First off, what is DMOZ?

The official description:

“The Open Directory Project is the largest, most comprehensive human-edited directory of the Web. It is constructed and maintained by a vast, global community of volunteer editors.”

Basically where sites such as Google send a robot (spider) to systematically index (crawl) your site on a regular (or not so regular in some cases) basis - the ODP is different - It is totally dependent on its editors.

This is what happens:

You submit your site (URL, Description, Contact details) into a submission form - first you have to surf to a category that you think your site belongs. Each category has an editor who will check your submission for errors and omissions. They’ll pop over to your site to make sure you’re not submitting a site that has no relevance to their category. If all goes well they’ll approve the submission and your site should show up in the next update of the directory.

As DMOZ is loved by the search engines, you should get a backlink from them within 2 weeks to a couple of months.

Why does DMOZ have editors?

If they didn’t have editors the directory would be useless and full of spammy sites like most of the FFA (free for all) directories out there.

Put it this way - If you had a directory would you let people post just anything where they wanted? No, I guess you wouldn’t. DMOZ editors make an excellent contribution to the Internet as a whole - If you want to find an authority website on a subject - DMOZ is the place to go. Categorized, sensible listings, relevant and up to date.

Don’t be fooled into thinking that paying $50+ to lots of these new directories is a good deal, IMHO it isn’t. Most of them operate on the ‘Pump and Dump’ principle - Pump the directory full of links (making money along the way) - then Dump the directory by just leaving it to rot or by selling it, domain and all, to the highest bidder. Caveat emptor - buyer beware!

Just because DMOZ is free and sometimes can be difficult to get listed on - don’t be fooled into overlooking it’s true value in getting your site indexed. Most of the search engines use the fact that you’ve been listed by a human on DMOZ to establish your links worth - you’ll get a higher PR (page ranking). Oh by the way - DMOZ is old! It has stood the test of time - Highly revered and loved (and hated) by almost anyone who knows anything about the Internet.

This Article was written by Steve Dorrington (AKA CarpetDog). Steve regularly contributes to the Get Your Site Indexed blog. He’s also written an ebook called The 48 Hour Plan – How to get your website indexed in 48 hours or less.

Someone recently asked me - “Please look at my blog site - does it have a nice design?” I said yes it does, why do you ask?

He was concerned that the only people who come to his site repeatedly are the ones he either gives the link to (in an IM) or after he’s commented on their site. Here is my take on it…

Let’s say I can’t see the site, I would say that design isn’t really an issue with a blog - as long as it is appealing to the eye - people come to read what you’ve written not how it looks - unless you are going to have a template a day!

People say “content is king”, I disagree - you can fill your site with the same stuff other people are writing or you can come up with something unique. So “Great content is king”.

Commenting for comments basically means that you get someone type “nice blog” or “I agree” most of the time. Go find a blog that reflects/mirrors your own - something with maybe the same niche (stuff) as you have - send them an email, tell them you like their site and ask them if they want to trade stories/content/comments.

Do that with a few people in your niche and you get nice content without having to write it all yourself!

Onward and upwards

Steve Dorrington (AKA CarpetDog)

Believe it or not, you don’t actually have to directly submit your site to a search engine. More often than not it will come and find you from links on other sites.

They find you either from links on another site (this is called ‘organic’ traffic) or a direct submission to the search engines database using an ‘add url’ link on their site. You can also use a service or a piece of software that submits you to several (or thousands) search engines at once. Please do watch out for some directories as they tend to either send you spam themselves or sell your email address to others to spam you.

What types of places are there to submit my website?
Directories (free and paid). Search Engines. Individual sites. Free For All (FFA) pages.

What is the difference between a directory and a search engine?
In simple terms:

A directory only stores links that you or someone else submits to their database.
A search engine normally follows a link that you, or someone else submits and then looks at all the other links on that page and follows them one by one until they get a list of all the pages on your site (sometimes this is called spidering or crawling, hence the terms ‘I’ve been spidered or my website has been crawled’).

Search engine spiders very rarely crawl every page of your site – they do it in batches. Depending on how ‘important’ the spider thinks your site is, depends on how deep or how many pages it will crawl.

If you have a busy site with lots of visitors and you are adding content very regularly – the spider will come visiting more often and will crawl more pages.

Getting links back to your site from your friends or forums you visit often are very good ways of getting the search engines to come spider you more often.

It is all about popularity. The more popular your site is, the more the spiders love you.

This Article was written by Steve Dorrington (AKA CarpetDog). Steve regularly contributes to the Get Your Site Indexed blog. He’s also written an ebook called The 48 Hour Plan – How to get your website indexed in 48 hours or less.

You need to get your web site index by the search engines so people can find you!

If you were to think of your site as a shop on the high street of your local town - People would walk past, see your displays and shop front and maybe pop in. This however is not true for the web. The way the internet is made – there is no such thing as passing trade. You can have the best site in the universe. You can have a revolutionary product which will change the way millions of people search the internet. You could have a very important message that everyone should read – but no one will come if they don’t know where it is.

To get people to visit your site, to read your message, to buy your products they need to know where to find you. People need to know your website address, your URL or be able to follow a hyper link to your site.

How do we tell people about your site? Word of mouth? Yes, this works but you can only tell so many people face to face. Should you send out an email to a list of people you recently bought from someone on the internet (10,000 email addresses for $10)? In one simple word - NO – This is the easiest way for you to lose your website, your credibility, your hosting - even your email and internet account. This is called spam.

Even though you personally may get tons of spam in your mailbox each day doesn’t mean you should do it too. It is something protected by law. Yes, you can be in serious trouble if you spam. As a rule of thumb - Only email people who have either emailed you (not spam) or someone who has personally asked you to send them information of a particular type. It would be a waste of time sending someone an email about automobiles if they are only interested in stamp collecting. I know, there could be an exception to the rule where someone could be interested in stamps with automobiles on them.

Statistically most people visit web sites by searching for them in a search engine. The funny thing is, that even if someone knows your URL or website address, they still type it into a search engine. Almost everyone has either a search engine as their homepage or they use the one provided by their internet provider and that almost always has a search box provided by a search engine.

They type your URL into the search box and press enter. If you aren’t listed in the search engine they are using, guaranteed one of your competitors will be.

Just to summarize:

You need to get your web site indexed by the search engines so people can find you!

This Article was written by Steve Dorrington (AKA CarpetDog). Steve regularly contributes to the Get Your Site Indexed blog. He’s also written an ebook called The 48 Hour Plan – How to get your website indexed in 48 hours or less.

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My friend Luke has just unveiled a new web site called StumbleUpon Exchange.

If you’re not familiar with StumbleUpon, it’s a toolbar for your web browser that allows you to rate web sites and to also view web sites which other StumbleUpon members have rated.

As a visitor, StumbleUpon can provide you with almost endless amusement as you are taken to web sites which you would not otherwise be able to find. As a webmaster, StumbleUpon can be an incredibly effective tool for building web traffic.

StumbleUpon Exchange is a web site where webmasters can trade “Stumbles” with each other, which will result in increased traffic to both web sites.

I receive thousands of visitors from StumbleUpon every month. If you’re a webmaster, I recommend that you check out Luke’s new site.

Putting up a company would of course require a lot of things, to get straight to the point, you need a capital. To make money requires money as well. But of course, with the versatility the internet offers, there are many ways you could find that could help optimize the potential of your site or business in generating traffic.

While there are ways to jumpstart your traffic flows, many sites don’t have the resources that others have to generate more traffic for your site. Well, you don’t have to spend a cent; all you need is the proper mindset and a lot of eagerness. You also must have the drive and perseverance to do hard work and research to generate more traffic for your site.
Read the rest of this entry »

Establishing your own E-commerce site is not like what it used to be. There are thousands of competition that is all too willing to get a bigger share of the pie. Every scheme and method you can find to augment your sales would be very beneficial.

We have got to admit to ourselves. Most of us are into it for the money. We are not going to waste our time and effort just for the fun of it. Many sites would not wait until hell freezes over just to see their profits. While there are some who takes things lightly there are always those who would rather see profit any given day. Read the rest of this entry »