Free Links With Directories

Submitting your website to web directories is a good way to improve your site rank, and this in turn will improve your search engine position. The following list is grouped according to their Google page rank. And the best part is that there’s NO NEED FOR RECIPROCAL LINKS.

All directories, submitted here are 100% qualitative great directories with high PR and Alexa statistics. A collection of the best web directories found on the Internet.

To get you started, submit your site to my web directory (a top 50,000 site) MovieDigg. Then submit your site to the following websites…

1.   DMOZ
2.   Jayde
3.   My Green Corner
4    The Living Link
5.   Can Links
6.   Search Sight
7.   Free Website Directory
8.   Miri Black
9.   Niche Listings
10. Esearch Research
11. Master Moz Directory
12. Domaining
13. Londovor
14. The Shoppings
15. Ldmstudio Directory
16. Directory Dice
17. SEO Court
18. Publimix Directory
19. Arakne Links
20. Dir Submission
21. Websites Promo Directory
22. Environment Page Directory
23. Directory Vault
24. Little Web Directory
25. Directory 365
26. 123 Hit Links
27. A List Sites
28. Sam’s Directory
29. Creative Agency
30. Prolink Directory
31. All Link Directory
32. Zunch Directory
33. One Mission
34. Wiki Web
35. Xakami Directory
36. Anaximander Directory
37. Invo Website Link Collection
38. Making Money Library
39. 474 Directory
40. Name Directory
41. YHAY Directory
42. Ask Bee Directory
43. Monster Directory
44. PakAd Trader
45. Treshella
46. Dream Submitting Directory
47. Exo Spy Directory
48. Nick’s Year Directory
49. Name Directory
50. Directory-free
51. directorydash
52. exactseek
53. Weserd
54. Seo Friendly Directory 4u
55. Aardvark
56. Security Climate
57. Surf Safely
58. My Training Hub
59. Phantis
60. Cheetosokumaodasi Directory
61. Eliteweb
62. SONICSYN
63. WUDSES General Web Directory
64. Twtoymuseum.com
65. Femeba Directory
66. Culaciati-Libros.com
67. Smalandoland.com
68. Fast Eign Web Resource Directory
69. ZoocK Directory
70. CANLinks Directory
71. Etup.org Link Directory
72. xzswhj.com
73. Global Markings Directory
74. Pro Link Directory
75. SudNET Directory
76. Chronos Directory
77. MedRanks Directory
80. InfoListings Directory

Submitting your site to these directories should help your sites page rank increase several points!!!

Do you know of any other great high PR directories not on this list? Leave your comments for us using the form below.

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There are many SEO companies claiming credit for their large brand clients jumping from obscurity to a top 5 ranking for a big generic keyword, saying that they predicted the change and have been actively optimizing towards it for months. Ask them exactly what they have been doing and you won’t get a straightforward answer.

We can guess at a lot of the signals but a lot of the sites ranking for major terms seems to be doing so for absolutely no reason at all. Some of the pages don’t even have any of the target keywords in the title tag and others have zero inbound links. Google is using some kind of unknown algorithm to give pages a boost and nobody in the SEO industry knows what it is. That’s a pretty worrying state of affairs.

My initial thoughts are that it’s a combination of the following factors:

• Search volume for the brand
• Direct traffic to the brand site
• Mentions of the brand name online in trusted sources
• Homepage links from highly trusted sites (BBC, CNN etc)
• Does the site have a long standing Wikipedia page (just an idea, but why not?)
• Number of times brand has been mentioned in the news recently
• Trusted links to the target page
• Trusted links to the entire domain

The problem with some of these factors is that they are totally uncontrollable by an average SEO company working on link building and on-page optimization. Companies spend years building up brand awareness with high street stores, PR campaigns, TV advertising, celebrity endorsements and sponsorship. These are things that can’t be implemented by an SEO company on a 12 month contract.

At the moment the fact nobody in the industry seems to understand the new algorithm isn’t really a major problem because it applies to so few keywords (although the keywords are high volume ones). The big problem comes when Google rolls out this brand algorithm to every single generic and mid-tail keyword and kills the rankings for thousands of non-brand sites in the process. That’s when the non-brand sites will start to ask the question – what on earth are we going to do?

One theory is that non-brands need to invest more in content & social media which is quite true although I’m not sure whether that will be enough to compete with a brand site.

The more useful content you can provide on your site, the more use it is to visitors, and therefore the more it will be talked about elsewhere and referenced; enabling it to become a known brand. Lesser known brands need to concentrate on brand awareness, putting emphasis on using social media to push themselves as recognized specialists in their sector, and understanding their position and standing in that sector’s network. Such brands should create good content and promote themselves with creative and interesting marketing ideas to create uplift in brand awareness. Get people talking about your site; post-Vince, there is even more chance that this will feed your rankings.

Another analysis of the top 30 results for “car insurance” shows that the external mozRank is quite well correlated with rankings which is good news because mozRank is directly controllable by an SEO company.

From this graph Richard concludes:

Inbound anchor text (100% pure or containing other terms) remains a strong ranking factor with emphasis on the quality of the inbound link passing value via that anchor text

All valid points but I’m sure there must be something more to it than content & links.

What’s really happening

A very powerful theory is that Google is using increasingly complex methods of evaluating link & query data together and that this is giving brands much higher trust. The Document Scoring Based on Link-based Criteria patent filed by Google in 2006 lists Matt Cutts as an inventor and describes how

A system may determine time-varying behavior of links pointing to a document, generate a score for the document based, at least in part, on the time-varying behavior of the links pointing to the document, and rank the document with regard to at least one other document based, at least in part, on the score.

The associated thread at WMW should be required reading for any SEO but I will summarize the patent below as well.

[0043] Consider the example of a document with an inception date of yesterday that is referenced by 10 back links. This document may be scored higher by search engine 125 than a document with an inception date of 10 years ago that is referenced by 100 back links because the rate of link growth for the former is relatively higher than the latter. While a spiky rate of growth in the number of back links may be a factor used by search engine 125 to score documents, it may also signal an attempt to spam search engine 125. Accordingly, in this situation, search engine 125 may actually lower the score of a document(s) to reduce the effect of spamming.

In plain English: New content can sometimes be given a boost but it depends on the query. Spiky link growth can be good but only if associated with a spike in search volume too (see my QDF post).

[0045] In one implementation, search engine 125 may modify the link-based score of a document as follows: H=L/log (F+2), where H may refer to the history-adjusted link score, L may refer to the link score given to the document, which can be derived using any known link scoring technique (e.g., the scoring technique described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,285,999) that assigns a score to a document based on links to/from the document, and F may refer to elapsed time measured from the inception date associated with the document (or a window within this period).

[0046] For some queries, older documents may be more favorable than newer ones. As a result, it may be beneficial to adjust the score of a document based on the difference (in age) from the average age of the result set. In other words, search engine 125 may determine the age of each of the documents in a result set (e.g., using their inception dates), determine the average age of the documents, and modify the scores of the documents (either positively or negatively) based on a difference between the documents’ age and the average age.

In plain English: Google knows that newer documents will have less links than older ones and takes this into account in the algorithm. Older documents that regularly attract new links are going to rank better than older documents that don’t attract new links.

[0049] In one implementation, search engine 125 may generate a content update score (U) as follows: U=f(UF,UA), where f may refer to a function, such as a sum or weighted sum, UF may refer to an update frequency score that represents how often a document (or page) is updated, and UA may refer to an update amount score that represents how much the document (or page) has changed over time. UF may be determined in a number of ways, including as an average time between updates, the number of updates in a given time period, etc

[0051] According to one exemplary implementation, UA may be determined as a function of differently weighted portions of document content. For instance, content deemed to be unimportant if updated/changed, such as Javascript, comments, advertisements, navigational elements, boilerplate material, or date/time tags, may be given relatively little weight or even ignored altogether when determining UA. On the other hand, content deemed to be important if updated/changed (e.g., more often, more recently, more extensively, etc.), such as the title or anchor text associated with the forward links, could be given more weight than changes to other content when determining UA.

In plain English: Google looks at whether the important body content of documents is being updated and if a certain query requires fresh results the algorithm will favour documents that are updated on a regular basis.

[0053] In some situations, data storage resources may be insufficient to store the documents when monitoring the documents for content changes. In this case, search engine 125 may store representations of the documents and monitor these representations for changes. For example, search engine 125 may store “signatures” of documents instead of the (entire) documents themselves to detect changes to document content. In this case, search engine 125 may store a term vector for a document (or page) and monitor it for relatively large changes. According to another implementation, search engine 125 may store and monitor a relatively small portion (e.g., a few terms) of the documents that are determined to be important or the most frequently occurring (excluding “stop words”).

[0054] According to yet another implementation, search engine 125 may store a summary or other representation of a document and monitor this information for changes. According to a further implementation, search engine 125 may generate a similarity hash (which may be used to detect near-duplication of a document) for the document and monitor it for changes. A change in a similarity hash may be considered to indicate a relatively large change in its associated document. In other implementations, yet other techniques may be used to monitor documents for changes. In situations where adequate data storage resources exist, the full documents may be stored and used to determine changes rather than some representation of the documents.

In plain English: Google stores every iteration of a page as it changes over time but to save on storage space they only store a representation or signature of the document rather than the entire document.

[0055] For some queries, documents with content that has not recently changed may be more favorable than documents with content that has recently changed.

In plain English: Sometimes Google lowers the rankings of pages that are changed on a regular basis – probably on a query basis.

[0057] According to an implementation consistent with the principles of the invention, one or more query-based factors may be used to generate (or alter) a score associated with a document. For example, one query-based factor may relate to the extent to which a document is selected over time when the document is included in a set of search results. In this case, search engine 125 might score documents selected relatively more often/increasingly by users higher than other documents.

In plain English: If a search result achieves a higher than average click through rate then it may be given a higher ranking.

[0058] Another query-based factor may relate to the occurrence of certain search terms appearing in queries over time. A particular set of search terms may increasingly appear in queries over a period of time. For example, terms relating to a “hot” topic that is gaining/has gained popularity or a breaking news event would conceivably appear frequently over a period of time. In this case, search engine 125 may score documents associated with these search terms (or queries) higher than documents not associated with these terms.

In plain English: A hot topic triggers the Query Deserves Freshness algorithm and gives a boost to topical documents.

[0063] Yet another query-based factor may relate to the extent to which a document appears in results for different queries. In other words, the entropy of queries for one or more documents may be monitored and used as a basis for scoring. For example, if a particular document appears as a hit for a discordant set of queries, this may (though not necessarily) be considered a signal that the document is spam, in which case search engine 125 may score the document relatively lower.

In plain English: If a page starts ranking for more queries than Google thinks it deserves then the algorithm will lower the rankings.

[0068] By analyzing the change in the number or rate of increase/decrease of back links to a document (or page) over time, search engine 125 may derive a valuable signal of how fresh the document is. For example, if such analysis is reflected by a curve that is dropping off, this may signal that the document may be stale (e.g., no longer updated, diminished in importance, superceded by another document, etc.).

In plain English: If you build a lot of links to a document and then slow down that link building the document could appear stale and rankings will drop off.

[0070] For the purpose of illustration, consider y =10 and two documents (web sites in this example) that were both first found 100 days ago. For the first site, 10% of the links were found less than 10 days ago, while for the second site 0% of the links were found less than 10 days ago (in other words, they were all found earlier). In this case, the metric results in 0.1 for site A and 0 for site B. The metric may be scaled appropriately. In another exemplary implementation, the metric may be modified by performing a relatively more detailed analysis of the distribution of link dates. For example, models may be built that predict if a particular distribution signifies a particular type of site (e.g., a site that is no longer updated, increasing or decreasing in popularity, superceded, etc.).

In plain English: Google looks at the rate of link growth over time to indicate whether a document is fresh and can then increase or reduce rankings depending on the query.

[0075] The dates that links appear can also be used to detect “spam,” where owners of documents or their colleagues create links to their own document for the purpose of boosting the score assigned by a search engine. A typical, “legitimate” document attracts back links slowly. A large spike in the quantity of back links may signal a topical phenomenon (e.g., the CDC web site may develop many links quickly after an outbreak, such as SARS), or signal attempts to spam a search engine (to obtain a higher ranking and, thus, better placement in search results) by exchanging links, purchasing links, or gaining links from documents without editorial discretion on making links. Examples of documents that give links without editorial discretion include guest books, referrer logs, and “free for all” pages that let anyone add a link to a document.

In plain English: If a document gets a spike in link growth without being involved in some kind of newsworthy event then the links will be devalued as possible spam.

[0076] According to a further implementation, the analysis may depend on the date that links disappear. The disappearance of many links can mean that the document to which these links point is stale (e.g., no longer being updated or has been superseded by another document). For example, search engine 125 may monitor the date at which one or more links to a document disappear, the number of links that disappear in a given window of time, or some other time-varying decrease in the number of links (or links/updates to the documents containing such links) to a document to identify documents that may be considered stale. Once a document has been determined to be stale, the links contained in that document may be discounted or ignored by search engine 125 when determining scores for documents pointed to by the links.

In plain English: If a page starts to lose links for example if rented links are not renewed then that page will appear stale and may lose rankings. A link from a document that is judged to be stale can be devalued also.

[0080] Alternatively, if the content of a document changes such that it differs significantly from the anchor text associated with its back links, then the domain associated with the document may have changed significantly (completely) from a previous incarnation. This may occur when a domain expires and a different party purchases the domain. Because anchor text is often considered to be part of the document to which its associated link points, the domain may show up in search results for queries that are no longer on topic. This is an undesirable result.

In plain English: Google looks at a change in anchor text in the same way as a change in a document or website. Be careful if you buy an old site and start altering anchor text in internal or external links.

[0084] According to an implementation consistent with the principles of the invention, information relating to traffic associated with a document over time may be used to generate (or alter) a score associated with the document. For example, search engine 125 may monitor the time-varying characteristics of traffic to, or other “use” of, a document by one or more users. A large reduction in traffic may indicate that a document may be stale (e.g., no longer be updated or may be superseded by another document).

In plain English: A document that gets a lot of traffic is given a boost, a document that loses traffic is regarded as stale and has rankings lowered.

[0086] Additionally, or alternatively, search engine 125 may monitor time-varying characteristics relating to “advertising traffic” for a particular document. For example, search engine 125 may monitor one or a combination of the following factors: (1) the extent to and rate at which advertisements are presented or updated by a given document over time; (2) the quality of the advertisers (e.g., a document whose advertisements refer/link to documents known to search engine 125 over time to have relatively high traffic and trust, such as amazon.com, may be given relatively more weight than those documents whose advertisements refer to low traffic/untrustworthy documents, such as a pornographic site); and (3) the extent to which the advertisements generate user traffic to the documents to which they relate (e.g., their click-through rate). Search engine 125 may use these time-varying characteristics relating to advertising traffic to score the document.

In plain English: Google may reduce or increase rankings depending on how trusted the sites advertising on a particular site are and how much traffic you are sending to them. If you display adverts for Amazon and send them a lot of traffic then you are given a boost. Seems far fetched.

[0089] If a document is returned for a certain query and over time, or within a given time window, users spend either more or less time on average on the document given the same or similar query, then this may be used as an indication that the document is fresh or stale, respectively. For example, assume that the query “Riverview swimming schedule” returns a document with the title “Riverview Swimming Schedule.” Assume further that users used to spend 30 seconds accessing it, but now every user that selects the document only spends a few seconds accessing it. Search engine 125 may use this information to determine that the document is stale (i.e., contains an outdated swimming schedule) and score the document accordingly.

In plain English: Google looks at bounce rates and how long users spend looking at pages to determine whether the page is a good result or not.

[0093] Certain signals may be used to distinguish between illegitimate and legitimate domains. For example, domains can be renewed up to a period of 10 years. Valuable (legitimate) domains are often paid for several years in advance, while doorway (illegitimate) domains rarely are used for more than a year. Therefore, the date when a domain expires in the future can be used as a factor in predicting the legitimacy of a domain and, thus, the documents associated therewith.

[0094] Also, or alternatively, the domain name server (DNS) record for a domain may be monitored to predict whether a domain is legitimate. The DNS record contains details of who registered the domain, administrative and technical addresses, and the addresses of name servers (i.e., servers that resolve the domain name into an IP address). By analyzing this data over time for a domain, illegitimate domains may be identified. For instance, search engine 125 may monitor whether physically correct address information exists over a period of time, whether contact information for the domain changes relatively often, whether there is a relatively high number of changes between different name servers and hosting companies, etc. In one implementation, a list of known-bad contact information, name servers, and/or IP addresses may be identified, stored, and used in predicting the legitimacy of a domain and, thus, the documents associated therewith.

In plain English: Google looks for signals of trust in your domain registration data. Most legitimate companies will be OK here.

[0097] According to an implementation consistent with the principles of the invention, information relating to prior rankings of a document may be used to generate (or alter) a score associated with the document. For example, search engine 125 may monitor the time-varying ranking of a document in response to search queries provided to search engine 125. Search engine 125 may determine that a document that jumps in rankings across many queries might be a topical document or it could signal an attempt to spam search engine 125.

In plain English: If Google notices a site gaining rankings too fast then it will be held back unless the document is considered topical. Probably why building rankings for ecommerce pages takes a long time.

[0099] A query set (e.g., of commercial queries) can be repeated, and documents that gained more than M % in the rankings may be flagged or the percentage growth in ranking may be used as a signal in determining scores for the documents. For example, search engine 125 may determine that a query is likely commercial if the average (median) score of the top results is relatively high and there is a significant amount of change in the top results from month to month. Search engine 125 may also monitor churn as an indication of a commercial query. For commercial queries, the likelihood of spam is higher, so search engine 125 may treat documents associated therewith accordingly.

In plain English: Google is more careful with commercial queries and won’t let sites gain rankings too fast.

[0102] In addition, or alternatively, search engine 125 may monitor the ranks of documents over time to detect sudden spikes in the ranks of the documents. A spike may indicate either a topical phenomenon (e.g., a hot topic) or an attempt to spam search engine 125 by, for example, trading or purchasing links. Search engine 125 may take measures to prevent spam attempts by, for example, employing hysteresis to allow a rank to grow at a certain rate. In another implementation, the rank for a given document may be allowed a certain maximum threshold of growth over a predefined window of time. As a further measure to differentiate a document related to a topical phenomenon from a spam document, search engine 125 may consider mentions of the document in news articles, discussion groups, etc. on the theory that spam documents will not be mentioned, for example, in the news. Any or a combination of these techniques may be used to curtail spamming attempts.

[0103] It may be possible for search engine 125 to make exceptions for documents that are determined to be authoritative in some respect, such as government documents, web directories (e.g., Yahoo), and documents that have shown a relatively steady and high rank over time. For example, if an unusual spike in the number or rate of increase of links to an authoritative document occurs, then search engine 125 may consider such a document not to be spam and, thus, allow a relatively high or even no threshold for (growth of) its rank (over time).

In plain English: It’s almost impossible to improve rankings faster than Google wants you to – only way around this is to do link building as part of a news/buzz campaign to make them appear natural.

[0106] According to an implementation consistent with the principles of the invention, user maintained or generated data may be used to generate (or alter) a score associated with a document. For example, search engine 125 may monitor data maintained or generated by a user, such as “bookmarks,” “favorites,” or other types of data that may provide some indication of documents favored by, or of interest to, the user. Search engine 125 may obtain this data either directly (e.g., via a browser assistant) or indirectly (e.g., via a browser). Search engine 125 may then analyze over time a number of bookmarks/favorites to which a document is associated to determine the importance of the document.

In plain English: Google may look at how many people add a certain site/page to their browser favorites / bookmarks and use this as a signal of trust. The rate of addition & deletion of the favourites is also looked at.

[0108] In an alternative implementation, other types of user data that may indicate an increase or decrease in user interest in a particular document over time may be used by search engine 125 to score the document. For example, the “temp” or cache files associated with users could be monitored by search engine 125 to identify whether there is an increase or decrease in a document being added over time. Similarly, cookies associated with a particular document might be monitored by search engine 125 to determine whether there is an upward or downward trend in interest in the document.

In plain English: Google might be looking at your history & cache to see which sites you visit and giving those sites a boost.

[0110] According to an implementation consistent with the principles of the invention, information regarding unique words, bigrams, and phrases in anchor text may be used to generate (or alter) a score associated with a document. For example, search engine 125 may monitor web (or link) graphs and their behavior over time and use this information for scoring, spam detection, or other purposes. Naturally developed web graphs typically involve independent decisions. Synthetically generated web graphs, which are usually indicative of an intent to spam, are based on coordinated decisions, causing the profile of growth in anchor words/bigrams/phrases to likely be relatively spiky.

[0111] One reason for such spikiness may be the addition of a large number of identical anchors from many documents. Another possibility may be the addition of deliberately different anchors from a lot of documents. Search engine 125 may monitor the anchors and factor them into scoring a document to which their associated links point. For example, search engine 125 may cap the impact of suspect anchors on the score of the associated document. Alternatively, search engine 125 may use a continuous scale for the likelihood of synthetic generation and derive a multiplicative factor to scale the score for the document.

In plain English: Unnatural anchor text growth is a signal of spam and Google will reduce the value of the links accordingly. Natural links with a range of anchor texts are better.

[0114] A sudden growth in the number of apparently independent peers, incoming and/or outgoing, with a large number of links to individual documents may indicate a potentially synthetic web graph, which is an indicator of an attempt to spam. This indication may be strengthened if the growth corresponds to anchor text that is unusually coherent or discordant. This information can be used to demote the impact of such links, when used with a link-based scoring technique, either as a binary decision item (e.g., demote the score by a fixed amount) or a multiplicative factor.

In plain English: A site gaining lots of links from unrelated sites with the same anchor text has the value of those links reduced.

[0117] A significant change over time in the set of topics associated with a document may indicate that the document has changed owners and previous document indicators, such as score, anchor text, etc., are no longer reliable. Similarly, a spike in the number of topics could indicate spam. For example, if a particular document is associated with a set of one or more topics over what may be considered a “stable” period of time and then a (sudden) spike occurs in the number of topics associated with the document, this may be an indication that the document has been taken over as a “doorway” document. Another indication may include the disappearance of the original topics associated with the document. If one or more of these situations are detected, then search engine 125 may reduce the relative score of such documents and/or the links, anchor text, or other data associated the document.

In plain English: If a site starts producing a lot of off-topic content Google may reduce the trust of that site.

What this all means

Google is using hundreds of signals and not all of them are within our control. We need to be smart and use huge amounts of intelligence with link-building to avoid documents being labeled as stale. Don’t go out and build loads of links for new documents because you can’t keep the same rate of linkbuilding going – start slow and build up naturally.

If you want to build links then you have to build them as part of a buzz/PR campaign otherwise they are going to be devalued. Any increase in links or attempt to improve rankings needs to be done for a reason – you can’t do it in isolation.

I will leave you with a quote from Tedster at WMW who sums it up nicely:

Here’s my current idea. I believe that Google’s staff contains more statisticians than any other specialty. The algo is, more and more, driven by statistics and probability. These statisticians watch query data as well as backlink data. That’s what jumped out at me while re-reading this patent: backlinks PLUS queries.

Google’s statisticians know what queries currently show bursts of interest from the general public. They know what companies are getting navigational queries – and they know when any online business is truly growing in brand recognition. For example, queries like [company keyword] will start increasing if there is a real growing interest. We puzzle over “Update Vince”? How about defining “brand” by folding data on navigational queries into the ranking algo.

When backlink numbers start growing, then that new “interest” at the webmaster level should be supported by the general population’s query data. In other words, if the backlink growth is relatively “natural”, then it should show a certain statistical footprint.

If the spike in backlink growth is too far outside that statistical footprint, then Google will take steps to limit the effect of that apparent SERP manipulation.

The statistically normal expectations are, by this time, quite granular and gaining in sophistication. The patent I mentioned in the opening post lists many possible measures that Google can take to determine when patterns are outside the natural range. And they’re probably making many others we haven’t even guessed at.

This is my current brainstoring area, and it’s why I recommend the idea of ATTRACTING backlinks more than “building” them. Backlinks alone cannot create a statistically correct footprint for a growing, thriving website. Even though such a “dummied-up” impression has been a working tool for improved ranking in the past, it’s a tool whose future is getting more and more cloudy.

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Robert Enriquez has made a blog post about link juice leakage at SEOMoz. And I feel that it’s important to share with you.

If you have serious link juice leakage, then it will affect your search engine rankings a lot. Placing the nofollow link attribute on your website is a very important SEO technique to control and fix the flow of link juice and PageRank. Today I’m going to discuss about the top 9 link juice leakage.

#1 User Function And Admin Links

Login, signup, sign in, logout, register and any admin links are just providing user function. And there is no vital information on these pages and there is no value to index them in the search engines.

#2 Logo And Header Picture Links

You should nofollow logo and header picture links as there is no anchor text unless you get customers by images (tangible products).

#3 RSS Feed Links

Most of the blogs do provide a link to readers to subscribe to their RSS feeds. Not only it will give you link juice leakage issue, it will also create duplicate content. You want search engines to index your blog post but not RSS feeds.

#4 Archive Pages

There are various form of archive pages such as tag pages, category pages and archive pages. They all contain your blog post and are considered as duplicate content. Nofollow and noindex those archive pages if you do not want them to be indexed by search engines.

#5 Contact Us And Feedback Pages

Usually this page only contains a form that needs to be filled out. So there is no need to index this page.

#6 Copyright And Privacy Pages

These pages do not contain any relevant information to your website. So they should not be indexed as well.

#7 Comment Page

As the number of comments grow, the leaking of link juice tends to be serious. You can use nofollow link and canonical link to prevent it.

#8 Home Page Link

Home button is another issue which cause link juice leaking. Since the anchor text is ‘home’, there is no point to follow the link unless you’re selling a home.

There are 2 ways to handle this. First one is to change the anchor text to your keyword other than ‘home’. Second one is simply add the nofollow attribute to your link.

#9 Read More Link

In most of the blog, you can find the ‘read more’ link in the blog’s main page. This does not contribute the link juice to your blog post because the anchor is not your targeted keyword.

You can find this issue in my blog too. Actually I plan to make the change but I haven’t taken the action due to time constaint. I’ll do it in the near future to resolve this problem.

Conclusion

You should review your website now to find out how the link juice flows from one page to another no matter it is a blog or e-commerce site. By assigning the proper flow of your link juice and PageRank, you can have a much better search engine rankings. If not, your keyword rankings on search engine result pages will be greatly affected.

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If you have made major changes to your website and you found that your rankings have dropped off 30 to several hundreds positions, then it’s likely you’re in Google sandbox. You might think that it’s unfair. According to Google, the delay of inclusion of brand new websites is to encourage webmasters to build content instead of building mini-networks.

The Google sandbox is something beyond your control and you cannot avoid it. You cannot fight the sandbox. The only thing you can do is to adapt to it and patiently wait for time to pass and sandbox effect will be slowly disappeared. But there are a few steps you can apply to minimize the damage for new websites and new domains.

#1 Create Good And Relevant Content Actively

As time passes by, relevant and fresh content will take you to the top of search engine. Relevant content will make your website becomes authority in the industry. Not only that, fresh content will keep your readers coming back.

#2 Gather Quality Inbound Links

When getting inbound links, keep in mind that they need to be from trusted sources such as DMOZ, CNN or other reputable places. In addition, links coming from .edu and .gov domains might help because these domains are usually exempt from the sandbox filter. Build the links slowly and steadily instead of getting 100 links a day as it will kill your website completely without releasing from sandbox.

#3 Buy Old Or Expired Domains

Sandbox effect is more serious for new sites on new domains. If you’re buying old or expired domains and launch your new sites there, you’ll likely to experience less problems.

#4 Host On A Well Established Domain

Another solution is to host your new site on a subdomain of a well established domain such as wordpress.com and blogger.com. The sandbox effect is not so severe for new subdomains unless the domain itself is blacklisted. However subdomains on free hosts are generally not a good idea in terms of branding.

#5 Concentrate On Less Popular Keywords

The fact that your site is sandboxed doesn’t mean that it’s not indexed by Google at all. You website can still be on the top ranking of search engine results if you’re targeting less popular and competitive keywords. I’m always advice to target long tail keywords first for newly established websites while waiting to get to the top for the most lucrative keywords. This is the technique I have been using for this blog.

Conclusion

Although Google doesn’t confirm the existence of sandbox but many people have experience its effect. It’s often reminded that Google is not the only search engine or traffic generation source. We should create multiple stream of traffic to minimize the damage of Google sandbox. If you’re planning your SEO efforts, try to include other search engines. This will help to minimize the damages of the sandbox effect in addition to the 5 points mentioned above.

Please share with us what is your thought and your approach in minimizing the sandbox effect.

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On May 28, 2009 Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer introduced the digital world to their new incarnation of its search technology, Bing. All web users had access to Bing on June 3, 2009. Why did Microsoft change the search engine and how does that effect the search engine ranking your company already has achieved? Will your keyword ranking lose ranking?

The initial answer is quite easy to answer. Microsoft is desperate to grasp some of the market share that Google now has. Do the names Magellan, Open Text, Info Seek, Snap and Direct Hit sound familiar? These are all Search engines that Google has gobbled up in the last decade. In 2006 the market share for Google and Live Search were 49.2% and 9.6% respectively. At the time of Bings onset the market share of Google had grown to 72.4% and Live Search had fallen to just 6.3%. With the Google share so large and not slowing down, Microsoft had to make some changes to their search engine offering.

The second question is not so easily answered. At first glance, the rankings you and your SEO provider have achieved should not be affected. Some features of the new Bing are innovative and could garner an ease of use which could be beneficial to your website visitors. One main difference is the fact that Microsoft calls their latest endeavor a decision engine not a search engine. The main reason for the title alteration is that Bing is supposed to assist the user in making decisions by delivering the best results, presented in a more organized way to simplify key tasks and actually help you make decisions faster. There are features such as cash back on great products, and Price Predictor, which will tell the user when to buy an airline ticket in order to help get you the lowest. Bing will also offer compare and contrast features so your customer will be able to compare your product, price and shipping requirements against others. It could be wonderful for your business to have such features at the tip of the users fingers. A primary goal of all websites is for the consumer to make a wise choice|smart decision (the decision to buy) at a fast pace. Bing promises to do just that.

Something else to keep in mind is that Microsoft plans on spending between $80 million and $100 million promoting Bing. These numbers represent almost one quarter of their yearly advertising budget. This immense amount of advertising can only help all of those websites ranked on Bing. High rankings should translate into sales. It is like getting free advertising. Your SEO company should work very hard in the next year to increase your standings on Bing so you can take advantage of this advertising push.

Microsoft reports that your websites rankings may fluctuate a bit at first. They say that the rankings will stabilize in a short while. Since the searches are going to be more refined and narrowed, it is believed that URLs with hyphen separated words will have an initial advantage. But it is too early to analyze the results. We can only go by what Microsoft is telling us at this time.

Should you consider changing your SEO optimization strategy? It is always a good idea to speak with your professional, but at this time, probably not. Remember how small Bing’s percentage of the total search engine really is. A month into its launch, Bing’s share has grown to 8.23% of all searches. While this is not a great number, the upward trend can only help those websites rank well on Bing. Microsoft’s Bing has come quite far in a short amount of time. Last year the term that was searched the most|the most commonly searched term on Live Search was Google. After it had been unveiled, Steve Wozniak, the Apple co-founder called Bing astounding. All the speculation can only improve web traffic and hopefully improve web sales.