Cost Efficient SEO Techniques for Maximum Effectiveness
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Here at PEOcompare.com we feel that educating the small business owner about Search Engine Optimization is more than appropriate as this proves to be a growing necessity. For those who are not well acquainted with the subject, the goal of SEO is to get your website ranked as high as possible in the long list of search engine results created when certain words or phrase are searched. Our first article on SEO dealt with the five SEO basics that every website owner should be aware of. Today we will deal with an additional three ways to promote your content out on the internet. The draw of these techniques to owners and CPA’s is that they have virtually no cost and do not require an experienced professional to implement them. These 3 things include article submissions, social bookmarking, and submitting website content to directories.
The number one technique to create a variety of pages linking back to your site is through article submissions. In this area, you have to first create your own content, preferably in article form, so it can be easily submitted to various article directories. The value in submitting to these article directories is to have a few hyperlinks throughout the article or resource box pointing to your site. The words that are linked should be keywords that your SEO campaign is targeting; for example, we target the term, “PEO,” by linking the word “PEO” back to our site from various article directories, resulting in the search engines ranking us higher for this term. As of this writing, we are on the first page of Google’s results for PEO, after 7 long months! In other words, a few articles submitted out to the web will make only a slight difference, but with persistence and time the terms, time & effort will pay off. Some article directories that we feel are the most important on the World Wide Web include:
· Ezinearticles.com
· Articlesbase.com (NF)*
· Goarticles.com
· Buzzle.com
· Thefreelibrary.com
· Selfgrowth.com
· Ideamarketers.com
We gave an asterisk (*) to Articlesbase.com because as of this writing the links that are submitted in the article are “no follow” (NF) links. This means that the search engines will not follow that link back to your website, in other words, you will not get credit for the link. This being true, we still feel this is one of the very few article directories that are worth using, despite their no follow policy. There is an enormous amount of traffic on this site, offering you exposure to promote yourself as a writer. Also, we really appreciate Ezinearticles.com and as of today rate it the top site you should be submitting to. If there is a site you would like to spend money on in becoming a premium author to gain additional perks, this is it. It is one of the most traveled of all article directories, and one you should take a little bit more time in maintaining. Lastly, we would like to mention that these are just a few of the article directories sites available; there are hundreds if not even over a thousand article directories where you can obtain free links, but it’s your job to find them.
The second way to get your website noticed by both the search engines and your targeted audience is through social bookmarking. Social bookmarkingis a method for Internet users to share, organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web resources. Unlike file sharing, the resources themselves aren't shared, merely bookmarks that reference them. From an SEO standpoint you can submit the various pages of your website to these social bookmarking sites, which will make them easier for the Search Engines to find and index. Your goal on these sites is to get as many people as you can to “like” your website. At Digg.com youdon’t “like” a site, you “digg” it (every social bookmarking site is different). By doing this you can get the search engines to take notice that a large amount of people are excited about your website, which lends itself to achieving a higher page rank. Some social bookmarking sites we strongly suggest include:
- Digg.com
- Twitter.com
- Delicious.com
- Reddit.com
- Buzz.yahoo.com
- StumbleUpon.com
- Mixx.com
To date, we believe there are more than 75 different social bookmarking sites that can help you rank higher in the search engines, however some of them are very hard to find. We recommend starting out with these 7 and then moving on to less popular social bookmarking sites as the best course of action.
Finally, the third ‘free’ way to get your website noticed; Directories. A directory is a compilation of websitesthat are categorized and sorted by a topic. Within every directory listing you will find an informative description of each site. When a site is listed on a popular directory, the site's link popularity will increase. When finding directories you want to look for two things: popularity and specificity. Firstly, you want to find the most popular directories (i.e. PAGE RANK) because they will spread their listings to multiple small directories that do not create their own listings. Secondly, you want specificity, meaning you want to try to find directories specifically for your area of business. For example, we look to find directories that are specific for human resources and employee leasing, so by typing in “human resources” and “add site”, Google will find sites that contain those phrases, which ends up in us finding human resource directories. You do this so you can target the audience that can find true use of your product or service. Some of the basic directories one must get acquainted with include:
· Dmoz.org – This is by far the most well-known directory and most important because it feeds it’s listings to many smaller directories. On the downside, it can be very tough to be accepted into because of the mass submissions it gets daily along with the fact that it is not for profit. At this time, PEOcompare.com has not been accepted; we’ve been waiting for almost a year now.
- Dir.yahoo.com (cost $)
- Lii.org
- Business.com (cost $)
- Jayde.com
- Mavicanet.com
Although we specifically said “free” ways to get your website noticed, unfortunately most of the top article directories do cost either a reciprocal link or a small dollar amount. We’ve tried to name the top free ones, but the truth is that the majority of the top 40 directories cost money. I’d also like to point out that some of these sites are worth the investment, such as the yahoo directory, which cost $299 per year – very highly recommended. Still, a lot of the small, more specific directories cost little to no money, so these can be a good starting point if one is adamant in not paying for this service.
All three of these techniques offer their own benefits. Article submission sites are huge for building up mass links to your site over time and by helping individual search terms rank as highly as possible. Social bookmarking is vital in creating hype around your product or service, if you can get your targeted audience to “like” your website, your fans start doing the work for you. Lastly, directories are important because they take only a small amount of time but can pay off in reaching the correct audience. Don’t think these are the only ways to get your website noticed by search engines and viewers; there are more than 3, but none as ‘low cost’ as these. If you are still confused, ask a couple of high school kids to help out with your submissions, odds are they know how already!
About the author
Carolyn Stoll is a frequent contributor to and writes about issues that may affect small businesses such as administrative duties which can be handled by an Employee Leasing company. She is a founder of PEOcompare.com which helps match small businesses with the right PEO Companies for their particular needs. Her background is in marketing and communications, employee education and training, development of policies and procedures and the ongoing delivery of outstanding service to customers.
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