Anyone who has used a SEO directory will swear by its advantages. It makes the task of searching the SEO services pretty easy even for the novice user. In fact it has a lot of advantages to offer!

So let us have a look at these advantages being offered by the SEO directories-

1.    Refine your search according to your need

Whether you want to search according to your location or according to the business details (like its URL or may be its business name), a directory will offer you all the options.

That simply means you have the option of refining your search based on the preferences you have!

2.    Time saving

You no longer need to search at thousand places. You just need to come to the directory and you get the complete details. Definitely this will save a lot of time for you!

3.    Everything at one place

Whether you want to know about any localized SEO Company or a globalised one, all you need to do is refer to these directories.

Also it will give you all the information that you could have wanted. I don’t think there could be anything better than finding everything you want at a single place!

4.    Easily accessible

Since they are available online you can access them easily. Also anyone can access them and that too for free!

5.    Reliable solution

A good SEO directory offers you reliable options. They enlist the companies only after getting a thorough knowledge about them. That means you can find reliable companies via these.

With so many benefits no doubt these directories could be your take while finalizing on that SEO Company to boost the sales of your business (irrespective of the fact whether you are eyeing the local or global arena!)

Though considered unethical but the quick results it provides (and the low cost involved) are enough to lure people to Black Hat SEO.

Let us have a look at some of the techniques that are adopted worldwide under this category (and beware of these if you want to avoid getting penalized by the search engines)-

1)    For content

Over here the main focus is on the statistical aspects of the algorithms (used by search engines) instead of the content.

So they use techniques like-

•    Keyword stuffing

It means over-using the keywords in alt or meta tags or the content itself (even the reader can make out these repetitions). Sometimes keywords are placed in the background as hidden text (by merging it with the background color)

•    Deceptive content

The gateway (also called bridge or doorway) pages may be created. These are the pages targeted towards a particular search engine with about 1-3 keywords.

Also at times different pages are created for the search engines and visitors (who is visiting is decided based on the IP or other methods). This technique is referred to as cloaking.

2)    For linking

•    Link farms

These are the pages that have unrelated links. In fact the sole motto of these is to create more and more links to the target pages.

•    Spamming

The blogs, forums and the other social networking sites are spammed with the links. It is again considered unethical.

These were some of the most popular Black Hat SEO techniques used. Though if you are planning to adopt these, do remember that they might give your site a sudden hike in the search engine rankings, but this will be maintained only till the time the search engines get to know (and then be prepared to pay the penalty!)!

Article marketing is one of the most important methods to advertise your business online. For every businessman, this forms a crucial step in promoting his products and services online. How is this accomplished? Articles are written and distributed through a proper method.

This technique is greatly helpful in generating visitor’s attention. When a visitor clicks on your article and finds it relevant and to the context he was looking for, he not just reads it but suggests to other people as well. What would be the result? Your content becomes famous and gets the required amount of traffic and hits.

It makes you a reputed person and provides you a status of the one who is capable of publishing business articles. Link building, an essential marketing approach, makes your site famous and visible on the net. As articles are a way of advertisement, it boosts up the sales of your products.

With more number of visitors on your site, its page rank also goes up. Focus on the content which is being used for marketing. It needs to be relevant and if the customer also feels the same, he would come back and turn out to be your trusted clients. These clients are the one who buy your product and contribute to your business becoming profitable.

How to write an effective article? Besides useful content, concentrate on offering certain specific, key and unique points when writing about a product or a company. With every word of your content, the reader gets to know about the company.

It is crucial to get noticed on the web for the purpose of making a mark in your field and prospering your business. Article provides you this visibility and in turn good amount of revenue is also generated. It is quite evident that number of visitors and profit is interrelated and one strongly depends on the other.

Once you are finished with writing an article, submit it to a reputed and high ranked article directory. Both writing and submission go hand in hand. Writing an article is half the work done until submission is also completed. More people visit a directory which has good rank and your article stands a good chance of being read and popularized.

To run a website successfully, link building is as important as your body nerve system. It is the practice of establishing links to your website from as many other reputable websites as possible. No you wonder how to create link building. You don’t need to give stress to your mind as I am going to tell some better link building ways.

Article Marketing

Article marketing is undoubtedly one of the greatest ways to get better link building. Without it you cannot take your site at a leap. Search engines crawl your published articles along with your site link. Different web directories like articlebase.com, ehow.com and buzzle.com provide opportunity to publish grammatically correct and indirect advertisement articles with your site links. Informational and effective article writing plays important role in taking your website at a leap.

Comments and Forums

Leaving comments on different reputed sites with your site link creates better link building. But chances of rejection of your comments are high if they are not genuine. Giving comments like “Nice article, keep it up!” gives clear indication that you are trying to get link from that site. So it’s quite important to give genuine comments. You can ask questions and can give tips. They look genuine and attract visitors. Talking on forum positing, it’s really a great method of building link. If your website is on health, it’s better to make your account in the forum sites dedicated to health issues to get quality traffic.

Over the last few years there has been lot of discussion regarding URL shorteners and their impact on SEO. Now it is officially confirmed by Google that “link value” through URL shorteners is preserved as Google treats them similar to a 301 permanent redirect.

This is great news for people using URL shorteners and the most important thing is that much of the link building being done through social media will beneficial for SEO.

Some of the best URL shortening services for SEO are:

Goo.gl :- This is directly from Google. The Goo.gl’s short URLs are always 301 (permanent) redirect as it makes it fast, secure and perfect for SEO. It also gives a great range of stats for the clicker. Google itself removes the spam links from its database thus building trust for users.

Tiny URL :- This is one of the most popular URL shortener. For several social media tools it is a default shortener like Twitter. ThisTiny URL does not provide click stats but allows you to customize your URL.

Bit.ly :- This URL has been around for a while like the Tiny URL. And for many tools it is the trusted default. It has one click shortening service along with a simple URL tracking feature. Thus now you can track Bit.ly shortened URLs by just placing a ‘+’ after the URL. You also get URL customization.

Thus these are top 3 URL shorteners which are beneficial for SEO. Therefore when going for any link shortening you can use any one of them.