Are link exchanges still an effective way of SEO? – A guild to link building.

Summary:- Clarifying how the practice of finding link partners is still a good means of gaining site popularity. How to do a link exchange campaign without falling into the counter-productive bad habits found around the internet. Anyone that owns an online business will know how difficult it can be to drive traffic and sales to their site but are they really using the core principles of the internet to achieve this? One way of gaining traffic is getting similar websites like your own to link to you. By having a link on another site pointing to your URL, describing a major keyword for your business acts like a vote towards the importance of your site within search engine ranking and positions. The internet from the very beginning was all about linking of information and resources and this is still true today with a greater emphasis being on quality and usefulness of content, but it is still a machine governed by algorithms and mechanical code. So it is still important to consider how the content you place on other sites is used and interpreted within these mechanics. Getting back links to your site is important for your SEO efforts as it puts content relevant to your business on other sites. This makes your site look more attractive and relevant within your industry and increases the amount of traffic your site receives both from searches and from the linked sites individually. Not all links can be beneficial to you however as you should try to have links from sites that have similar content and subject matter as your own. For example if you are an online florist you should look for other online florists to partner with your own, having a link from jewellery sellers won’t do you any good. This is because search engines place you within its results pages in relation to other florists that are your competitors all after the same customers a link from somewhere else will be seen as irrelevant. Here are some popular mistakes when implementing a link exchange campaign. Will having hundreds if not thousands of backlinks increase my PageRank? No – this is where quality verses quantity counts! The rank, quality of content and relevancy of content of the site linking to you makes all the difference. You may be tempted to just find a program that would submit your keywords to hundreds of blogs, directories, feeds and forums with one click but your efforts will be seen as spam and may even be banned from listings. Organic submission (that what looks like it has been done by a human being) will give you the best returns so it is best you research into the sites you are putting content on. Will having a link from a really popular site that has nothing to do with my own help? To some extent it will be the result will be diluted in comparison to a popular site in your own industry. There are three types of linking you will encounter, a one way link which is probably the best type but these kinds of links are hard to get and you may have to pay for them. A reciprocal link exchange, where the two sites link to one another is the most popular and in most cases is free to undertake. These are a good link to have as content is shared between the sites and is seen in the search engines as such. Another less desirable and yet popular link type is a three way link where your site will link to a site that links to a third site that links to you. These are extremely unreliable as you don’t always know the quality of the other site linking to you so you should try to stay away if you can. There are a few things to look out for when choosing link partnerships as not all sites are friendly and helpful for doing this. Look at how search engine friendly a site is and check if a site has a “nofollow” tag in its html meta head content, this means that links are found on a page but not associated with another page. Find out if the page where you are linking from is directly accessible from the home page of the site, a standalone page probably has no PageRank of its own and certainly doesn’t get importance propagated from the sites main page, therefore of no practical use to you for SEO. Try to develop a professional relationship with your link partners where it is in your mutual interest to link together otherwise you might find them removing your link after only a short span of time. Fail to do this and you will find yourself having to check your links regularly and we are sure you have more important things to do with your time. The best thing to remember is to take your time with your campaigns even though they seem to take forever, but what you will get out of them will set your site within a commanding position within your industry into the future. Please visit www.wallsdirectory.com, Web Directory

Pixel pages – can you teach an old SEO dog new tricks?

Re-visiting an old idea of the once popular pixel page and discussing if the format can be used in today’s search engine optimisation environment.

The internet is full of new and innovative ways to market a website online and the phenomenon of the pixel page became something of a craze in the mid 2000s. We first started to see this marketing idea in 2005 when a British business student, Alex Tew created a web page where advertisers could buy blocks of space for $1 per pixel. He had managed to sell all 1 million pixels by the end of 2006 with the help of quite some media interest and the page can still be viewed to this day. As you can imagine this success sparked a wave of similar pages employing the same script and was an interesting way of marketing a site for a time.

The types of advertisers that used these pages where varied but the aim was to get an ad block on them, regardless of the size with a hyperlink back to your site. You might think why would an advert measuring just 10x10 pixels – the minimum size could be seen as useful but it was the fact you had a link on a highly ranked page with many visitors that made advertising sense.

So in this way although the idea itself was very simple it satisfied the needs of almost all websites and that are of needing visitors and an increase in search engine positions and rankings. Just a single named back link on a page such as this would give a new site a boost in it position needed to get the business off and rolling. Unfortunately this technique for SEO is not as effective these days with search mainly determined by content rather than keywords.

These kinds of websites are still found today although it is hard to see if any are successful enough to make money. It would be because they are essentially copying from an original idea and no longer seen as original – a trap you have to be careful not to land in with any business venture. The mechanics of this style of SEO resource is still quite interesting and providing quality back links is a useful service for a website, especially if it has just been published. So saying this it is fair to say there is still a market for this kind of online service. So how can these sites be brought up to date with current search engine trends? Well you can’t just have to many out-bound links from any page anymore or just have content consisting of just hyperlinks as your site will be branded a link farm and be severely penalised for it. So limit the links on a page to no more than 50! – This is good for publishers as they are not lost in a sea of links and keeps the page useful for SEO. For websites who it is there job to list links, such as web directories already (with the exception of a few badly managed ones!) use this rule. Relevant and interesting content, information that visitors want to read about other sites products and services is a must so you should give users the chance to talk about themselves, also many people have business social connections that should also included. A secondary info page in addition to a link would be the answer to this requirement.

So to sum up what I have said a pixel style online marketing site can still be a good idea, all that is needed to make one that advertisers will actually use is to make it as useful from a content point of view as possible. Also invent a new format as to satisfy the need to be original and not just seen as just another pixel page.

The WALLS Directory is a new and innovative approach to the web directory industry incorporating a creative use of visual marketing and bespoke search engine friendly information display. Comprising of an online directory in the familiar format together with 8 digital “walls” that can be graffited and where users posters can be placed. Manual production ensures complete human moderation and the quality you would expect from a modern web directory.

For more info please visit www.wallsdirectory.com, Web Directory

Socialising the anti-social, bringing together the graffiti culture and forming an online community.

Can the anonymity of identity online bring together a culture that largely keeps itself hidden from society? And in doing so free its individuals up to explore and discuss their creative ideas as a community?

Graffiti culture is known by many to be something that is anti-social in nature and almost never seen to be practiced openly. The modern culture that we witness today was derived from the Hip-hop culture and has many negative political and rebellious social overtones to the messages that people write. But could it be that we just misunderstand what is essentially another form of creative expression by individuals that are merely displaying their form of art?

With the rise of digital social network and online communities there is now more than ever, more people coming together in groups that share similar interests and opinions. And with them doing so, opening themselves up to people, who are not from that area of interest but are curious to learn more about it. The reason that we don’t actively see graffiti art being practiced is that you can be arrested for vandalism or destruction of property if caught and that graffiti “crews” like to compete with each other in battles to see who can produce the most impressive creations. The individuals or groups of people that write graffiti have always operated under secrecy in order to protect their identities from persecution, but the anonymity of the internet gives opportunities to bring their artwork across to the world and gain recognition of their ideas.

The online graffiti community can come together quite easily through the sharing of common interests. For instance a user can post their latest creation from their black book and get feedback from others regarding the style or subject matter. This is something that wouldn’t normally happen on the streets giving rise to stagnating of styles of what is really a genuine form of personal illustrative art. So given this method of online idea exchange the creativity of this art form can be expanded and developed maybe to a point that it could start to be used in commercial advertising or art trade (such as Banksy!) and collection. Graffiti as a whole is found outside on just about everything that can be painted and even if online graffiti should become popular it will always be found marking our environments so I’m not saying that this is a cure of this kind of vandalism, merely describing a less harmful outlet. People have been using this form of expression since pre-history and it is unlikely to change overnight or be replaced entirely. The forums that can be found that deal just with the graffiti culture are a good start to get people more interactive through the sharing of ideas and opinions, they are also good for new people interested in the genre. The discussions are none too different than what you would expect when speaking to a photographer or illustrator about their work.

For more info please visit www.wallsdirectory.com, Web Directory

WALLS Online Web Directory has built an extension.

The WALLS online web directory builds an extension to accommodate the needs of different industries and to give customers more choice and a better service.

The WALLS online web directory has extended its service genres to take into account differences in certain industries.
The web directory now has 8 main areas which users can include websites from anything like accounting to building contractors, and find they are with businesses of similar genre.
The first of the 2 new WALLS is called Builders Lane and is open to businesses from the industry, construction, logistics, materials handling, fabrication, trade services and other similar areas. We used to have these kinds of sites with the financial and public service type businesses but thought they would be happier splitting the two. The WALL itself has a bold Granite stone look with galvanised metallic posts that you can also place posters on, we are sure you would enjoy having your industrial or construction based business displayed here.
The second WALL addition called TAG Heaven is that of a graffiti only area. This is mainly for the use of graffiti artists or users but is also open for companies wishing to showcase themselves with graffiti art instead of poster banner artwork. Although this is quite a creative option we would like to extend this choice to our users. The style of this WALL is “low quality standard brick” and is photographic in nature with residual graffiti – the first time we have used this method. The posts are a mixture of telephone pole, concrete light and corroded posts. There is the option to include your website or business for free although many of the benefits of a paid inclusion are not included, a paid directory inclusion on the WALLS is not unreasonable and is well worth the investment. WALLS directory is quite a new web directory – less than 3 months old, yet we are continuing to improve our online standings so that we can better be of service to you and with our minimum 6 month inclusion and the ability to renew, you will be able to take advantage of our growth. The WALLS online web directory is quite unique in comparison to other sites of its kind but by no means less powerful or useful.

For more info please visit www.wallsdirectory.com, Online Web Directory