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 Issue #62 - February 7th, 2005 Internet Marketing Newsletter for Small Businesses
Brought to you by idesignbusiness.com http://www.idesignbusiness.com Issue # 62 Monday, February 7th, 2005 In this Issue: ARTICLES: FREE RESOURCE: Welcome to Issue # 62 of the Internet Marketing for Small Business Newsletter. By now every one understands it is critical to have your website listed in the major Search Engines to generate traffic. One commonly overlooked part of Search Engine Marketing is including your website in the Human-edited directories that exist. Directories are Search Engines are very different and take very different approaches to successfully be listed in each. This issue‘s article does a great job of explaining the difference between the two resources as well as provides submission tips for the large directories. Getting a listing in these directories and making sure it is accurate should be the first step to your Search Engine Submission process. We would love to hear any questions, comments, or ideas for future articles, just email us at newsletters@idesignbusiness.com Did you miss the last issue? You can always visit our idesignbusiness Internet Newsletter Archive and easily view and search all our past issues. Neal St. Clair idesignbusiness Advertisement Free Small Business Course Introducing the ProfitPuzzle provided free of charge from idesignbusiness. The ProfitPuzzle is a collection of more than 100 lessons and articles organized by subject. Refresh your business knowledge or explore new techniques to jump start your business and your motivation. Each business section includes action items you can apply to your business. Perfect for online businesses and traditional brick and mortar companies. Free Small Business Course ARTICLE How are Directories Different from Search Engines? By Craige Stacey Directories are important to your ranking and success with Search Engines. In a nutshell, search engines are completely automated and usually there is no need to submit. Directories all have human editors who review your site and you do have to submit to them to be listed. But you must submit the right way or you are wasting your time. If you think getting listed in search engines is slow, try directories. Getting listed in directories takes time but it is well worth it. One of the good things about getting listed in directories is that Google puts a LOT of weight on sites that are listed in directories. DMOZ is the most important one to Google (and therefore should be the most important one to you). Junk sites can get listed in the search engines, but try getting a junk site past one of the human directory editors. You can‘t even get useful sites that are poorly designed past the "eagle eyed" directory editors. Maybe that‘s why Google puts so much weight on sites that have achieved the status of being listed in directories. There are a LOT of directories, but there are only a few that you should bother with now. Here are the major directories www.DMOZ.org -- Free. Submit to DMOZ first. (DMOZ is also called "Open Directory Project" on their website). They take a LONG time to get your site listed, but do NOT resubmit or your site will go back to the bottom of the stack. To find out about the status of your site getting listed go to www.Resource-Zone.com and ask questions in the discussion forum directly to the DMOZ editors. www.Gimpsy.com -- Free or pay $20 for 72 hr. inclusion and higher ranking for 90 days. www.JoeAnt.com -- Pay $39.99 or become an editor and it‘s free. All editor applications are automatically approved. I suggest you become an editor. You‘ll learn a lot. www.GoGuides.org -- Pay $39.99 or become a "guide" (same as editor for other Directories) and it‘s free. www.Business.com -- $99 a year, but well worth it if you sell your products to businesses. You‘ll get a lot of interested and qualified traffic. www.Yahoo.com -- Yahoo is no longer worth the $299 a year fee in my opinion. Skip this one. Here‘s how to get listed in these major directories. Of course, you have to submit your URL to the directory to get listed, but before you do that consider the following steps: Don‘t jump the gun and submit a site that is under construction. Make sure your site is well designed, easy to use, has useful content, no spam, no tricks, no broken links, etc. A human editor is in charge of "widgets" and she wants all of the sites in her widgets section of the directory to be useful to the directory visitors. By all means spend a LOT of time reading the instruction of each directory before you submit. Don‘t rush to submit your site until you understand what the directory is looking for and how they want you to do it. Your directory title and description are very important to getting your site listed in the directory. They are also important after you‘re listed. Your title and description are what potential visitors to your site will see in the directory listings. Here are some tips for writing your title and description for directories. Do NOT use any marketing hype (Never use words like "best"). Stick to the facts. Be descriptive. Choose your most important keyword phrase, but don‘t try to stuff a lot of keywords in your title and description. Tricks will kill your chances of getting listed. The human editor has to like you and your site before your site will get listed. So follow the rules! The most important thing to do is to submit your site in the right category. Drill down to the most specific category you can. Look at your competitors. What category are they in? Look at the sites that are in the category you choose. Look at their titles and descriptions. You want to follow these examples, but you don‘t want to be exactly like these sites. Directories don‘t want sites that contain basically identical information to what‘s already in the directory. As soon as your site is completed submit it to DMOZ and get the clock to start ticking. A listing in DMOZ will automatically get you listed in the Google search engine and in the Google directory. Of course, you can get listed in the Google search engine much quicker by having incoming links from other sites, so don‘t wait on DMOZ to get you listed in the Google Search Engine. Do depend on it to get you listed in the Google Directory. A lot of people say they don‘t want to spend the effort trying to get listed in the directories because it could take three months. (I‘ve seen it get done in one month, but sometimes it has taken six months.) I know people who said this over a year ago. They could have had a much higher PageRank and a LOT more free traffic by now if they had spent a few hours back then submitting their sites to the directories. Some people make things happen. Some people watch things happen and some people wonder what happened. You have to make things happen if you want to get high rankings in the search engines. Craige Stacey has been studying search engines optimization as a hobby and has achieved some very good search engine positions in the past for membership software Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/ Advertisement Keep Your Website Fresh, Relevant and Up-to-Date Do you update your website on a regular basis? Fresh content is the number one thing that will bring people to your website and keep them coming for more. idesignbusiness offers comprehensive Website Maintenance plans to help you keep your website up to date. Have your own professional webmaster for less than $25 per month! We can handle all technical aspects of your website including updating text, images, links, databases and more. Contact us today for more information and rates for your website and needs. info@idesignbusiness.com FREE RESOURCE: Each issue of the Internet Marketing Newsletter for Small Businesses will include helpful free online resources to promote your websites. As discussed in the article above getting your website listed in DMOZ is a very important step in Search Engine Submission. DMOZ is the largest and most well-respected free directory on the web. A listing in DMOZ will greatly help your ranking in Google and many other Search Engines. Unfortunately, getting your website listed in DMOZ can be a long and frustrating process... All websites submitted to DMOZ are reviewed by human editors who can be very strict. You need to make sure you submit your website to the correct category and use an acceptable title and description for your website. The DMOZ editors have created a great resource for all of us that outlines the submission process and also includes a message board where you can determine the status of your submission. Resource-Zone.com is a great source of information about DMOZ and provides direct access to the DMOZ editors through the message boards. www.Resource-Zone.com ABOUT idesignbusiness idesignbusiness provides complete Internet services for small businesses including website design, website development, hosting and Internet marketing. Increase website traffic, build your customer base, and drive revenue using our cost-effective and result driven tools and services. Please visit http://www.idesignbusiness.com for more information. SUBSCRIPTION NOTICE This newsletter is only sent to opt-in subscribers. If at anytime you would like to be removed from this list, please send an e-mail to newsletters@idesignbusiness.com with REMOVE in the subject line or click on the remove link below. 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