One way links are exactly what search engines are looking for and websites with a high number of quality, one way links are typically the sites that rank the highest. 

There is a vast number of free directories that anyone can submit their url to, but the process is very time consuming.

As a way of automating the process several websites directory submission programs have been developed. In my opinion, the best and easiest to use, is a new program created by Brad Callen, called Directory Submitter.

The software currently contains around 1700 website directories, all free.
It’s really easy to use,  all you need to do is:

1. Input your website details (i.e. title, description, URL, etc.) into the
software ..

2. Click on the directory you want to submit to and the software will automatically fill in your website details.

3. Click the submit button and your website is instantly submitted to the directory.

Then, you can move on and select the next directory.

If you were to go through the entire list, by the time you’re finished, you’ll have roughly 1500 one way links pointing to your website. In reality, you can work your way through the most appropriate directories with the highest page ranking. It’s still a time consuming process, but much quicker and easier that reentering the same data over and over.

Note; If you’re going to add multiple links quickly, it’s important to vary your website title (anchor text) every 20-30 links or so, to make things look more natural to the search engines.

You can do this really easily via Directory Submitter at the start of the process when you initially create your project.

According to their sales blurb, the software is constantly being updated and their is also a community of fellow users established (and growing), that work together to improve the software.

To check out Directory Submitter, click on the banner below:

As I’m currently creating marketing videos to promote a limousine company, I was fascinated to read a little used technique that can dramatically increase your YouTube video views.

Video Response

What is a Video Response?
As you know, YouTube allows viewers to rate and comment on the videos they have watched.
A Video response is just another method of responding to YouTube videos.

Why should I post a Video Response?

Video Response provides you with an opportunity to piggy back popular videos. (As long as it is relevant).

It is a video marketing technique to increase the number of views your video receives by association with related content that has already received a high number of views.

How to create a Video Response:

Upload a video to YouTube.

Find a related video (on YouTube), that has LOTS of views.

Post a video response.

Look underneath the video in the section called “Video Responses”.

On the right hand-side you’ll see a blue link that says “Post a Video Response”.
Click on that link and you will then be taken to a page where you can post a video response.

Click on the link in the middle that say, “Choose a Video”.
Select one of the videos you have already uploaded on YouTube and click on the button that says, “Respond with This Video”.

To read Kim Roach’s 21 traffic sources on BuzzBlogger click here.

I’ve added video responses to a couple of limousine videos that are getting lots of hits and I’ll let you know what impact it has.

Please share any success you have using this technique.

I’m currently trying to improve the Google ranking for my profit pulling platform http://www.listbuilding-for-newbies.com

I’ve played around with tags for keywords, title, description and have managed to get to the 21st position for the phrase ‘list building for newbies’.

To improve this ranking, I want to create a back link which I can create myself by building a Squidoo lens on the eBook ‘List building with Alex’.

This gave me an ideal opportunity to work my way through and review the free step by step guide to creating a Squidoo lens, written by Pot Pai Girl.

Although 55 pages long, I can see myself using this reference guide a lot, so I’ve printed off the whole eBook.

The layout and content is really easy to follow and it took me around an hour to create a Squidoo account, decide on a url http://www.squidoo.com/listbuilding_with_alex build and publish my first lens.

Having created the lens, (which includes a link to my profit pulling platform), the guide outlines how you can update your profile to include details about yourself and a link back to your blog. (In doing so creating a blog back link).

The next step is to get the Squidoo site indexed by Google and hopefully by writing this blog post, Google spiders will crawl my blog and find a reference to the Squidoo site and generate an Index.

I’ll let you know if this works.

If you want a Free copy of Squidoo 101, click here.

Thanks
John

I’ve been looking for ‘do follow’ blogs to comment on recently and came across this tongue in cheek post I’d like to re-publish.

Sure it’s sarcastic, but it highlights common mistakes that are so easy to avoid.

I’m sure that you all want everyone to think that you’re a blogging newbie! That’s what I want! Wouldn’t that be an awesome way to develop your brand?
For those of you that want to appear like you actually know a lot about putting together blogs and websites, sorry but you’ve found the wrong place! I’ve given this a lot of thought, and I think that looking like you started yesterday is one of the most important things you can do. I have compiled for you the greatest internet marketing list of all time:

10 Easy Ways To Make Yourself Look Like A Blogging Newbie

1. Don’t use title case. Using ‘Make money online like a champ’ for your title would make you look 100 times more like a newbie than ‘Make Money Online Like A Champ’ would. You may want to consider leaving all of the words of your title in lower case, for maximum affect: ‘make money online like a champ’.

2. Use the original URLs that look like this: http://courtneytuttle.com/?p=123. Bloggers that have more experience will use these: http://courtneytuttle.com/2007/02/27/not-using-permalinks-search-engine-suicide/. Make sure you don’t have URLs like that if you want to look like you started your blog last week.

3. Make 26 categories for your 26 posts. This is a very effective way to look like a blogging newbie so make sure you don’t forget about this one! Adding a new category for every post is a powerful, advanced newbie disclosure method.

4. Change your blog’s theme and layout every 13 hours, that way people will know with absolute certainty that you have no idea whatsoever what you want your blog to look like. Tweak your theme relentlessly so that your readers get a chance to see each ‘mess up’ you make in the process.

5. Admit openly in your writing that you have no idea what you want your blog to be about. Consult with your readers about what kind of things they would like to learn. Better yet, hold a poll to allow your 7 active readers to determine your blog’s main topic.

6. Spread yourself thin. Make sure to cover celebrity news, blogging, real estate, credit card debt, technology, programming, social media, home based business, fast cars, music, movies, books, computers, drug rehab, pet training, exercise, framing, construction, writing, photography, art, wealth, investment banking, and water balloon fighting. Definitely don’t become an expert at any one thing. That would make you look too well-informed and advanced.

7. Install your blog in a directory named ‘wordpress’. Using http://yourdomain.com/wordpress/ for the main address of your blog would look a lot more newbie than http://yourdomain.com/ would.

8. Use meaningless post titles. Titles like ‘Another meaningless Monday’ (You’ll notice that I’m ignoring title case for a double-newbie-effect.) and ‘Life sucks again’ are my personal favorites for looking newbieish. (Is newbieish even a word? Hmm.. Is newbie even a word?)

9. Post erratically. Write 7 posts your first day, and then don’t post for a month. Then come back and post 9 times in a day, and then don’t post for another week. Trust me, it works. Do this, and you will definitely look like a newbie – people will surely take note.

10. Beg every decent site you’ve ever heard of to link to you. Definitely don’t tell them about any posts you’ve written, just ask them to link to you without offering any reason at all why they should.
Please no one take offense, this post is 20% a joke and 80% to show you a few things to avoid. I’ve personally made 9 of these common mistakes! It took me a few months to work them out of my system, so I thought it would help some of you that are starting out! Please let me know if you have any questions, I would be more than happy to help.

Feel free to add any other suggestions to this list in the comment box.

With Thanks to Courtney,
John

But not all sites are equal in the eyes of Google.

Back in 2005 Google’s “Webspam” team, came up with an HTML attribute (rel=”nofollow”), that tells search engine spiders whether the links in a webpage should be given credit or ignored.

So it is worth understanding the difference between “nofollow” and “dofollow” links.

 

“NoFollow “- Why wouldn’t I want the search engine spiders to see all of the links on my site?

• Paid Affilliate Links
  The page rank of your site is taken into consideration when Google processes the links it finds and that kudos is passed on to the ranking of the link site.
  Google doesn’t like paid links, they see it as an artificial method of the selling site gaining a higher ranking.
  To hide paid affilliate links it is worth adding the HTML attribute “nofollow”.  

• Blog Comments
  Many authority sites are aware of blogging tactics to gain ‘link juice’ by simpley posting comments that add no value and wish to block it.
  This can be done through a widget such as ‘Delink Comment Author’ or by adding the “nofollow” attribute.

Is there a DoFollow Attribute?

No, basically by NOT using the “nofollow” tag, search engine spiders can crawl the content and evaluate the links. 

Why does this matter for linkbuilding?

If the reason for commenting on a person’s blog is part of a strategy to increase your search engine ranking, it’s important to know if the site uses the “nofollow” attribute before spending time commenting on it.

How to identify a “Do Follow” blog.

• Look at the blogs source code to see if it uses the ‘nofollow’ attribute.

• Find a “do follow” list similar to my previous post.

• Use Free software “The Real Link Finder” tool.

This free software allows you to find blogs specific to your niche. You enter your keywords and the software searches for “dofollow” sites with your preferred parameters. In addition, their is a useful feature that populates a blog with your name, email and website address, saving you valuable time.

For more information and your own copy of the software visit: http://www.reallinkfinder.com

But be aware; Just because a site does not use the “nofollow” html attribute, (which means that a  comment posted on that site will be picked up by search engine spiders), doesn’t mean you should add a lame comment like “nice blog” or “good idea”.

Your comment must add value.

It’s more than likely that the administrator of an authority site will moderate comments.

So if you add a comment  without adding value, at best your url may be stripped away and in many cases your comment will be marked as spam.

Affordable Internet Marketing
SimpleRandomness
ArticleSnatchBlog
CutieGadget
EricSocia
LcdLove
MenstrualPoetry
WomanTribune
OnARidge
FatLadySingz
PixelHeadOnline
Revellian
Logon
TriathlonTraining
YourWebsiteProfit
HowToWakeUpEarly
LondonerLife
LaughOutLoudDogs
BillHartzer
FootbagShop

NeoMeme
Marenda
SavingMoney
SunlightFlavor
TheBuffaloRiver.com
MeloVillaReal
Jakeldaily
TallFreak
BaseballInvestor
TheDarkLightOfLove
LifeInTheRough
TheDailyFuzz
ErikKarey
RobertaFerguson
MarketingASolicitor
BloggersJourney
SecretsOfUnlimitedProsperity
Amorphism
Jenny’sCorner
JadeHat
News Notion
BrilliantCheers
Achille
ChrisHoyt
LinkItForMe
RamblingThoughtsBlog
BlogThatOutside
Tobsy
SweetAgring
LayerCake
PajamaProfessional
RoadLessTravelled
Derek Semmler
Zr5
SmartWealthyRich
CrayonWriter
BlogRaters
TagsKitchen
TradeMacro
Brian Pratt
Best Real Income
A Writers Words, An Editors Eye
Advertising for Success
Andy Beard
Ang’s Chicken Coop
Army Mom:New Jersey
Axplay
BloggingTips
BMonaco
BodyFitnessInfo
BuyMeBlog
By the Sea
Colloquium
Community Building Blog
Curious Cat Science
Craftblog
Dont Fear the Truth
Ecomm Tips
EMoneyMarketing
Jones PC
JOIN – Do Follow Bloggers **
Just Not Martha
Kansha Shite
Last Blogger
Life in the Fast Lane
Life Is Risky
Life Passion Travel & More
Life through eyes of Krissy
Lifecruiser
LittleAmerica.us
Live Life Organics & Your Health
Magical Rose Garden
Marketing Blagger
Master Cleanse
Midlife Musings
Mom is Nutz
MomReviews.net
Mothering Many
My Credit Group
My Dandelion Patch
My Home Recipe
My Muddled Mind
My Opinion Counts
My Thoughts, Ideas, and Ramblings
Nanashi-Inc.net
New Century Politics
No Average Mom
Odd Planet
On the Horizon
Open Road Biker
Patrick Says v2.0
Paula Mooney
PBriscoe.com
Pegs AZ Life
Pencil Thin
PimpMyPageRank
Pink Poison Store
Pond, The
Ramblings Of An Undisturbed Mind
Randa Clay Design
Raw Vegan Momma
Reasoner, The
Rotten Bananas
Sassy Southerner, The
Scribble On The Wall
Scuttlebutt Pipeline
Selena’s Travel and Culture
SelfHynosisProgram
Shopping Flavor
ShowMeHealthBiz
ShowMeMoneyBiz.com
Simple Kind Of Life
Simplify Every Obstacle
Skeets Stuff
Sophistishe.Org | Personal Blog
SQKIKs Simple Tech
Super Blogging
Sun-Flower Family, The
Table for Five
TeaScoop
TechieZone
Teenage Angst Regression
Texas RV Travel blog
Thermal
TimeForBlogging
Tricia\’s Musings
Utterly Geek
Wanders World
Web Files, The
WebStyle
Wild & Crazy Ride
Winding Threads
Wired Kayaker, The
Work At Home Mom Revolution
Yoga Blog
This DoFollow Blog list is courtesy of Courtney Tuttle and was created originally by Coleen as the D-List.

When this happens, you’ll be given an affilliate link like this;
https://paydotcom.com/r/88429/JohnTanner/25533774/

Affiliate links can be used as part of an email campaign, be part of a forum signature, or be direcly mentioned within a blog post.

So you don’t want to put people off by displaying links that scream “I’m trying to sell something”.

First impressions count.

So take that an extra few minutes and create a more appealing url address that will hide the affilliate link.

 
To do this, think of a meaningful address that you’d like to display.

In this instance I want the url to follow the following naming format;

http://www.myblog.com/recommends/productXYZ

   
Start off by creating an empty folder on your P.C. called ‘recommends’ and within that folder, create another empty folder called ‘productXYZ’.

Open up Notepad and copy the following code into the editor.

 
<?php $URL=”https://paydotcom.com/r/88429/JohnTanner/25533774/“;
header (”Location: $URL”);
exit();
?>

Change the value of $URL to be the affilliate link address you want to cloak.
Save as “index.php”

(Note; If you save the file without quotes you will end up with index.php.txt)

 
Now you need to open up your FTP Editor and copy the Folder ‘recommends’ from your P.C. across to sit within the folder Public.html of your website.

   
The end result will be that you can use

http://www.myblog.com/recommends/productXYZ  (or what ever you decide),

as part of an email campaign, forum signature, or blog post, rather than the ugly affilliate link.

Whilst on vacation, I thought I’d try my hand at creating a video.

The other people on the beach must have thought I was a right nutter talking to myself.

My wife and kids were really embarrassed!

I was looking back at a few of my own blog posts yesterday at work, and something occurred to me.

It was a lesson that I learned, years back now, about writing for the web. Something that apparently slipped my mind in the midst of all of this excitement.

I almost forgot – how to write for the web.

But first, I want to share with you, that up until now, all that I know about website development and having an online business, I learned from Ken Evoy, the founder of Site Sell.

One of the things that I learned from Ken, early on, is that when we are writing for the web.

We need lots and lots of white space….

Lots of line breaks…

And short paragraphs.

And why are we doing this?

We are doing this for our readers, yes, the people that land on our webpages and blog posts. We have to consider what they see and think when they arrive.

The last thing that we want to down is drowned them out with a sea of words. So they just initially look at our blog post and think…

“Well this looks exhausting,” and just click away.

We want to make our pages as reader-friendly as we can, and help our readers get through our writing, so we can get our message across.

And the way to do this, is to shorten our paragraphs.

And yes, included lots of line breaks.

And make sure there’s lots and lots of white space on the page.

See, how easy that was to read?

I can take this a step further, too. And share a bit more, and this is about the font that we are supposed to be using when writing for online reading.

The font is Verdana.

Verdana is apparently very easy on the eyes when reading on a computer screen. And we should be using this font with all of our post, pages, and ebooks.

Because the idea is make what we write for online reading, as user-friendly as we can. So we don’t loose our visitors.

We worked hard to get them to our sites and blogs, and we want them to stay.

Because remember, it’s just one-click and they’re gone.

So do everything you can to make what you write, really easy to read online.

This is so your visitors can get through your masterpiece.

Your thoughts and ideas…your writing.

For more information from Karen, visit her excellent blog at http://karenkalata.com/

(Now I need to work out how to change the Font on my Blog)

So if you want your image to appear on a blog posting;-

1. Sign up for a Gravitar  account at  http://en-gravatar.com
2. You will be asked to enter an email address,  after which you will create a nickname and password
3. Next you can upload an image to associate with the email address you entered.
4. Go to you Wordpress blog admin section http://youraddress/wp-admin
5. Select the option ‘Settings’, then ‘Discussion’, then Avatar
6. You will see a panel with options which you set with a radio button. Set Gravitar and then save.

From now on, when you post a comment, the image you uploaded to your Gravitar account will be displayed.