SEO Friendly List Updated Again

Dan's SEO Friendly List was updated on 11/26/05. He has added 42 new general and 13 niche directories. He has also removed 27 directories for a variety of reasons. As always, his list contains a lot of great information, but check back here for the full story on the ones that I have reviewed.

I have added reviews of 3 new directories for my Free Directory Listings. I will try to add more this week.

As always, I am looking for other free directories. Please keep sending them to me. Thanks to you that have sent me directories to check out.

Feel free to comment below or email me by clicking on my name.

martin

.htaccess and mod_rewrite resources added

I have just added a new page on .htaccess and mod_rewrite (redirects) Explained to my website resources section. This gives you some easy copy and paste examples for using .htaccess files and mod_rewrite to redirect your non-www domain to www.domain to avoid confusion and link pop/PageRank splitting in the search engines. I have also provided some other examples and details for those that have additional requirements. There is also a method to use mod_rewrite and FrontPage Extensions (thanks to Rhoda Schueller for that info).

I will be adding some more information and examples of what you can do with .htaccess and mod_rewrite to help with other web server issues. Please let me know if there is something special you want to see covered.

On the Free Directory Listings front, I have added two general and one niche directory that are accepting submissions quickly. Check them out on Free Directories page 6.

As always, please comment below or email me by clicking on my name.

martin

Press Releases for Link Building and Traffic Too

I had heard for some time about promoting websites via press releases, but I hadn't had a chance to try them. I recently used PRWebDirectfor two press releases for one of my clients.

Their paid service is excellent. We opted for their "PR Web Distribution w/ SEO TOOLS" level for $249 and added their "Edit and Polish" service (+$69) to make the press releases sound really professional. It's amazing how their editor took our copy and rearranged it to make it really flow. This paid level is the minimum level where you can use anchor text links (very important for link building) and also gets you into Google and Yahoo! News. I did the keyword research and basic optimization, but if you want them to do that for you, they have a "Premium Search Engine Optimization & PR Web Distribution" level ($350 without the Edit and Polish).

If you working on a tight budget, PRWeb offers distribution from free up to $80, but the distribution and services are more limited. I think it's best to use the PRWebDirectlevels to get the greatest distribution.

We were quite happy with the exposure we received in the search engines News channels and the regular SERPs. We got some decent initial traffic and believe the links will help us in the future, as they are archived and grow in strength. I think the initial traffic surge is really dependent on your market. Our test was aimed at some areas that were quite narrow and we were mostly doing this promotion for the links.

I also added a couple of new directories to my Free Directory Listings and updated a lot of the back link data. Several of the recent directory additions have already shown up as back links in Yahoo! and MSN (Google, of course, only shows a small percentage and only "exports" their link data about once a month).

That's it for now. As always, your comments are welcome below or email me by clicking on my name.

martin

Looking For Some Good Free Directories

I just spent most of the morning looking for some new free directories to add to my free directory listings. It's getting harder each week. I found a couple of new ones that look like they may grow into good ones, but right now they are PR0. I can find tons of PR0 directories, but it's tough to predict which ones are going to grow into a mature directory and ultimately give you a valuable link.

I have received some good recommendations from visitors, thank you for that. If you know of or run a directory that is free, search engine friendly and has potential to grow in strength, please let me know by commenting below or emailing me by clicking on my name below.

How do I judge a directory under consideration? I look at the home page PageRank, does that PR seem to make it to interior pages. I look for static links with a static path from the home page. It amazes me the tricks that some sites use to keep from giving link pop to the sites listed in their directory. I also look to see if they have blocked search engines from their listing pages. I look at their page satuation and link pop.

Now I'm not a PageRank fanatic, but it is an easy "quick reference" measurement of their link strength. I also look at the type of sites that are listed. Are they decent sites or just a bunch of spam.

I depend heavily on Dan's research in his SEO Friendly List. I don't discount a directory if it's not on his list, but his research is very up to date. Thanks Dan!! ;-)

That's it for now, so get to submitting and let me know if you find a good directory or have problems with one in my Free Directory Listings.

martin