Benefits of Directory Submission

While some SEO experts think that directory submissions are already a thing of the past, the truth is, they are still extremely valuable, but not in the way they are used. What makes it valuable is the fact that it is free, so the only investment required is time. And there are hidden ways where new businesses can benefit from directory submission. You just need to know them.

Google Uses Directories to Return Results

A lot of people may have the notion that Google is a link directory. It may be the giant search engine everyone knows of but definitely not a directory. Directories organize links under categories and sub-categories while search engines (Google and the likes) scour the internet to find whatever is typed into the search box. People don’t use directories when they search for something. They use Google. What people don’t know is that search engines use directories to return results. Hence, if your website is listed on as many directories as possible, the better chance that a searcher will find your site through the search engines.

Use Manual Submission Directories

Search engines sift through a long directory to find exactly what was being searched by a user. To make this work, you must submit your links to the directories manually. Once you sign up for a website, you will have to submit your link. It will be beneficial to use directories that require manual submission. Links will be checked by link reviewers before they are approve for the directory. Google and other search engines will value those directories because they know that the links submitted are properly screened and reviewed for quality.

Search Engines Index Links on Directories

It is therefore, important that your website is submitted to as many quality link directories as possible because search engines will rank your page at the top of the SERPs. When you submit a link to a directory, search engines will index it and this will be found by search engine crawlers that regularly look for index-created and updated links. A good place they start looking into is the links listed in directories.

Increase Your One-Way Inbound Links

This is better than link exchange. Websites and pages with one-way, inbound links are valued by web directories more than the sites that use link exchange tactics to drive traffic to and from their pages. Link directories do not require listing their name and link on your website, thus increasing your one-way links. It also does not require updating the website every time a new link is submitted.

Utilizing directory submission does not mean that you will forego other SEO strategies. SEO is still highly valuable. Any strategy that promotes valuable content will be useful for the website. That’s why keywords are still important. SEO may even be used when submitting links. You get the opportunity to use keywords and title when you name your links which is required by directories. It will be easier for search engines to catalog your links. And most importantly, link directories are often free to use. There’s no additional expense or budget required which is a crucial element especially for new businesses. You will have a reason to question a directory that requires paying a fee, or just look for another one that does not require any fee to be paid.

How to create Facebook promotion to go viral

 

Everyone knows the opportunities presented by social media sites in increasing one’s online visibility and one such social media site is Facebook. This strong and powerful social media platform has served many marketers with successes they have not gained from other online marketing activities. A lot of people have used Facebook successfully to promote their business activities, products or services. They have launched promotions with high-value prizes, raffles and draws. Promotions that have celebrity appeal or limited edition offerings tend to gain support from the community. But promotions need not always have costly prizes. There are other rewards you can offer when doing promotions on Facebook.

While doing promotions in Facebook, there are some rules that need to be followed. Facebook has Promotions Guidelines that spell out the rules surrounding the use of promotions within the Facebook platform. Such rules are designed to eliminate spam and protect the user’s profile data from being used by other brands for their own purpose and benefit. Facebook also imposes limitations on ways for companies to use the brand name and logo of Facebook in any promotion.  And as an additional security measure, any promotion on Facebook needs to be approved by Facebook.

How to Set up the Promotion

There’s no argument on how compelling a Facebook promotion can be for any business or individual. Following the guidelines, you can use your Page as a starting point and create a link to your website for promotion entry details. Alternatively, you can have the entire promotion within the Facebook community.  The following tips may help you achieve success with your promotion:

• Attractive Prize. As in any contest or promotion, an attractive prize will have an impact on the turnout of participants. If you offer attractive prizes, more people are likely to respond. But what prizes can be attractive? Prizes that money can’t buy seem to be favored by participants of the promotion such as an opportunity to meet a celebrity (movie, music, sports, etc. depending on the type of promotion held), or participating in a TV commercial or attending a product’s pre-launching party.
  
  
• Start with Your Existing Customers. This is the best way to start a promotion – get your existing customers involved. You can probably pre-qualify them to the promotion if they have purchased a certain item or product. With an attractive prize at stake, they will have a justification for making an extra purchase. With this strategy, you already overcome the tough part of getting the initial entries. You can reach out to your mailing list of customers by sending a friendly invite. Or get on instant messenger, Twitter, Google+, or email to inform them about the promotion and inviting them to join.
    
• Cross Promotion. You can use your website and other channels (social media accounts other than Facebook) to advertise the promotion in order to gain maximum participation. By adding a promotional banner that has a link to your Facebook Page is a good way to kick-off your promotion.
  
  
• Keep it Simple. The simpler the promotion, the better for participants. Avoid over-complicating the rules. If forms are to be filled out, limit the questions and make filling out easier for the participants. It will also help to give out a single prize of significant value as the top prize and several smaller prizes for second, third, etc. prizes. Less clicks to enter the promotion will be appreciated by those interested to participate.
  
  
• Don’t Make the Promotion Hard to Win. If you set the criteria too high, you might not have any participant. If you’re running a promotion for the most original T-shirt design, don’t ask for too many requirements.
  
  
• Keep a Regular Run of Promotions. You can run promotions for at least a month. If you give more time for the promotion to be known to the community, the more entries you are likely to get. By making enough noise in the community to build up excitement for the promotion, the more successful it is likely to be. Users or followers that are constantly reminded by adverts or write-ups about the promotion, the more they anticipate the big day when winners are announced.
  
  
• Integrate Promotion with Media Campaign. You can combine a Facebook ad campaign with a promotion to maximize the viral effect.
  
  
• Go for Fun Promotion. Avoid off-the-rack kind of promotions by making yours interesting, unique and fun. It should contain an element of entertainment. And the promotion should offer participants an outlet to express themselves, encourage members to share with friends, and convey messages about your product, brand or service.
  
  
• Use Third-Party Promotions Apps. There are several third party apps for promotions – some are free and some apps come with a small price tag. Some of them are:
  
  
• Wildfire Promotion Builder
• Fan Appz
• Virtrue

New Google Adwords Features You Should Try

  

The online world is constantly challenged by the algorithm updates that Google and other search engines roll out. SEOs have to contend with keeping their campaigns aligned with such changes and anxiously pray not to be hit hard by those updates and lose the page rankings that they have worked so hard to achieve over the years.

Google has not stopped at working its way towards providing the users with the best search results, implementing rules intended to weed out the web with those unworthy content that proliferates because of bad SEO practices. AdWords is no exception – some things get changed, taken away or scrapped. But AdWords continue to evolve with new features that PPC managers and advertisers would surely be excited about.

Check out these five new AdWords features:

New Keyword Planner

It works like a standard research tool for keyword with more enticing features including keyword search options; keyword statistics and performance estimates; keyword filters; and group and list view.  It actually combines the keyword tool and traffic estimator. You can change the match type before adding the keywords to your plan, and the tool provides traffic estimates for the keyword. It also has a feature that multiplies keyword lists to get estimates, saving a lot of time of combining keywords manually.

AdWords Upgrade Center

This feature will allow you to upgrade existing campaigns to enhanced campaigns, which is useful for anyone managing multiple campaigns. It will also allow you to merge and upgrade accounts. AdWords will even give you merge recommendations. This is applicable if you have campaigns that have similar keywords and location targeting, like it automatically combines budgets and ad groups.

Upgraded Sitelinks

With this feature, Google allows advertisers to nominate specific text that will display for their sitelink descriptions within their ads, giving advertisers much more control over what is appearing on their enhanced advertisements and the ability to be particular about the text that they would like to appear.

Ad Group Mobile Bid Adjustments

This ad group-level mobile bid will allow advertisers to have more granular control within their campaigns. It used to be that mobile bids could only be set and adjusted at the campaign level in enhanced campaigns. This feature is a clear sample of granular level of customization. Based on past performance, if one ad group has CPCs which are much different from the rest of the campaign, the ad group level bids can even out the playing field and limit losses.

New Google Display Planner

The results this feature produces contains more details than the previous Display Network tools. The tool will generate a list of areas that you can potentially target if you provide your customers’ interests and your landing page. There will be a breakdown of impressions, cookies, demographic data, ad formats, relevance statistics, and many more, per week.

All of these features are available and you can start experimenting with them. And who knows, by the time you mastered the use of these features to your advantage, more new features will be released for Google’s AdWords. After all, it’s Google – and Google always find something to change or update or upgrade.

If you need some help with your PPC campaigns, we would be glad to be of help.