Search engine optimization or SEO is one of the most powerful strategies a business can deploy to attract customers. HubSpot estimates that over 70% of marketers are now investing in content marketing, so the importance of SEO is only going to increase.
Unfortunately, SEO is a confusing process, and people who were flabbergasted with SEO early on are still having trouble understanding search engines today.
Here are some things to remember when formulating your SEO Strategy.
Choose your directories carefully
Suppose you are going to hire a professional to conduct a manual search engine submission directory submission program. In that case, you want to make sure that your directory is listed correctly in all the major search engines, especially Google.
Not all directories offer the service of enabling cross-linking. Likewise, when directory submission services provide the option for a business's websites to rank in Google Maps, increased traffic implications are significant.
To evaluate where your business will show up on the web you may want to consider paying a marketing company to perform a rigorous analysis of your web pages, the links used to drive these pages to your site, and the incoming and outgoing links of your website.
Don't do any "keyword spamming"
These are the methods of optimizing your web pages to rank in Google by adding words or phrases to your webpage that are relevant to your business. If you overdo it in Google's eyes, Google can penalize you for it.
Your service provider, the people that most likely will perform SEO for your website, should only optimize your web pages based on proven techniques and methods that have been proven to work.
This includes:
- Using keywords in your directory of choice and ensuring all the directories and directories you submit to include your business on those directories.
- Providing the correct titles and descriptions when submitting to directories.
- Bookmarking your website/blog so that your subscribers and visitors can return to your website more easily.
- Providing quality content on your website for all of your visitors.
- Using website analytics.
Submit to directories!
Numerous directory websites pose as crawlers, but it is better for a service provider if all of your directories get crawled by humans so that the SEO report provided by them will look like it is not from Google.
As mentioned before, as a business owner, you may have some questions that you are unsure of. Naturally, you'll want the SEO report generated by your SEO specialist or company, so that you can tell if what they say is actually true.
Submitting to hundreds of web directories will be of no use. Submit to directories that you either know by reputation, by category (general directories that are great to submit to), or confident that a human will visit the directory and crawl it.
As always, submit only to directories that make it known up front that your website (or the business you represent) will be on one of these directories. If you are unsure, go to a few of the popular directories like DMOZ and Yahoo and ask to confirm that your business is there.
If you are not sure what directories to submit to, there are also some basic SEO practices that can be done.
Do not submit to just any directory
Most dangers you will face when getting your website on a directory. The worst is that you can get penalized by Google for any or all of the following reasons:
- Having too many inbound links.
- Having a Page Rank = 0. So make sure you read up on the Page Rank of now up to number 7 directories.
- Contrairement of websites that link to you.
- Don't submit to link farms, irrelevant directories or unrelated directories, neither do you decide which directories need to be submitted to or not.
Take your time, persevere with your SEO, go slow. Once you start enjoying the fruits of your hard work, you will know how SEO works.
