What is Directory Submission ?

Directory submission is still a powerful way to get quality backlinks from relevant high PR  free directory submission sites. You can get only approval by submitting into an appropriate category with the unique description, meta keywords, and best title, avoid to use more keywords or same description for all web directory sites.

 Types of Directory Submission

There are mainly three types of directory submission sites, but some webmasters define them in the form of doing submission like manual directory submission, automation directory submission and niche directory submission, etc..

Primary type of Directory Submission

1). Paid or Featured Listing

2). Free or Regular Listing

3). Regular Link with Reciprocal

Paid or Featured Listing: If you opt for paid listing, you need to pay to directory submission sites owner. The amount is depending on the directory submission sites. When you opt for paid listing, you get guaranteed approval of your directory since you have paid for them.

Free or Regular Listing: if you opt for a free directory listing, there is no guaranty for approval. And webmaster of directory submission site checks your directory submission info manually if he found everything is good, he approves since every day lots of sites are submitted, so it takes lots of time to get approval. Sometimes more than months. To increase chances for approval first read guidelines of directory submission sites since every directory submission has different guidelines. Some directories offer links permanent for free listing while some for a particular period.

Regular Link with Reciprocal: if you opt for Regular link with reciprocal, you need to give backlink them. It means they provide you a code and you need to paste that code into your website’s page to validate reciprocal link.

I suggest you to go with free or regular listing since Google hate paid links. 

What is the Importance of Directory Submission in SEO?


Bloggers and website owners make use of different SEO techniques, and directory submission is one of the popularly used methods. You may be giving time for commenting on blogs, guest post submission, forum posting, etc., but you may be forgetting the importance of directory submission. SEO is not an easy thing, and you won’t be able to rank unless you try out all the strategies.

Let me make you understand that why directory submission is considered important by most of the SEO experts.

1). Better Search Engine Ranking

You need to know that many popular web directory submission sites have got very good search engine ranking. The most important thing is making a list of these free directory submission sites with good ranking. By submitting your blog or website link to some of the highly ranked web directory submission website, you’ll definitely be able to make your blog posts rank better than before. If your competitors have not submitted their blog to the best web directory submission list, then you’ll be definitely able to get better search engine ranking for your blog posts.

2). Link Popularity

One of the reasons which is making many bloggers consider director submission important is that submitting to best free directory submission sites may boost the link popularity. By having some of the best incoming links to your blog, you’ll definitely be able to improve your blog’s ranking for many competitive keywords. Good number of backlinks from web directory submission sites have already developed the search engine ranking of many blogs.

3). Indexing of Pages and Blog Posts

Free Directory submission Sites helps in faster indexing of new blog posts and new web pages. By having more incoming links, search engines may be able to find your blog quickly. You shall be able to index all the new blog posts and web pages very easily by submitting your blog to the best free directory submission sites.

4). Drive More Traffic to Your Blog

Directories also help in getting more traffic as your content is promoted in the best way. You may be able to get some of the most interested readers through web directories. Some of the web directories may keep providing you some traffic regularly which may ultimately make your blog become a popular one. If you do not have readers who come again and again to your blog, then definitely you need to start doing directory submission now itself.

5). Improve Keyword Relevancy

Directory submission will help you in improving the keyword relevancy of your blog or website. This is possible because many directories will allow you to use your anchor text containing the primary keyword. By having the right anchor text for anchor listings, you’ll be able to get better keyword relevancy. When you make use of the right keywords in the anchor text, you’ll definitely be able to maintain the search engine ranking for the long term.

For getting all the advantages of directory submission, you need to give enough time for it. You’ll need to submit your site/blog to the right category of the particular web directories, provide the information required which includes description and keywords. The last thing you’ll need to do is that you’ll need to confirm the submission by checking your E-mail.

You may find some web directories allow free submission while some web directories are paid, and they ask for the submission fee. Paid web directories may provide you with more benefits than free web directories. If SEO is important to you, then start giving importance to directory submission for getting the best search engine ranking for the most competitive keywords.

Guidelines For Directory Submission

Every directory website has own guidelines. Only if you follow those, you can get approval. Mostly directory editors check directory submission manually to ensure you followed all instructions or avoid spamming. When you submit your blog or website, ensure you follow all following guidelines. I categorized guidelines into seven parts.

Title

Every directory has owned criteria. Mostly directly sites accept company name without including any keyword into the title. In this case, you should only use your official website name. Ex. My blog name is Update land.com. So Title is Update land. It doesn’t contain any keyword. It has only official blog name.

Few directory sites accept keywords into the description to describe the website. In this case, you should remember below points into your mind while doing directory submission.

Title should be relevant and descriptive.
Title should be meaningful and not stuffed with keywords.
Title doesn’t seem promotional.
Avoid the use of exclamation mark and repetition of keywords and avoid words like best, cheaper, good, No.1, etc
Title length should be between 20 to 50 character.
Description & Meta Description

Many times you do directory submission, but you get a few approval. Reason can be inaccurate description also. Below are some guidelines. Keep these points in mind while writing a description for directory submission.

 All points that are mentioned for the title, is also applied in description except title length.
Don’t mention pricing, phone number and address details, they can be vary according to time.
Avoid using etc., others, or even in description’s end.
Write more specific means that you website offer.(don’t stuff with keywords).
Keywords & Meta keywords

There are no special guidelines for keywords. Avoid to use the same keyword again. Keywords format: keyword1, keywords 2, keywords 3 …. Some directories allow spaces instead using a comma.

Category

Some people make silly mistakes choosing a category. Take some time and find the best category even you can check sub category also. You can found best sub category which best suite to your website. Some websites allow an option to suggest a category. If you don’t see any relevant category. Click on suggest category button and submit your site. If directory editor or owner found this category best suits your website and best for their directory. Your website is added to a new category.

URL/Domain

Most directories don’t be strict about URL. But make sure you follow below points.

Submit the URL into the correct format. Most directory sites accept URL into http://www.updateland.com. Only a few directories take without http:// means www.updateland.com. Some directories demand to add forward slash’/’ at the end of URL. When it is notified, add this. Otherwise, you can’t submit your website.
Do not submit parked domain websites that have no content or under construction.
Only submit home page URL unless specified for inner pages. Avoid use of index in the end of URL. The correct format is http://www.updatland.com.
Only a few directories accept hosted domain on free hosting services like updateland.blogspot.com or updatelamd.wordpress.com etc.
Email

Website Content

Mostly, websites are particular about website content. Make sure you follow all below points.

Don’t submit such websites which are under construction or coming soon. Make sure your website all pages have built before you do directory submission.

Don’t submit websites that have no content or mirror content.

Some directory sites are also particular about page and don’t accept single web page site. Make sure you site have few pages before you submit.

Step by Step Guide To Website Submission into Directory Site

1.) Visit Website

2.) Select Category

3.) Select Subcategory

4.) Click on Submit or Add listing option

4.) Now select directory listing type from free, paid and reciprocal option. You need to choose free, if you want instant approval go for paid option.

5.) Fill forum with all required information like title, website URL, meta description, keywords, meta keywords, description, name and email.

6.) After filling form click on continue or submit button that will be shown below the form.

7.) You will get a confirmation email from verification.Now time to open email account and click on the verification link in the mail.

8.) Directory Submission has been Done for your website.

How To Use Q&A Sites For SEO and Content Creation .

A lot of SEO predictions for 2011 were published in the end of 2010, while not many marketers mentioned the increasing popularity of Q&A sites. I think that it could be a great opportunity to exploit this new rising phenomenon for our marketing efforts while it's still fresh.

Why shouldn't you worry about Google's Content farm update?

I'm pretty sure that you're already familiarized with the Google's recent farmer update, and might think that Q&A sites are useless now. But if you take a closer look, there are a bunch of quality Q&A sites that did not suffer at all and can still be used for your marketing efforts. It's important to use only these kinds of sites as part of the following techniques, to get the most value for your efforts.

I believe that Google (and other search engines) should try and fit their offering to users according to changes on the web, so completely ignoring a rising concept such as Q&A platforms will be like shooting themselves in the foot.

What's a Q&A site and how does it work?

Before diving into the endless marketing opportunities of this concept, it's important to understand what a Q&A site is and how exactly it works. The simplest definition can be found in Wikipedia:

"A Q&A website is a website where the site creators use the images of pop culture icons to answer input from the site's visitors, usually in question/answer format."

While this definition mainly refers to the traditional type of Q&A sites, the whole concept refers to the following four groups:

Q&A sites comparison

This table highlights the main purpose and value of each group, and we will see how we can use each group in a different way. The following article will mainly concentrate on the potential of the first two groups – social and standard Q&A sites. Also, the examples for each group include only general websites and not niche oriented (which are of course useful for the following techniques).

Now that we have clearer picture of the different kinds of Q&A sites, let's see the top seven reasons to use them, in order to improve our online acquisition efforts.

1. Recent Trend: people google more questions than generic keywords

It doesn't necessarily mean that the search volume of generic keywords is higher. But we can clearly see that there's an extreme increase in the search volume of question quarries, while at the same time a slight decrease in the search volume of generic primary keywords. The most interesting fact of this phenomenon is that it happens with keywords from the same topic.

To visualize this data, I chose some competitive generic keywords and related questions for those keywords. Than compared with Google KW Tool the difference between their search volumes in 2010.

For example, here's a comparison between the search volume of both generic and questions quarries for iphone keywords (it's "exact" search):

generic keywords vs questions

2. QA sites have become much more popular in the last year

Another evidence for this phenomenon, can be found in the fact that the traffic to QA and "how to" sites has been dramatically on the rise in the last year. Using Compete comparison, we can see the yearly change among some of these sites (unique visitors):

Q&A sites traffic

This is a very interesting trend, which can tell us a lot about the evolution of our search habits. What does it say about our web search psychology? How will this change impact the search engine's relevancy algorithm?

While the content farm update "erased" some of these sites, there will probably be new alternatives that will take their place (the next point can explain why).

3. Q&A pages ranked high in search results

It seems that pages from QA sites rank pretty well in organic search results. These pages are highly on-page optimized for the main keywords, well engaged by the users and are continuously updated by users. Here are some reasons why these pages might rank high:

Search results variety – For each query, Google tends to offer different kinds of websites and content in the organic results, in order to diverse it's offering for users. So for example, if we will search "Michael Jackson", the search results will include links to different kinds of websites and content: Wikipedia, videos, music sites, magazine/news sites etc. Therefore, we can think of QA sites as an independent group of content, which might be ranked high for many queries.
Frequently updated content - people always love to share their knowledge by answering questions related to their area of expertise. Whether in forums, professional communities or QA sites. People will always add new comments/answers to such pages. And if new content is frequently generated – you can be sure that Google will be there to index it and prioritize it over "dead" pages. Another aspect that definitely contributes to the richness of the content is user engagement. Things like commenting, scoring and voting make these pages very valuable for users.
Well on-page optimization – most of these pages include various elements, which are an essential part of the on-page optimization factors (e.g. title, meta description, related tags and text). First of all, each one of these elements includes the main keywords of the specific question. Also, the internal linking structure supports the optimization level (e.g. "related questions" in each question page, "Recent answers" in user's profile, recent questions in main categories etc). For instance, take a look at a question page from Pro Webmasters:
on page optimization of Q&A page

Knowing that, you can simply search for the most relevant questions related to your keywords and start dropping useful answers. Of course in addition to your answers, you can place links within the text in a relevant context. This way, you can drive some really targeted traffic and increase your backlinks profile. It's better to start with QA pages that are already ranked high in SERPs, since they already have existing and relevant traffic.

questions with rankings

After dominating the 1st result page for your related terms, it's time to expand your sources by searching within the QA sites themselves. You can use Questionhub to save a lot of time. Questionhub is a giant aggregator that gathers questions from various QA sites around the web. Using Questionhub, you can find a lot of relevant Q&A pages in which you can leave answers and links to your site.

4. Great opportunity to diversify your backlinks profile

It's always recommended to include links from various kinds of websites in your backlinks profile, and not to concentrate just on one type (e.g. blogs, forums, news sites, social bookmarks/networks, static sites etc...). Basically there are two main reasons why you should get links from various sources:

Your campaign will look more natural – if all your links come from blogs for example, it definitely won't look natural. More likely to be flagged by Google. It's much more natural that people will link from various spots rather than only one type of sites.
Chances to gain more trust - Barry Schwartz referred to a video, in which Matt Cutts talked about the value of links from different segments of sites. In this video, Matt does seem to imply that Google is valuing links differently according to the type of the site.
If you expect to find some dofollow links with anchor text, you might be disappointed. But it doesn't matter as they will still be counted by Google (you can see them clearly in your webmaster tools account). And in any case, like I said before, it's a great opportunity to diverse your backlinks profile.

5. Pages that people prefer linking to

Let's say you wrote some really nice piece of content about car insurance for your blog. Since you want to make it useful for your users, you will link from it to external sources in a relevant context. But which pages will you probably link to? Will you link to some pages from commercial/corporation websites, or to some Q&A or "how to" pages? Let's assume for example that both options have the same relevancy to your content, and both deal with a narrow topic that you can't find on Wikipedia. I'm pretty sure that you will choose the 2nd option in such case.

Why do people prefer to link to such sources?

Psychology – The action of linking from our site to a corporate or commercial website may be interpreted as an act of solitude or identification between us and that said company. This might make us rule it out in at point blank, sub consciously. Therefore, there are high chances that Q&A pages will gain natural links.
Value – referring to Q&A and "how to" pages is much more valuable for users. Imagine yourself reading an interesting article and suddenly bumping into a link – wouldn't you prefer that it takes you to a neutral source that can assist you and teach you something new (or will expand existing knowledge)?
Easy to find – as I wrote before, Q&A and "how to" pages are ranked well in SERPs because of their high level of on-page optimization. The most common thing to do if we want to find the appropriate source to link to - is to search for it. If I want to link from a paragraph that deals with cooking thanksgiving turkey for example, I might search for "how to cook a turkey" and will probably get results from Q&A and "how to" sites.
easy to find such pages

Build your own Q&A asset and gain natural links

The best way to benefit from this behavior and attract links, is to establish your own Q&A property. This kind of asset can be built on a separate domain or on a subdomain/subfolder in your existing domain. There are a lot of free open source solutions for building such platforms, just choose one (it's pretty ironic that I naturally found the Q&A site which I'm linking to right now, using the same technique I've described in the previous paragraph J).

After establishing the platform, you should think about a keyword strategy that will assist you in focusing your content. It's better to have a targeted Q&A section with questions related to specific and narrow topics, rather than general ones. So for example if you have a hotel - website, focus your content only on this field by covering all related long tails. If all questions will be related to a specific topic, it will encourage users to use your platform because they will treat it as an authority source to get answers (will you prefer to ask about hotels in a dedicated or general source?). It will also encourage expert users to leave answers (ego?), especially if they have a business or a website in the hotel industry that they wish to promote.

Now that we know which keywords we should focus on, it's time to fill them with some initial questions/answers and spread the word. Here's a quick action items list that will assist you with this mission:

Publish about 10-20 initial questions that will include your main keywords. You can check in other popular Q&A sites what are the most common questions being asked, and imitate them. Also, it's highly recommended to concentrate on questions with low-middle competition in SERPs (only in the beginning of the process). A practical way to verify that, is to use the intitle:"your question" search operator in Google (more search operators that can help with narrowing your query).
Leave detailed answers to these questions. But don't do it at once, use a couple of hours interval so it will look more natural. If you want it to look even more natural, you can use different identities instead.
Drive traffic to your new section using social media (retweet new questions, share on facebook, email all your friends, link from your homepage, ask for reviews in forums etc). If it will bring value, I'm sure that shortly after launch, users will start asking and answering questions. And if the source will become an authority of a sort – links will soon follow.
6. Targeted traffic = better conversion

Imagine that you are a blackjack enthusiast, and next month you're traveling to Las Vegas for a vacation. Since this will be your first visit to Vegas, it's reasonable that you will search questions like "Which casino has the best blackjack game in Las Vegas". Chances are you will hit a Quora result:



In this page you will find some very informative answers from anonymous users, who describe various casinos in Vegas and even provide some blackjack tactics. In fact, this answer is so informative and insightful, that you just can't ignore it. I bet you also won't ignore the single link within the content, which refers to a blackjack strategy page:


Now when you click on the link, chances are high that you will also click on the affiliate banner in this blackjack website and the rest is history. Let's see how the funnel of this process looks like:

conversion funnel

You can use this technique for both link building efforts and traffic generation. But if you are looking only for SEO benefits, you should concentrate mainly on getting such links. While these kinds of links may be worthless in terms of link juice as they are not followed, but  they do have an alternative added value:

Traffic – if you leave such detailed answers with links in more than one question, it can bring you some really nice and targeted traffic.
Conversion – if the traffic is targeted to your niche, there are high chances that those users could become customers.
Link from a Q&A site – although in certain cases they are not followed, they are still counted in the overall backlinks calculation. And like I've mentioned before – it's a great way to diverse your backlinks profile.

What is your experience with Q&A sites?

The techniques shared in this article can improve your SEO campaign, especially in a competitive niche. If all your competitors are doing pretty much the same – this is a great chance to be prominent and bring something different to the table.

Ref- Moz.com

What is classified submission in seo

Classified submission is one of the most influential ways to let the world know your business and service. It includes SEO strategies for website promotion by driving potential buyers and generating sales for products or services. Internet is the place where you can find numerable classified sites and directories from where you can easily display ads on products or services. It has rendered the submission of classified ads to free classified directories into a much sought after service for website promotion in search engines. Classified submission service even helps to generate back links to push up websites’ search engine ranking is a competency of classified submission.

Classified Submission Guide


It has been proven by most websites and services that advertise or promote their services in the classifieds sites achieve better inquiries and boost their online sales level. Your website and your brand can enjoy these benefits. You can submit your website to free classified sites to increase your opportunity. Classified submission  provide greater result for online stores as well as offline stores.

How to do classified submission

At the time of submitting your website you need to excise discretion to avoid the black list of your website for being found free for all directories and paid link farms. There are multiple benefits you can gain from your Classified Submission Service. Once you have done with your classified submissions then your brand will be highly visible among the targeted audience. mostly free classified service searcher have specific yet immediate requirements, so here you can promote your website classified submission to free classified sites to reach near prospective customers. Another classified submission benefit that you will enjoy from Classified Submission is free one way links. Your website’s link popularity will improve greatly with Classified Submission Service.

When people search for your offered products or services, your listings appear in the search results. This again will increase the traffic rate to your website. So encourage the manual submission strategies to make your entire process search engine friendly.


classified submission guide

Whether it’s small business or the larger one, the internet marketing has changed the total scenario nowadays. Every day the changing business strategies are compelling companies to change their advertising strategies also to attract more to more customers. Though people understand the importance advertising budget but hardly few understands the true essence of allocating marketing dollars to internet marketing.

Classified submission divided as both online and offline according to their business requirements. Online classified ad submission has the same functionalities as offline classified ad submission. The only difference is online classified ads are easy to perform and very much affordable. Along with saving money you also save lots of time and energy through online classified submission.

In addition to time and money in many places your classified submission will also submit site to other classified sites for free or within small amount of cost. So here expenditures are very less than that of benefits.

Classified Submission enables you lists your website in local classified sites
Classified listing help people drive direct customers from local marketplace
Effective Classified Submission helps business owners get worthy backlinks
Inner pages of a website and portal are also allowed hence people can also promote their inner pages or product pages
It helps website owners improve their search engine ranking

Search Engine Optimization is consisting of multi-layer techniques and strategies to get the most out of online marketing. SEO through classified ads is an imperative positioning technique that will place you ahead of all your competitors. Classified submission  helps in SEO by promoting the traffic for your existing website. It automatically enhances links for website and to magnetize buyers towards your services.

SEO with classified ads creates a new medium to communicate among online users. Classified ads are provide more benefits when you know its exact placing, making more informative, convenient and beneficial. SEO classified is all about utilizing right strategies for speeding up your website with well positioned in search engine rankings.

how to do classified submission

List your website in local classified sites.
Classified submission listing will help you to drive direct visitors from local search.
Get unique backlinks from high quality Classified submission websites.
Service quality is updated as per new search engine guidelines.
Use your choice of Keywords for Classified submission.
The manual submission process will help you to produce high returns from classified submission.
Website Inner pages are allowed, so you can promote your website inner pages/product pages and service pages.
Improve your search engine ranking with our classified submission Service.

Prior to starting your classified submission here are some points that every web users must take into account.

Before start writing the ad, collect all the information that your clients want to include.
Compile all information of clients with all relevant information.
Include those information that compel visitors to keep reading and in the end buy products or services of clients.
Form your classified in a way that it tells all in the least number of words possible.
Use smart classified words like free, win, and phrases like “make big money” which clearer product or service in details to get more responses.classified submission guide
Here are the steps to enter into learning accurate strategies of Classified Submission service.


If you want to gain great online business, then go for the right classified websites for submission. Select those websites where most visitors land with the hope of purchasing a product or service online. I would advise you to submit classified on websites with high PR. But if you are doing classified submission for SEO purposes, then submit your classified to as many classified sites as possible.


After selecting the website on which you wish to submit you classified, the next important step is to select the right category and sub-category. Suppose you are submitting a classified under ‘Information Technology’ then you need to select the category that may be ’Computer’ then you have to select its subcategory such as ‘web design’.

For example, if you are submitting a classified of an IT company on a classified website like Click.in, then you should submit your classified under the services category and in the sub-category called ‘computer & web design’ or something very close to it.


Now fill the rest of the fields for which you have already prepared the content like

How to do classified submission

• Title
• Description
• Company name
• Your email ID
• Your mobile number
• Company logo
• Security code (CAPTCHA), etc.

This is all about Classified Submission  in advance SEO. If you enjoyed reading this and want to include some points of your own, then feel free to comment below. Stay Tuned for more Micro guides in SEO.

What is image sharing in SEO and how to get Traffic from Images sharing.

How many of you heard about Pinterest? An Image based Social bookmarking and sharing site, which has become one of the top social networking site in no time. And it’s not rocket-science that Images with social feature made this site so big. Anyhow, here we will not be talking about Pinterest but we will look into the Factor on which Pinterest run: Images and Websites based on Images.

Image Based WebSiteImages and videos are always preferred and we have already talked about Video blogging. Now. it’s time for Bloggers who are running image based website. Photo-blogs are one of those niche of Blogging, which can easily go viral with the help of social media, but if you are a photographer, designer and in any such profession which requires you to have a photo based Website, your target should get people/Traffic from search engines. Now, the catch here is Image optimization for Search engine can’t be same as normal Weblog, as text helps a lot in ranking. And we all know, Images do rank well in search engines and they help a lot in driving traffic to our site. Infact, image referral traffic is one of the top traffic contributors for ShoutMeLoud.

Photo-blogs are a growing part of the blogosphere, with time as the technology is getting advanced, more and more people are converting to the modern forms of blogging like photoblogs and video blogs as known as Vlogs. Here, we will discuss some basics of Search Engine Optimization for Photo-blogs.

The Search Engine Optimization for Image-based website has much in common with traditional SEO but there are certain things that are specific to the photo-blogs. We would like to start from the beginning.

Like ant other text-based blog, SEO on image based site is not very different. But, one thing which you should try from now on is, add text to your images. Even few line of textual content will make it useful and I have talked about it’s benefit below.

Selecting Keyword for Image:

The keyword selection for the photo-blogs is as important as it is in the SEO process for common blog. Usually, people ignore the keyword selection for photo-blogs but its the most important part of the SEO for photo-blogs. One keyword should be our primary keyword while create separate posts for images, the title should have some heavy search volume words so that each post can individually get ranked as well.

ON page optimization:

The on-page optimization includes the same SEO optimization steps that are included in the normal SEO process. Here are some basic SEO onpage factors that are included in the normal SEO onpage optimization. But there are some things that need special care in case of Photo-blogs. We will talk about each of the factor step by step:

I) Name of Picture File

The file names of the images should be properly named and its better to have the names around the selected keyword. Google look at the file names of the images, especially in the Google image search. Usually, people forget about the file names and let the names at default like picture-1.jpg or Defaultpic.jpg, this practice should be avoided and proper and optimized name should be used.

II) Image ALT Tag

Alt text is what describes the image to the search engine bots. It should be a well optimized phrased carrying the keyword and its better to keep alt tag under 140 characters for better results. Although alt tag I very important in normal SEO as well, but for photo-blogs where the major content are the pictures, the alt tag should be given special importance.

III) Text Around Image

Whenever you are create a blog posts either with one picture or more in it, make sure to have some text around the images. This is not compulsory but is recommended. While crawling through pictures Google check the image itself, then checks the alt tag and then check the text around the picture as well. A picture of horse in the Search Engine Optimization blog may not be considered as a good practice, so better to avoid it and keep related text around the picture to give Google a good idea about the images. Also, if you are taking images from some where, give proper credits to the link. Also, outbound link helps in SEO and for your site it will be beneficial.

IV) Compression of Image:

Compressed images better for SEO

As we know that Google focuses a lot on the site speed, that’s why the image compression is very important in the photo-blogs, no matter how many photos you have on your blog, you must compress them. Here is a technical point to explain.

There are two type of image compressors. First are those in which you trade the quality with size and secondly there are those tools which helps you reduce the size of the image by keeping the picture quality same. I would like to recommended the second one strongly.


V) Number of images
One should not put too many images on one page as it will slower the load time of the website, and thus will get you lower in ranks. Always try to keep an optimized number of images on the front page especially, just according to the template that you have. If you using WordPress, use a good cache plugin and if your image based website is getting too much traffic, use CDN along with cache. This will not only reduce server load but also helps in better user experience.


As I mentioned above, Social media sites are the best way to drive traffic to your Image based site. Infact, sites like Stumble Upon, Pinterest and Reddit can drive an insane amount of traffic to your photo-blog. Now, in 2016 (Post Panda SEO World), SEO is more about becoming social and factors like Page speed, Ad layout and many more, I will talk about some of the basic How to do SEO tips, which will help you to get started.

Before we move ahead, I would tell you image-based site need to have a good design along with some basic features which a user need. For example, quick Facebook share and Pinterest share button. Prominent previous and next buttons.

OFF-PAGE OPTIMIZATION

Just like on-page optimization, the majority of steps for the off-optimization of photo blogs are same as the general off-optimization process for a normal site. Here are some basic tips about offpage optimization of normal sites but still there are some factors that we need to care about.

Water Marking images

Watermarking images is an important part and can drive a good amount of traffic. You have to put your company website on every picture that you upload. This step is between the onpage and offpage optimization but since it has to deal with the traffic directly that’s why we are including it in the off page optimization. This also helps in branding and if someone is copying your images, you can simply spot it using  watermark.

I suggest you to try Watermark reloaded plugin for WordPress, which will add automatic watermark to images you will upload. And, if you use Windows Live writer, this guide will help you to add watermark using Windows live writer.

Social Media Activity:

Make sure you are well connected to social media and your blog has the option to easily share images from your blog to the social media sites. There are various plugins that can help you in adding the sharing options to the blog. Now, since you are running an Image based website, make sure you add the option to share images on Social sites like Facebook, Pinterest with one click.

 Maintaining Social Media Profiles:

Every time you update your blog, you should simultaneously update the Facebook, twitter and other profiles as well, so that you can interconnect the content with social media.

Benefits of Web 2.0 Sites

All Web 2.0 sites that allow you to post your interesting and unique content on them should be exploited to maximum if you want to drive huge traffic and backlinks to your site. All reputable Web 2.0 sites like Squidoo, Blogger or Hubpages also reward you for your efforts by sharing some of their income with you depending on their payment and earning rules. So, creating different Web 2.0 pages will both promote your own site and earn you some money mostly through Google Adsense and Amazon network.

Most of the newbie webmasters still wonder what the benefits of posting on web 2.0 sites are and why they have to waste their articles and time to complete the process. Well, if you do some search you will quickly realize that the page rank of the main page of all popular web 2.0 sites is pretty high and there are many pluses although the new page that you will create will be PR0. The high PR of the domain will definitely transfer some link juice and authority to your site.

If you create your web 2.0 properties using unique and high-quality content, then the actual PR of these pages can be boosted pretty easy just with one basic backlink campaign – some top bookmarks, social signals and blog comments. For example, now it’s relatively hard to post your content on Squidoo due to their horrible spam filter which gets activated for nothing and you have to edit your page several times before successfully publishing, but the benefits that you will gain are really valuable. You get both contextual backlinks to your desired sites but also fantastic traffic because of the huge online authority and millions visits on Squidoo.

This situation presents on almost all famous and worth web 2.0 sites, but if you put the needed efforts you will get rewarded for your hard work and patience. It’s always recommended to create everything manually without the help of any tool. You can search and find software that can post your articles on all top web 2.0 sites, but you have to use highly spun articles that are sometimes unreadable. Well, just for the sake of more backlinks you can use them, but you will be in a better position if you avoid such tools or services. The bad content won’t lead traffic to your site and your pages can get deleted easily if they get flagged for spamming or inappropriate content.

All web 2.0 sites will help you to promote your products and get it out there with huge success if everything is done correctly. Such sites can drive massive amount of traffic if your products, services and tips are interesting and informative for the right auditory of the site. The quality branding of your company or site should not be underestimated when it’s up to web 2.0 site. So, who don’t want a piece from the web 2.0 benefits?

1. Tools are simple to provide andmaintain. One of the challenges many organizations experience is maintaining an increasingly complex IT infrastructure. Even smaller organizations still have to provide their employees with e-mail, office productivity tools, and all the other capabilities required by the modern knowledge worker. Those applications require specialized, highly skilled people to provide, operate, and maintain them. For most organizations, something as simple as moving to the most current version of software is not so simple; ask your IT staff what the process is for upgrading to a new version of Microsoft Exchange. Web 2.0 tools are much simpler to provide and require no maintenance from the perspective of the organization.

2. They have little downtime. The next benefit is a bit counterintuitive and may not be applicable for the largest, most sophisticated organizations. But for the rest, uptime is a major issue. Most Web 2.0 tools simply don’t have downtime. Gmail has been in the news lately because it has experienced several outages; then again, it provides more than 7 GB of storage each to some 50 million users worldwide. Even taking those outages into account, Google has provided better than 99.9% uptime over the past 12 months, averaging 10 to 15 minutes downtime per month. That compares pretty favorably to all but the most mature enterprises.

3. They are low-cost. The previous two points lead to a third, which is perhaps the most important benefit of Web 2.0 tools. These tools are a fraction of the cost to provide and even lower cost to maintain. Granted, they generally include fewer capabilities, but some organizations see that as an additional benefit. Consider a small organization without the budget or technical expertise to implement a massively resilient e-mail system with automated failover and multiple stage-gate deployment capabilities. The cost to implement Web 2.0-based e-mail capabilities is significantly lower, and it requires almost no technical expertise. There are no upgrades, hot fixes, or service packs to apply, and no need to migrate – in fact, Web 2.0 tools have begun to turn the entire concept of software versioning on its head.

Almost all organizations today, regardless of their industry, sector, or size, rely on office productivity suites to get their work done. More than 90% of those organizations use a version of Microsoft Office. The average cost of Office 2007 to an organization is significantly higher, even for upgrades, than the cost of Google Apps, Thinkfree, Zoho, or any of a number of other competitors. These competitors offer much less functionality than Office, but this is not necessarily a bad thing for many users. They are generally compatible with basic Office files. And many of them are free – which is even harder to beat.

4. It takes little effort to make them productive. Another benefit of Web 2.0 is the ability to fail. What this means is that when an organization selects an enterprise software application, the cost and the effort to implement it generally demand that it be used by everyone in the organization, even when it comes with a steep learning curve and even when it isn’t necessarily the right tool for every usage. Web 2.0 tools cost very little and are generally easy enough to provide and use that the time required to be productive with them is short. And if the tool turns out to be the wrong one, it is relatively easy to move on to another tool.

One of the reasons Web 2.0 has found its way into organizations is because of users’ frustrations with IT and the difficulty they have encountered in getting access to the tools they need. So far, most organizations haven’t deployed wikis because the CEO read about them in a business magazine, or the CIO developed a detailed set of requirements and did a year-long analysis and feasibility study. Instead, wikis infiltrate organizations because users have a need for the collaboration capabilities and can deploy one as easily as signing up for a free pbwiki or Wikispaces account.

Organizations are also increasingly running into the “shadow IT department” – users that use these types of tools at home and are comfortable enough with them to be able to provide them without, and even in spite of, the organization’s IT department. And they are not that easy to stop. At last count, there are more than 250 Twitter-like tools, at least 40 web-based document creation and sharing tools, and more than 10,000 other Web 2.0- based tools. IT departments that try to completely prevent the usage of these tools face a rapidly moving target.

5. They facilitate collaboration. Finally, one of the most significant benefits of using Web 2.0 tools is how well they facilitate collaboration. Collaborating through e-mail and attachments is the norm for many organizations. Everyone has e-mailed to a group of people a message with an attachment for review. Most recipients review the attachment and send comments back; some send their comments in a message; some mark up the electronic document with change tracking; and others simply make changes to the document before sending it back. The sender receives all the comments, boils them down into the necessary changes, and sends them back out for another review cycle – and then gets additional comments from the first draft. This process is broken for most organizations.

From document-sharing tools like Scribd or Google Docs, to the wiki that was used to write this article,Web 2.0 tools include inherent collaboration capabilities. Many of them also offer networking and communication capabilities, so users know the status of a shared document: who is editing it and what changes were made when. This is particularly important when collaboration is required across a geographically dispersed organization.

Managing the Tools

So, given that users will use these tools, that organizations will find it increasingly difficult to block them, and that many organizations are looking at them as a legitimate opportunity to control costs and improve collaboration, how do organizations manage them effectively?

First, while users know they shouldn’t talk about their internal issues and challenges in public, they may not know that blogs, wikis, social networking, and other Web 2.0-type tools default to public access. Users also need to know that even if they don’t use their organization’s name, other people may recognize them and consider them to be publishing on their organization’s behalf.

Second, many of the tools have begun to mature. As they move from“bleeding edge” into mainstream usage, organizations are increasingly looking for the same types of functionality as from their other applications: identity integration, security, records retention and disposition, and the ability to place and enforce legal holds. And the market is responding. There are enterprise-focused versions of almost every major class of Web 2.0 application, including wikis, blogs, web conferencing and document sharing, and even social networking. Many of these can be implemented behind the organization’s firewall and integrated into the identity infrastructure such as Active Directory. They generally use open protocols and data structures (often XML-based), so organizations should have minimal difficulty exporting from one solution to another or applying retention controls and policies.

The key consideration for these tools, as with any other tools, is to do due diligence for the particular application. Review the service level agreement to see how realistic it is, how enforceable it is, and what happens if something happens. Select a vendor with a track record – and call its reference accounts. Integrate the tool into existing backup and disaster recovery protocols; many of these applications are web interfaces to database back ends, and database maintenance is mature technology.

The Bottom Line

The bottom line is that there are benefits to using these tools: They tend to be less expensive than their mainstream competitors; they are easier to implement; and if they don’t meet the organization’s needs, there may be another provider with similar capabilities ready to ink a deal.

There are risks to using these tools, but they are not insurmountable. Not every tool will be right for every organization or situation, but many will be useful for particular purposes. Organizations need to be smart about how to use the tools to maximum benefit while maintaining effective control over their usage. And many organizations will want to consider enterprise versions of these tools and do their due diligence before committing.

Records managers must be full partners in the process of selecting and evaluating these services and tools. They will need to adapt their principles to suit this new environment. They cannot afford to bury their heads in the sand in hopes that this is a passing fad.