Hmmm… Now the web page is showing that it was last updated on October 13, 2007, but on July 3, 2010 is said the last edit was done on May 5, 2010. Obviously something strange going on here.
I also took a quick glance at the external links and it appears there were no changes, not that it matters.
Whatever, I guess. I would be doing my clients a disservice if I didn’t attempt to get their website listed there, regardless. I don’t expect it will be approved or even get looked at, though. Only about 1 in 10 websites I submit seem to. Regardless of how good and appropriate they are to the category or how well the guidelines are followed.
This is pretty straight forward and easy to do, but I’ve included a few images here to show what I have done to enable a DoFollow backlink to my website from my public Facebook profile. When you are logged in your links will be NoFollowed, but by doing what I’m going to show you here, your displayed website address will be a DoFollow backlink at your public Facebook profile URL when is viewed by logged out users and, of course, crawled by the search engines.
Facebook Profile Page
I’ve chosen to use a custom privacy setting by clicking on the “Custom” navigation link on the left. After that I clicked on the customize settings link as show circled in yellow.
Facebook Privacy Settings
On the customized settings page I chose to allow my website to be viewable by everyone.
Facebook Website Privacy Setting
There is no save button on this page, so you can just go back to your profile from here and your new setting should be saved. Last you need to have set a website address under your contact information as shown below.
Facebook Contact Information Settings
Now your first website address should show on your public Facebook profile – as a DoFollow link – like it does on mine.
Don’t expect any more link love from BizJournals Business Directory. They’ve recently added the nofollow attribute to outbound website links.
That’s too bad because I used to think of them as one of the highest quality free business directories. They actually do a good job of verifying the company information being submitted and approving or denying appropriately. Not sure why they decided to ad nofollow?? Sad to lose another great resource. Every time we lose a quality business directory like this one it drives the cost of SEO up for local small businesses.
For the last few weeks I’ve been working on a huge master Excel document with most of the satisfactory to high-value backlink sources I can think of. A checklist if you will. Needless to say the list is extremely long and I’ve gotten a little burnt out now. I’m sure I’ve overlooked some very obvious ones and could really use your help identifying them. In no particular order, here is how I have the link sources categorized right now:
Free General Directories
Paid General Directories
Location Specific Directories
Industry Specific Directories
Blog Directories
Business Profiles
Misc. Profile Pages
Certifications
Associations
Donations
Sponsorships
Testimonials
Case Studies
Portfolios
DoFollow Blog Comments
Third-Party Blog
Business Partnerships
Relevant Link Exchanges
Forums
Social Bookmarking
Third Party Web Stat Tools
Article Submissions
Press Releases
Guest Posting
Guest Books
Client Websites
Banner Ads
Classified Ads
Employee Profiles
This list doesn’t include getting back links from social media or link-baiting such as high-value blog posts, badges, widgets etc. Just backlinks that are acquired more manually. Link baiting and social media will be on my next list.
I’m sure this list of possible backlink sources is far from perfect, and would appreciate it if you shared some of your ideas here too. Would love to know what I’m forgetting, or haven’t even thought of yet.
Do you have any to add? Feel free to leave your comments below.
Paying to get listed in web directories is probably one of the most controversial issues when it comes to SEO. I’ve recommended a few quality directories on this website for awhile. Since I still get so many people asking if it is “really” okay to submit to directories, I thought it would be helpful to let you hear directly from Google that not all directories are not considered bad and some business directories do actually carry weight!
So what makes a quality directory?
Here’s a video with Matt Cutt’s giving advice on what to look for:
I know of several SEOs who say all directories are bad, and you’re bad if you submit to them. But you can see from this video that is simply just not the case. What’s bad is the number of “experts” blogging about things that just aren’t true.
From the video:
How to Identify a Quality Web Directory
They also seek out quality websites rather than just waiting for submissions
Strict editorial guidelines
High Standards
Cost of directory
Offer value-added
What is a Low-quality Directory
Everyone gets in
Whatever anchor text you want
Automatic approval process
Now you have it directly from the horse’s mouth – when looking for link sources, a few high-quality web directories such as Yahoo! and BOTW are okay by Google, and can even help increase your search engine rankings.
I just noticed ActiveRain.com added the nofollow attribute to outbound links on free profiles. I’m not really sure when this happened, but I estimate it was within the last month or so.
Well that’s another great “free” link-building resource down the drain. For $39/mo you can pay for dofollow links by signing up for their Outside Blog subscription. That membership will allow you to show your ActiveRain blog posts publicly as well as dofollowing your outbound links.
When social networking communities build a subscription based service with the only real benefit being dofollow links, should they be penalized for selling links?
Should they be encouraged to dofollow or nofollow across the board?
I don’t know what the right answer is.
What do you think?
Side note: Usually when a new social networking community launches without implementing nofollow on free profiles, they are only doing it in order to draw in the herds of members who understand what a dofollow link means. Then, once they have enough members to show the venture capitalists or whomever, they quickly add nofollow and force you to pay if you want to continue receiving link-juice from them. Unless you have unlimited funding and marketing dollars, you kinda have to dofollow links in the beginning..
Bye, Bye, backpage.com. I just noticed Backpage has recently implemented rel=”nofollow” on all free outbound ad links. I’m not sure when this went into place, but I couldn’t find any other resources acknowledging it yet.
While I do believe this will help the quality of their free classifieds, I don’t know of anyone other than myself that has actually ever used their website to buy something or find a service provider. Unfortunately, the majority of value was in their ad links. With that said, it is quite possible Google manually stopped allowing them to pass outbound link-juice a long time ago anyway. Tough to tell though, any link-juice that might have been passed before was minimal already.
You have to wonder if they were given the infamous Google ultimatum.
Now that Backpage no longer helps with link-building for SEO, I’ll be interested to see what happens with their traffic over the next few months.
Does anyone know on what day they actually implemented the nofollow tag on user-generated outbound links?
HotFrog.com is a free US business directory. This is an easy way to get a free one-way link back to your website, which helps with SEO. You just need to create a business profile and add your link.
You can get more than one link by creating news articles under your business profile too. The more information you add to your profile the higher up in each category your business will show. You can read their optimization tips here.
Even though I consider this a lower quality directory, I do believe there is some link-building benefit to adding your website there. This is because whenever I add a businesses website, the newly created HotFrog business profile is usually indexed and ranking in Google search within a couple of hours to a couple of days.
However, If you don’t take the time to submit a thorough, well-optimized listing, then I don’t recommend submitting at all. You’ll just be wasting your time.
As you probably know by now, there are a few directories I recommend you get your business and/or website listed in.
Wouldn’t it be great if you could submit multiple websites to them without feeling like a spammer?
Well three of the directories I recommend most frequently allow you to do just that by becoming a volunteer directory editor. Those three are JoeAnt, BOTW, and DMOZ.
Becoming an editor doesn’t necessarily give you a free pass on submitting crappy websites, however it does get you a little more involved in the approval process and has other benefits like understanding what goes on behind the scenes, networking, and possibly getting multiple websites listed in JoeAnt for free.
Both BOTW.org and DMOZ.org already allow for free submissions without having to become an editor; however, BOTW only allows free “blog” submissions.
Beyond that there isn’t any real financial benefit to becoming an editor, however the insights learned by becoming one can go a long way. Especially because these three directories are 3 of only a very few general directories Google hasn’t come down with the hammer on. Volunteer for your favorite category, and you likely be introduced to quite a few great websites you hadn’t known prior to.
Regardless of what some high-profile SEO bloggers might say regarding manual link-building and paid links, I still think they have their place. It is careless to inculcate a one-size fits all when it comes to link-building.
While manual link-building is becoming less and less relevant, it is still one of the the most cost-effective ways for small, location specific businesses to rank well in the search engines. And I think that is exactly the way it should always be.
It is ridiculous to force small-town shops, dentists, chiropractors and similar industries to spend months if not years publishing articles and social networking until they finally get some of their work redistributed and linked to. Great content alone rarely equals links; it’s years of online networking and reputation building or an expensive marketing campaign that drives “natural” links. Regardless of what some of some these bloggers might say. All these bloggers have to do is sneeze and they get linked to and retweeted. They have simply forgotten what life is like for the majority of small business owners. Especially ones who don’t have a need to do actual business over the Internet. But just because they might not do business over the Internet, that doesn’t mean they don’t have a need to be found there. Google is today’s Yellow pages.
Unlike high-profile SEO bloggers, most small-businesses don’t have thousands or even a just few online networking buddies, so getting articles and blog posts redistributed and linked to isn’t nearly as easy as 1 2 3.
My advice is this: If you’re a small business, or doing SEO for a very small-business, it is okay to find some local directories and manually request some links. Also, there are a few general, paid directories like Yahoo!, BOTW, and Business.com, which Google appears to treat as authorities. If you’re competition is minimal, having a well-optimized website and a handful of high-quality manual links could, and IMO should, earn you a spot on the first page of Google, Yahoo!, and Bing.
The more Google discriminates against manual links, the more expensive it will get for small businesses to get found on the Internet. And quite honestly, the more necessary they will be making paid links….one way or another, almost all links are paid links.
BTW: Business.com and BOTW.org are affiliate links. However, my valuation of their worthiness is in no way influenced by that.
Search engine optimization blog and Internet marketing resource dedicated to helping you
drive traffic to your website through search engine marketing! Be sure to check
our blog daily for frequently updated SEM tips.
For the last few weeks I’ve been working on a huge master Excel document with most of the satisfactory to high-value backlink sources I can think of. A checklist if you will. Needless to say the list is extremely long and I’ve gotten a little burnt out now. I’m sure I’ve overlooked some very obvious ones and could really use your help identifying them. In no particular order, here is how I have the link sources categorized right now:
I just noticed 
Bye, Bye, 
As you probably know by now, there are a 
Regardless of what some high-profile SEO bloggers might say regarding manual link-building and paid links, I still think they have their place. It is careless to inculcate a one-size fits all when it comes to link-building.
