Google Sitemap

The main advantage of the Google XML sitemap is that it allows you to specifically inform search engines about URL’s that appear on your website which are available for crawling. The Google sitemaps is especially beneficial for webmasters, as this enables them to include additional and more specific information regarding URL’s. For example when each website was last updated and how often it may change, this endorses the search engines to crawl each site in a more intelligent manner.

Sitemaps can be extremely advantageous when the user is unable to fully reach every area or region of the website by following links. To put this into perspective, basically any particular website where certain pages are not accessible through a search form would vastly improve from creating a sitemap and the concluding to submit this to search engines.

It’s essential that you are fully aware that the sitemap protocol will supplement, but will not completely replace the actual crawl-based mechanisms that search now use to locate URL’s.

It’s also imperative that you recognize this protocol does by no means guarantee that your web pages will be designated in search indexes.

48 Do-follow SMO sites

48 Social News Websites: A List of General and Niche Social Media Communities

1. Reddit: Popular social news website with a large user base. Covers a wide range of news. Includes several topical sections called subreddits, which focus on specific topics like programming, science, politics and business.

2. Digg: The largest and most popular social news website on the internet. Covers all topics including politics, entertainment, technology and general news. Includes a separate video and image section.

3. Propeller: A social news site that covers all topics from technology to politics and entertainment. Operates in a similar fashion to Digg.

4. Fark: A community news site which allows users to comment on news articles. User submitted links will be posted on the main page once they are approved by the administrators.

5. Slashdot: Primarily a tech news site, Slashdot also covers topics like books, games, politics and entertainment. Users can submit stories and they may be published after editors approve it. A popular site that can send a large amount of traffic.
6. Metafilter: A community weblog which allows users to share links and discuss interesting websites/topics. Moderation is done through editors as well as peer pressure in order to prevent gaming.
7. I am bored: Covers general topics with a strong focus on weird and offbeat news. You can submit a link which may be posted after the editors approve it.

8. Mixx: A general social news sites which has a category for all types of news. Topics covered include business, entertainment, sports, health and tech. Includes the ability to create groups to share news with other users.

9. Shoutwire: General news site that is well populated with a loyal group of users. Topics covered include technology, politics, entertainment, lifestyle and sports.

10. Newsvine: A website consisting of community-driven news stories and opinions. Users have their own blogs and can write articles, save links to external content and vote/comment on other user stories.

11. IndianPad: A general social news site that with a large indian userbase. Topics covered include entertainment, sports, videos and tamil news.

12. Linkfilter: Covers all sorts of news. All links are posted and moderated by users. Links can be ranked on several levels: clicks, votes, age, or a combination of all three called points.

13. NewsCloud: A general social site with a focus on news in all topics. Similar to Newsvine, each user has their own blogs and can publish content to be voted up by other users.

14. Hugg: Hugg is a social news site with a strong focus on environmental issues. Also includes other categories like politics, science, fashion and technology.

15. Plime: A general news site which features a wide variety of topics ranging from religion and sports to technology or business. Odd news performs best in this community.

16. C2NN: An active social news site with a variety of topics including environment issues, business, politics, animals and offbeat. Similar to Hugg in focus but much more populated and active.

17. Sk*rt: A general news site with a focus on fashion, entertainment and design on top of other topics like technology and food. Has a strong female user base.

18. Nowpublic: A participatory news network which focuses on citizen journalism. Each user has their own individual profile blog/page and can upload videos, images and news stories.

19. Stirrdup: General social news site with four broad categories: politics, technology, news and entertainment.

20. Searchles: A hybrid social news sites which covers all topics. Includes a video section and offers personalized filtering features and the option of joining groups made up of other users with similar interests.

21. Linkinn: A social news site that specializes in pictures and video. Covers a broad range of topics, particular offbeat and weird content.

22. Earthfrisk: Covers topics like humor, politics, entertainment and business. Combines a social network and group features with digg-style news voting.

23. Truemors: A social rumor news site which focuses on the publication of “true rumors that are relevant, informative, and interesting.” Users can post links anonymously via text, voicemail, web or email. Editors moderate content.

24. StumbleUpon: A social network and browser toolbar which allows users to channel surf the internet. Technically not 100% a social news site, although users can submit webpages to be rated by other users. Here is a

25. Sphinn: Sphinn is a social site for search and interactive marketers. It’s designed to allow you to share and discover news stories, read and take part in discussions, discover events of interest and network with others.

26. Dzone: DZone is a free link-sharing community for developers. Other topics commonly featured include web design and programming.

27. Tweako: A user-powered site and social network with a focus on guides and tutorials in all categories like computing, technology, and the Internet.

28. Autospies: A social site that focuses on automotive news, car reviews, auto show photos and videos.

29. Design Float: A social news site for design-related content. Topics covered include business, freelancing, advertising, digital art and branding.

30. Ball Hype: A site that aggregates content from thousands of sports blogs. Users can submit stories and votes will determine if they make it to home page.

31. YCombinator Hacker News: A news site that focuses on technology, startups, business and entrepreneurship.

32. SWiK: A community driven resource for people who use open source software.

33. Buzzflash: A user driven progressive political news website that allows you to submit political stories.

34. DNHour: DNHour.com is a user-powered news portal built specially for the domain name industry. Most members are generally from the domain name industry, which includes domain name owners, companies or professionals.

35. PlugIM: PlugIM is a user driven internet marketing community. Topics covered include search engine optimization, products, business and marketing.

36.Showhype: Operates in a similar way to Ballhype. Stories come from two sources — users and aggregated content. Users can also submit a link to a story that they’ve found or write their own article on ShowHype.

37. Small Business Brief: A niche social site which focuses on small business news. Topics covered include marketing and sales, website development, management and entrepreneurship.

38. Hypediss: Social news site with a focus on design, fashion, urban culture and art.

39. Chictini: Product-oriented social site which a focus on new trends and styles. It’s possible to submit news stories although most of the submissions feature products from online retailers.

40. DotNetKicks: DotNetKicks.com is a community based news site that focuses on topics like NET development techniques, technologies and tools including ASP.NET, C#, VB.NET, C++ and Visual Studio.

41. Lipstick: Reddit-style social news site for celebrity gossip.

42. Hubspot: Social news site for marketers, entrepreneurs and business professionals.

43. Winelifetoday: A niche social site for wine lovers. Topics covered included news and opinion articles to do with wine.

44. iliketotallyloveit.com: Allows users to publish and share products with the broader public which they find cool, innovative, exceptionally beautiful, or just weird. Included with every item is a link to an online shop where it can be purchased.

45. Wordsy: A niche social news site for people who love reading and books. Topics covered include small presses, fiction writing, authors, book awards and poetry.

46. Value Investing News: A niche social news site that covers stocks and investment news. A small but active community.

47. Teenwag: Focus on celebrity gossip. A hybrid social network with digg-style voting. Users can submit links to be voted up by other users.

48. Muti: Muti is a social bookmarking site inspired by reddit and Digg but dedicated to content of interest to Africans or those interested in Africa.

Type of Links

Reciprocal link

A reciprocal link is a mutual link between two objects, commonly between two websites to ensure mutual traffic. Example: Alice and Bob have websites. If Bob’s website links to Alice’s website, and Alice’s website links to Bob’s website, the websites are reciprocally linked. Website owners often submit their sites to reciprocal link exchange directories, in order to achieve higher rankings in the search engines. Reciprocal linking between websites is an important part of the search engine optimization process because Google uses link popularity algorithms (defined as the number of links that led to a particular page and the anchor text of the link) to rank websites for relevancy.

Three way linking

Three way linking (siteA -> siteB -> siteC -> siteA) is a special type of reciprocal linking. The attempt of this link building method is to create more “natural” links in the eyes of search engines. The value of links by three-way linking can then be better than normal reciprocal links, which are usually done between two domains.

Automated linking

In order to take advantage of the need for inbound links to rank well in the search engines, a number of automatic link exchange services have been launched. Members of these schemes will typically agree to have several links added to all their web pages in return for getting similar links back from other sites.

Link exchange

An alternative to the automated linking above is a link exchange forum, in which members will advertise the sites that they want to get links to, and will in turn offer reciprocal or three way links back to the sites that link to them. The links generated through such services are subject to editorial review.

One way linking

One way link is a term used among webmasters for link building methods. It is a hyperlink that points to a website without any reciprocal link; thus the link goes “one way” in direction. It is suspected by many industry consultants that this type of link would be considered more natural in the eyes of search engines. One Way links are also called Incoming Links or inbound links.

An effective way to build this type of one way linking is by distributing articles through content sites and article directories. These articles generally contain an About The Author box that contains a one-way link back to the author’s URL. When publishers use these articles, those one-way links help authors increase their page rank.

Multi way linking

Multi way linking is a technique used for website promotion whereby websites may create similar one way links that each involves 3 or more partner sites. This provides each website with a one way non-reciprocal link. This technique has evolved from reciprocal linking. According to Google and Yahoo, the latest search algorithms have evolved to hold less favor towards websites that contain a high percentage of reciprocated links, and a higher favor towards websites that maintain a high level of incoming non-reciprocated (one-way) links.

The term multi way simply refers to the fact that the link exchange is between 3 or more websites, however each link is singular by only pointing to one other website. Other means of linking that may increase your web presence may also include other indirect methods such as loading images, videos, content or RSS feeds from a third partners website.

Link campaign

Link campaigns are a form of online marketing and SEO. A business seeking to increase the number of visitors to its web site can ask its strategic partners, professional organizations, chambers of commerce, suppliers, and customers to add links from their web sites. A link campaign may involve mutual links back and forth between related sites, but it doesn’t have to require the reciprocation of links.

Incestuous linking

Incestuous linking is an SEO strategy used by a webmaster to promote a collection of their own web sites, or those of close friends.

Due to the domination of the search engine market by Google, and its underlying PageRank technology, sites are deemed to be more important if they have large numbers of inbound links. If those inbound links are also from highly ranked web sites, they will boost the web site further. With the take-up of blogging and social networking sites such as MySpace, this has resulted in lots of web sites that are inter-linked and can artificially improve the ranking of a web site without merit, i.e. without valuable or unique content.

When the sites are not directly owned, this is referred to as a web clique.

Overlinking

Overlinking in a webpage or another hyperlinked text is the characteristic of having too many hyperlinks.

It is characterized by:

• A large proportion of the words in each sentence being rendered as links.
• Links that have little information content, such as linking on specific years like 1995, or unnecessary linking of common words used in the common way, for which the reader can be expected to understand the word’s full meaning in context, without any hyperlink help.
• A link for any single term is excessively repeated in the same article. “Excessive” is usually more than one link for the same term in a line or a paragraph, since in this case one or more duplicate links will almost certainly then appear needlessly on the viewer’s screen.

Underlinking

The opposites of overlinking are null linking and underlinking, which are phenomena in which hyperlinks are reduced to such a degree as to remove all pointers to a likely-needed context of an unusual term, in the text-area where the term occurs. Underlinking results whenever a reader encounters an odd term in an article (perhaps not even for the first time), and wants to briefly browse more deeply at that point, but he or she cannot without an extensive search of the article for a (possibly non-existent) instance of the linked term.

The extreme case of underlinking is a dead-end page, a page with no links at all. Usability experts discourage making dead-end pages.

Link doping

Link doping refers to the practice and effects of embedding a large number of gratuitous hyperlinks on a website, in exchange for reciprocal links. Mainly used when describing blogs, link doping usually implies that a person hyperlinks to sites he or she has never visited, in return for a place on the website’s blogroll, for the sole purpose of inflating the apparent popularity of his or her website. Since the search algorithms of many web directories and search engines rely on the number of hyperlinks to a website to determine its importance or influence, link doping can result in a high placement or ranking for the offending website.

Originally used in an essay published in Sobriquet Magazine and on Blogcritics.org, link doping has been confused with the related practice of excessive hyperlinking, also known as “link whoring”. While the two phrases may be used interchangeably to describe gratuitous linking, link doping carries the additional connotation of deliberately striving to attain a certain level of success for one’s website without having earned it through hard work (as an average athlete on steroids might perform better than a naturally gifted athlete not on performance-enhancing drugs).

Free for All linking

A Free For All (FFA) link page is a web page set up ostensibly to improve the search engine placement of a particular web site. Webmasters typically will use software to place a link to their site on hundreds of FFA sites, hoping that the resulting incoming links will increase the ranking of their site in search engines. Experts in SEO techniques do not place much value on FFAs. First, most FFAs only maintain a small number of links for a short time, too short for most search engines to pick up. Second, the high “human” traffic to FFA sites is almost completely other webmasters visiting the site to place their own links manually. Finally, search engine algorithms count more than link numbers, they also check relevancy which the unrelated links on FFA sites do not have. Another drawback to FFAs is the amount of spam e-mail webmasters will receive from members of the FFA. Using an FFA can be considered a form of spamdexing.

Link popularity

Link popularity is a measure of the quantity and quality of other web sites that link to a specific site on the World Wide Web. It is an example of the move by search engines towards off-the-page-criteria to determine quality content. In theory, off-the-page-criteria adds the aspect of impartiality to search engine rankings. Link popularity plays an important role in the visibility of a web site among the top of the search results. Indeed, some search engines require at least one or more links coming to a web site, otherwise they will drop it from their index.

Search engines such as Google use a special link analysis system to rank web pages. Citations from other WWW authors help to define a site’s reputation. The philosophy of link popularity is that important sites will attract many links. Content-poor sites will have difficulty attracting any links. Link popularity assumes that not all incoming links are equal, as an inbound link from a major directory carries more weight than an inbound link from an obscure personal home page. In other words, the quality of incoming links counts more than sheer numbers of them.

Link bait

Link bait is any content or feature within a website that somehow baits viewers to place links to it from other websites. Matt Cutts defines link bait as anything “interesting enough to catch people’s attention.”^[3] Link bait can be an extremely powerful form of marketing as it is viral in nature.

Link bait in search engine optimization

The quantity and quality of inbound links are two of the many metrics used by a search engine ranking algorithm to rank a website. Link bait creation falls under the task of link building, and aims to increase the quantity of high-quality, relevant links to a website. Part of successful linkbaiting is devising a mini-PR campaign around the release of a link bait article so that bloggers and social media users are made aware and can help promote the piece in tandem. Social media traffic can generate a substantial amount of links to a single web page. Sustainable link bait is rooted in quality content.

Types of link bait

Although there are no clear-cut subdivisions within link bait, many attempt to divide them into types of hooks. This is a short list of some of the most common approaches with brief descriptions:

• Informational Hooks – Provide information that a reader may find very useful. Some rare tips and tricks or any personal experience through which readers can benefit.
• News Hooks – Provide fresh information and garner citations and links as the news spreads.
• Humor Hooks – Tell a funny story or a joke. A bizarre picture of your subject or mocking cartoons can also prove to be link bait.
• Evil Hooks – Saying something unpopular or mean may also yield a lot of attention. Writing about something that is not appealing about a product or a popular blogger. Provide strong reasons for it.
• Tool Hooks – Create some sort of tool that is useful enough that people link to it.

Forum signature linking

Forum signature linking is a technique used to build backlinks to a website. This is the process of using forum communities that allow outbound hyperlinks in their member’s signature. This can be a fast method to build up inbound links to a website; it can also produce some targeted traffic if the website is relevant to the forum topic. It should be stated that forums using the nofollow attribute will have no actual Search Engine Optimization value.

Posted on: Link Building

Organic Search Engine Optimization

Organic SEO is the process of optimizing a website & increasing the link popularity on the way to obtain a better ranking in the non-paid search engine listings. This will improve your brand visibility and draw massive amount of visitors to your website. Thus, making your business to grow immensely.

As comparative to Pay per click, Organic search engine optimization renders a much more return on investment for the reason: many users go for the option of natural search engine results as they are more inexpensive than paid listing, thereby providing your site with much more enhanced traffic. Hence, organic search engine optimization technique is the best alternative for getting a hold of the infinite visitors at the lowest price.

There are three tactics for organic search engine optimization. Those are:

Compelling Content: In order to have organic search engine optimization, make sure that your site has a good, relevant and meaningful content that put your message about products and services across in an efficient way. Your content should be embedded with the targeted keywords with the appropriate keyword density of 2% to 3% for every web page in your website. Don’t commit a mistake of exceeding a keywords as it will not make you rank higher in the search engines. It will rather consider your content as a spam.

Keyword Research: Key word research is of vital importance when optimizing your website. Once you have finished off with the keyword research, than place those targeted keywords within your web content. You can also situate them in the title tags and Meta tags of your website as well for better ranking. Make sure that keywords selected by you are browsed by the users for finding the information. Hence, take care that you employ the terms that the person who will land on your site will use when they are in look out for your product and/or service.

Backlinks: Another means to have organic search engine optimization is to consider back links. A backlink is a text link that links to the other website. The more the number of backlinks will be, the more the popularity of the website will be. Hence, it will make your site appear high in the search engine ranking results. Useful source for back links are: Blogs, Web Directories, Online message boards and reciprocal links. To conclude, do consider quality as well as quantity when taking back links into a consideration.

By: Priyanshu Malhotra
SEO Article Source: http://www.eArticlesOnline.com

Search Engine Marketing: Give a Boost to Your Business

Whether it is small or large business, the main focus of its marketing department is search engine marketing. One of the best and most effective ways to market one’s website is taking the help of search engine marketing. The main essence of search engine marketing is submitting quality content with the website attached with contact information. Internet provides all such facilities. Thus, one has to provide more and more content in the website so that it appears higher and higher in the search engines. Thus, it allows more and more viewers to view the website and thus allowing home business to flourish at a large scale. Article submission is the basic form of search engine marketing.

Search engine marketing provides a rewarding and wholesome experience to the company hiring the services by increasing the traffic and thus, incrementing the sales of the company. One can get hold of immense number of clients and customers by hiring the services of search engine marketing firm. If one has an online business, then search engine marketing is the best option to make the business popular. The professionals working on the process of search engine marketing follow a proper protocol which defines a set of methods essential for search engines. Through search engine marketing, not only the amount of visitors gets increased, but also the quality of visitors also increases. Search engine marketing can help in reaping benefits as well as success to one’s business.

Since article submission is one of the crucial steps in the process of search engine marketing, one has to take into consideration some simple rules. While submitting an article, one has to focus on the content, form and keywords. One must make sure that one has something to say like a specific message or a valuable point. One must always submit articles that relate to one’s business. The main idea behind implementing the method of search engine marketing is that the visitors ultimately become customers. One must not be afraid of sharing his thoughts with others. The message can be conveyed easily if one focuses on the value and meaning of what he has to say. The message to be conveyed must be simple and easy to understand. It should not be confusing. One must write short and clear sentences. One must write friendly and personable articles which people can relate to.

The professionals working in this field always follow a simple rule, that is, to provide an excellent look and feel to the website. One can surely attract the attention of the visitors if the website has an attractive look and face. Various aspects of the site are tuned and brushed up by search engine marketing firm to give the website a comprehensive look. Many firms offer such services but it is necessary to have a good research on the web. This is important as one need not have to repent later for non efficiency on account of search engine marketing firm. By handing over the work to a reliable firm, one can be rest assured that the work will be done in the best manner.

By: Steve Waganer
SEO Article Source: http://www.eArticlesOnline.com

The Rules of Reciprocal Linking

In most SEO-related articles, one finds a mention of reciprocal linking. The concept itself is simple: Site A adds a link to Site B, Site B adds a link to Site A. Both sites are noticed by Google, and proceed to benefit from the so-called “reciprocal” link. It’s not quite that simple though — there are a couple of rules that one should know before constructing an SEO strategy around reciprocal links.

First, you need to set a goal. It’s not realistic to shoot for twenty links a day: unless you’re a really good salesman (or you’re bribing your link partners), that’s just not gonna happen. Instead, you should set a goal that you can comfortably meet. For new sites, this might be as little as one reciprocal link per week; for more established sites, a couple links per week might be possible. Once you’ve set a goal, stick to it! E-mail other webmasters and ask for link exchanges, look on related boards for link partners, etc. It’s not hard to get links, but you’ve got to actually try in order to do so.

Choose your link partners wisely. Link only to sites that are relevant to your target topics. Reciprocal links have little to no SEO value unless they’re between two sites with related content. Google (and others) are pretty lenient about this (I’ve gotten PageRank value from sites that only shared a couple keywords), but it’s best to link with the most relevant sites possible.

Don’t submit your link to “free-for-alls”, or poorly-categorized directories. Since about 2002, Google’s been smart about link-farms; any page with more than a couple dozen links on it will carry little to no SEO value, and may even hurt the scores of pages linked from it. In order to avoid this problem, don’t submit your site to free-for-all directories, or directories with more than a few links per page (i.e. poorly-categorized ones.) If you must submit to directories, be sure to submit your site to the most refined sub-category you can. Doing so will yield more refined traffic and will give your link more SEO power.

Pitch your site to webmasters. Don’t be afraid to get out there and promote. E-mail the webmasters of relevant sites and pitch your site: briefly tell them what your site has to offer, why it would be of interest to their visitors, request a link, and tell them where you’ll link their site. Chances are, they’ll say “yes” — few webmasters will turn down the offer of free traffic. Once you’ve worked out the details (anchor text, what page, page location, etc.), you’ll both start to benefit from the increased traffic. If you get in the habit of e-mailing the webmaster of every relevant site you run across, you’ll soon have a mountain of incoming links and a heap of quality traffic.

Reciprocal linking is a simple process — but it requires dedication and a bit of patience. If you’re willing to put in a bit of work, however, you can get a tremendous amount of targeted traffic for free. And that’s hard to argue with.