For example if you are linking to a site don’t write something like xyz company is fantastic click here to visit the site, with the link text being click here. It would be far better to write out a descriptive sentence that is appropriate for the site and link to the word in the phrase that describes the site best. For example if xyz company sells bikes you might write “xyz company sells bikes and you can read articles on biking, and purchase bike accessories directly on the site” with a link to the work bike or bikes.

Filed Under: SEO Tagged With: algorithm, contextual link, Google, Link popularity, page rank, rank, search engine, SEO, text link

BlogAdvance Traffic Engine

September 14, 2006 by Tricia

Going on with my series on blog traffic engines I’d like to discuss BlogAdvance. I’ve seen this site go through a few changes since I joined.

When I first signed on they only gave 0.5 credits per blog view when you were surfing, but now they have upped it to 1 credit per blog viewed so the ratio is 1:1. You visit one site, one person visits yours.

I’m not sure how many members Blog Advance has right now, but I wish I got a few more blog views per day. Perhaps if I can entice you to join their service and actually surf blogs regularly we’ll all have our blogs viewed more often over there. I find that my Blog advance visitors stop and leave comments a little more often than my Bl0gexplosion visitors do. Bl0gAdvance also has a forum for members to talk and discuss just about anything to do with blogging.

One thing that I like about Blog Advance is that they occasionally have surfing contests and they give out cash awards to the top surfer. I haven’t won anything yet but I’ve come close!

Give Blogadvance a try –

Filed Under: Traffic exchange Tagged With: blog, Blogadvance, credits, new blogs, surf blogs, Traffic engine, Traffic exchange, visitors

Blogexplosion traffic engine

September 7, 2006 by Tricia

I’ve been using some of the popular blog traffic engines for my other blogs since February or so and I thought that it might be time to do a series discussing each traffic engine that I use, and how well they’ve worked for me.

One thing that I like about traffic engines in general is that you get to visit more blogs and if you take the time to stop and leave a valid comment on the sites you like they will often come and visit you. If you’re lucky you might gain a few extra loyal readers in this manner.

I’ll start with the first one that I joined. It’s called Bl0gexplosion. When I first joined I got quite a bit of traffic from the site, but it seems to have slowed down lately. I’m still getting about 15 to 20 views of each of my sites a day, but when I started I think I got about 30 views each day. Some new traffic engines opened up since I joined Bl0gexplosion and I don’t know if they took some of the members away from BE and if that’s why it’s slowed down a bit, or there are just so many members and so many blogs that the circulation per blog has slowed.

Features – They have a number of different features that allow you to earn credits. The main feature to earn credits is to surf other blogs. For each credit you earn gets your blog viewed by another surfer – once you assign your credits. You can also put your site into the blog rocket and have it visited from that area, Battle of the blogs- pit your blog against others and earn credits if you win. You can earn credits by voting on battles as well. This by far is my favorite feature of the site, and the main way that I earn credits there.

They also have forums where you can discuss a variety of topics and get help with the bl0gexplosion system if you are having a problem.

Give Blogexplosion a try –

Filed Under: Traffic exchange Tagged With: blog, blogexplosion, comment, credits, features, surf blogs, Traffic engine, Traffic exchange, visitors

DIY Search engine Optimization tips #2

September 1, 2006 by Tricia

Continued from DIY Search Engine Optimization Tips #1

6. When writing your articles or posts on your pages be sure to include important keywords and search phrases at the beginning, middle and end of the article.

If you are using good writing technique when composing your pages and articles you shouldn’t have a problem with this phase of SEO. As you might know, a well written article usually begins with a paragraph that describes what the body of the article will be about; the mid section of your article goes into more detail or greater depth regarding your initial statement in the first paragraph; the end of the article should come to a conclusion regarding the information you have discussed in the mid portion of the article.

Write naturally, but do remember to use terms within your post that might be used by people when they are searching for the type of information that your article contains.

7. Place your keywords and phrases in the link text of your web pages.

Keywords should be used in your links. When you are linking to another page or subpage on your site use a descriptive keyword or phrase to describe the clickable link. Don’t use terms like “click here” as that offers no description of what the link is for the search engines.

8. Make sure your site can be navigated easily by your visitors as well as search engines

When someone links to your site, or when you submit your site to a search engine it is often only the index page of the site that is given to the search engine. When the search engine visits your site it will index your main page. Your main page should contain some links that lead deeper into your site but if you have a javascript based navigation system the search engine spiders may not follow the links deep into your site as easily as if your links are text (html) based.

9. Build a site map page or use the Google sitemap option.

It’s important to get all of the pages on your site indexed by the search engines. Creating a page that contains links to all of the pages within your site, a sitemap, helps the search engine in this matter. As you probably know, visitors using your sitemap will be able to find items on your site easier as well.

You can create an xml version of your sitemap and submit it to Google Sitemaps. Google has links to third party XML sitemap creators in it’s Webmasters tools area. Once you’ve created your xml sitemap you can submit it to the sitemap area and googles spiders will visit your site on a regular basis depending upon how often you update your site.

10. Off-site optimization

Now that you know how to optimize your site, and write articles and sub pages for search engine optimization you should concentrate on off site optimization. Google places a high measure of importance as to where you site is ranked on factors such as how many other sites link to your page, the page rank of the sites linking to your site, and the type of sites linking to your site.

The best way to get off site links of course is to create a website with valuable information that will make others want to link to you. If you exchange links with other sites try to exchange links with sites that are similar to your own. For example if you have a gardening site you should attempt to link up with other gardening sites – of all types.

You can also write informative articles and get them published on other websites which will result in a link back to your site. This may also help increase the amount of visitors coming to your site as well. Submit your links to all of the main directories- Google, Yahoo, MSN, the Open directory, and directories that are perhaps related to your sites genre as well. Participate in forums in order to promote your site and perhaps get more visitors to your site as well.

All of the tips that I have listed should help you promote your site and get better rankings on the main search engines.

Filed Under: SEO, Site Promotion Tagged With: articles, descriptive keyword, Google, Keyword, MSN, optomize, page rank, search engine, SEO, submit links, write, writing, Yahoo

Connect with Us

  • Facebook
  • Flickr
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
  • RSS
  • Twitter

Categories


Eavestrough Cleaning Toronto

Recent Posts

  • Top Social Media Automation Tools Designed For Marketers
  • Social Selling: The Right Way to Sell Through Social Media
  • When in Doubt Turn to SEO Consulting
  • Considering using Guest Bloggers
  • Can you make money blogging? Yep
  • The World Of Blogging
  • Internet Marketing And Permission-Based Email Marketing

Recent Comments

  • Locked out my own sites by Bad Behavior plugin — The Web Files on The War on Comment Spam
  • AspDotNetStorefront E-commerce shopping cart — The Web Files on What Are The Best Ways To Make Money Using A Blog?
  • I changed my do follow plugin to Lucia’s Linky Love — Tricia's Musings on I’m not against website urls – I’m against comment spam
  • diagnosing comon windows errors on It’s important to backup your data regularly
  • Parol on Social Selling: The Right Way to Sell Through Social Media

Shopping

Gifts, Gadgets, computers and More! At our Amazon store.


Site Stats





Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.org

Archives

Blogroll

  • The Career Strategist
  • Eavestrough Cleaning Toronto

Other Sites

  • Celebrity Scoop 2
  • You are in My World Now
  • Amphibian Care
  • Breath of Life Photography
  • Guitar Licks

Search our Site

Pages

  • About
  • Archives
  • Become a Guest Blogger at The WebFiles
  • Blog
  • Canadian Bloggers
  • Contact
  • Disclosure
  • Do Follow Bloggers
  • Links
  • Privacy Policy
  • Toronto Bloggers

Tags

Affiliate article articles blog Blogger Blogging Blogroll blogs business comment comments computer CPU design easy email features Google How To install instructions Internet internet marketing Keyword page rank plugin plugins posts problem resources search engine SEO sites Software tech traffic Video visitors Web web host website Wordpress Wordpress Plugin write writing

Copyright © 2025 · News Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in