What is Directory and How it helps in SEO (Search Engine Optimization) ?

A directory is an online list or catalog of websites. That is, it is a directory on the World Wide Web of (all or part of) the World Wide Web. Historically, directories typically listed entries on people or businesses, and their contact information; such directories are still in use today. A web directory includes entries about websites, including links to those websites, organized into categories and subcategories. Besides a link, each entry may include the title of the website, and a description of its contents. In most web directories, the entries are about whole websites, rather than individual pages within them (called "deep links"). Websites are often limited to inclusion in only a few categories.

There are two ways to find information on the Web: by searching or browsing. Web directories provide links in a structured list to make browsing easier. Many web directories combine searching and browsing by providing a search engine to search the directory. Unlike search engines, which base results on a database of entries gathered automatically by web crawler, most web directories are built manually by human editors. Many web directories allow site owners to submit their site for inclusion, and have editors review submissions for fitness.

Web directories may be general in scope, or limited to particular subjects or fields. Entries may be listed for free, or by paid submission (meaning the site owner must pay to have his or her website listed).

 

Scope of Directory Listings:

Most of the directories are general in on scope and list websites across a wide range of categories, regions and languages. But some niche directories focus on restricted regions, single languages, or specialist sectors. One type of niche directory with a large number of sites in existence is the shopping directory. Shopping directories specialize in the listing of retail e-commerce sites.

However, a debate over the quality of directories and databases still continues, as search engines use ODP's content without real integration, and some experiment using clustering.

 

How to Monetize the Directory Listings:

Directories have various features in their listings, often depending upon the price paid for inclusion: 

1. Free submission – there is no charge for the review and listing of the site
2. Paid submission – a one-time or recurring fee is charged for reviewing/listing the submitted link
3. No follow – there is a rel="nofollow" attribute associated with the link, meaning search engines will give no weight to the link
4. Featured listing – the link is given a premium position in a category (or multiple categories) or other sections of the directory, such as the homepage. Sometimes called sponsored listing.
5. Bid for position – where sites are ordered based on bids
6. Affiliate links – where the directory earns commission for referred customers from the listed websites
7. Reciprocal link – a link back to the directory must be added somewhere on the submitted site in order to get listed in the directory. This strategy has decreased in popularity due to changes in SEO algorithms which can make it less valuable or counterproductive.
8. No Reciprocal link – a web directory where you will submit your links for free and no need to add link back to your website

 

Human-edited directories

A human-edited directory is created and maintained by editors who add links based on the policies particular to that directory. Human-edited directories are often targeted by SEOs on the basis that links from reputable sources will improve rankings in the major search engines. Some directories may prevent search engines from rating a displayed link by using redirects, nofollow attributes, or other techniques. Many human-edited directories, including World Wide Web Virtual Library, Business.com and Jasmine Directory, are edited by volunteers, who are often experts in particular categories. These directories are sometimes criticized due to long delays in approving submissions, or for rigid organizational structures and disputes among volunteer editors.

In response to these criticisms, some volunteer-edited directories have adopted wiki technology, to allow broader community participation in editing the directory (at the risk of introducing lower-quality, less objective entries).

Another direction taken by some web directories is the paid for inclusion model. This method enables the directory to offer timely inclusion for submissions and generally fewer listings as a result of the paid model. They often offer additional listing options to further enhance listings, including features listings and additional links to inner pages of the listed website. These options typically have an additional fee associated but offer significant help and visibility to sites and/or their inside pages.

Today submission of websites to web directories is considered a common SEO (search engine optimization) technique to get back-links for the submitted website. One distinctive feature of 'directory submission' is that it cannot be fully automated like search engine submissions. Manual directory submission is a tedious and time-consuming job and is often outsourced by webmasters.

 

 

Find List of Directories @ http://www.srikshitha.com/2012/01/huge-huge-huge-list-of-directories-for.html

 

 

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_directory

Google Plus Account is going to close from April 2, 2019

Recently I have received a mail from Google that my personal Google+ Account is going away on April 2, 2019

I have received this email because I am a consumer (personal) Google+ account or I manage a Google+ page

In December 2018, Google announced the decision to shut down Google+ for consumers in April 2019 due to low usage and challenges involved in maintaining a successful product that meets consumers' expectations. Google want to thanks for being part of Google+ and provide next steps, including how to download our photos and other content.

On April 2nd, our Google+ account and any Google+ pages we created will be shut down and Google will begin deleting content from consumer Google+ accounts. 

Photos and videos from Google+ in our Album Archive and our Google+ pages will also be deleted. We can download and save our content, just make sure to do so before April. Note that photos and videos backed up in Google Photos will not be deleted.
The process of deleting content from consumer Google+ accounts, Google+ Pages, and Album Archive will take a few months, and content may remain through this time. For example, users may still see parts of their Google+ account via activity log and some consumer Google+ content may remain visible to G Suite users until consumer Google+ is deleted.

Already from February 4th, we will no longer be able to create new Google+ profiles, pages, communities or events.


See the full FAQ for more details and updates leading up to the shutdown.

If We are a Google+ Community owner or moderator, we may download and save our data for our Google+ Community. Starting early March 2019, additional data will be available for download, including author, body, and photos for every community post in a public community. Learn more

If we sign in to sites and apps using the Google+ Sign-in button, these buttons will stop working in the coming weeks but in some cases may be replaced by a Google Sign-in button. We will still be able to sign in with our Google Account wherever we can see Google Sign-in buttons. Learn more

If we have used Google+ for comments on our own or other sites, this feature will be removed from Blogger by February 4th and other sites by March 7th. All your Google+ comments on all sites will be deleted starting April 2, 2019. Learn more

If we are a G Suite customer, Google+ for our G Suite account should remain active. Contact our G Suite administrator for more details. We can also expect a new look and new features soon. Learn more

If we are a developer using Google+ APIs or Google+ Sign-in, click here to see how this will impact you.

Evolution of Email Marketing - Some Curious Facts Which you Don't Know

In recent years, social media has helped foster communication between people all over the world, but email has been doing it for decades. In fact, a 2018 forecasting report by The Radicati Group found the number of email users around the world will reach 3.8 billion by the end of the year. To put things into perspective, this is 100 million more users than 2017. And by 2022, this number is expected to reach over 4.2 billion.

Before email, marketers relied on traditional mail for distributing advertisements in the form of flyers, catalogs and promotional letters. Thankfully, today you don’t have to head to your local FedEx and print out hundreds upon thousands of ads resulting in a costly, time-consuming and outdated job. Email marketing has transformed the way businesses reach their customers, turning what used to be a distribution headache into a swift click of a button. But to really appreciate everything it has to offer, we need to dive deep into the history of email marketing and how it transformed into what it is today.

Let’s take a trip down a digital messaging memory lane

1971 – The first email is sent

Sent by Ray Tomlinson, a computer programmer for MIT’s Arpanet (which was essentially the foundation of what we know today as the internet.) While he can’t remember exactly what his message said, he believes it was something along the lines of “Test 123” or perhaps the top row of letter keys, QWERTYUIOP. Do you think the recipient knew this was a code that needed to be cracked?

1972 – The first email management system is developed

Not long after, Larry Roberts created an email management database. This system allowed people to list, select, forward and respond to messages.

1978 – First email blast sent

Only a few years down the line, Gary Thuerk, a marketing manager at Digital Equipment Corporation, sent an email to nearly 400 users on Arpanet, advertising DEC machines. The result?

About $13 million in sales. Talk about a win.

This first email blast foreshadowed a bright future for the world of marketing, developing what is known today as one of the most efficient and important segments of internet marketing.

1982 – The term “electronic mail message” was shortened to “email”

Referring to digital postage as an “electronic mail message” didn’t exactly roll off the tongue. Life became easier when users began utilizing the term “email” instead. This was the same year the smiley  “:-)” was used. Can you imagine having to wait 10 years after the systems were created to learn how to express emotions over the computer? I bet the recipient reacted the same way we do today when we receive the lonely “K” via text from our grandparents.

1988 – Spam becomes a thing

Now, we’re not talking about spiced ham, here. But why do they have the same name? The email version actually it got its name from a Monty Python sketch, but I digress.

It was this year that the word “spam” was added to the Oxford English Dictionary and defined as junk mail. It was inspired by those who weren’t happy about receiving email blasts that sparked zero personal interest or relevance.

1989 – Lotus Notes launched

Lotus Notes 1.0, one of the first widely used email software services, was created and launched by Ray Ozzie and Mitch Kapor.

1989 – AOL recorded the iconic “you’ve got mail!” track

When I think about the first few emails I ever received, three words come to mind: “You’ve got mail!” – in that nostalgic voice, too.

With such an iconic phrase and sound, you’d think that AOL spent months developing the perfect audio, but that wasn’t the case at all.

Former AOL CEO Steve Case shared the story behind the sound in his book “The Third Wave: An Entrepreneur’s Vision of the Future,” and you’d be surprised to learn that it was just a customer-service rep’s husband, a voice-over actor, who recorded it the night of Case’s request:

“The next day, she brought the recordings to me. His voice couldn’t have been more perfect. It was disarmingly friendly, like the voice you’d expect from a stranger who offered to carry your grandmother’s groceries. The second I heard it, I knew we weren’t going to be auditioning anyone else. I instructed our engineers to add the voice files to the new version of our software.”

1991 – The internet (as we know it today) is born!

Can you think back to a time before the internet was a thing? I can’t, because 1991 was my birth year as well, so I sincerely couldn’t imagine a world without it. The introduction of the internet to the general public really changed everything about everyone’s daily lives, but it opened up so many new doors for marketers. Gone were the days of relying on snail mail to send catalogs to promote products and services. With email, marketers could experience a whole new – and simplistic – way to directly reach potential customers.

1996 – Popular email services begin to launch

After the success of Lotus Notes, companies began to take notice of its popularity and decided to branch out and create their web-based email database. In 1998, Microsoft developed its Internet Mail, which would go on to be renamed Outlook. The same year, Hotmail launched free email services for the general public. Up until this time, a private email was the only form of digital communication. Now, anyone with access to the internet could also create their own personal email address (which consisted of about 20 million American adults).

Late 1990s – Introduced us to HTML emails taking over plain text emails

Do you remember plain text emails? You know, the ones that consisted of basic, typewriter text and nothing visually captivating? This was the only option up until the late 1990s when HTML emails came about.

The use of custom fonts, colors, graphics and formatting changed the way messages were perceived. Before, everyone knew what they were going to see as soon as they opened the message. With HTML, it became more of a surprise.

Not only has HTML allowed marketers to help develop company brand awareness, but it also enabled them to make calls to action more prominent and engaging.

2003 – the CAN-SPAM Act was introduced in the US

Don’t take this title seriously – this law doesn’t encourage spamming. It’s actually the opposite.

The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 was signed into law by President George W. Bush as the nation’s first standard for sending commercial email, requiring the reduction of unsolicited email efforts. According to Autopilot, it also required that all marketing emails include sender details and an unsubscribe link, allowing readers to opt-out of receiving messages they found to be annoying or spammy.

2009 – Responsive emails were introduced

Did you know that mobile opens accounted for 46 percent of email reads in 2018? Webmail opens made up 38 percent, while 18 percent were desktop opens, according to Litmus. None of this would’ve been possible without the introduction of responsive email in 2009, which enabled marketers to optimize their emails for every user no matter what device they use to check their inbox.

According to Send Pulse, responsive email is the most effective way to improve email click-through rates, as 70 percent of people refuse to open or read an email if it doesn’t transfer well from a computer to their smartphone or tablet.

Today – Email marketing is EVERYTHING

Over the last decade, emails have become so much more than messages filled with general text. Now we pay attention to the pre-header text, word placement, visual hierarchy, hero images, gifs, and external linking options, all of which can take an email marketing campaign to the next level. In fact, research by Econsultancy found that 73 percent of marketers rate email as the No. 1 digital channel for ROI.

Today, marketers make use of email segmentation, mailing lists, newsletters and personalized campaigns through automated email marketing software. These tools are key to generating customer loyalty, improving click-through rates and ensuring your marketing efforts aren’t going to waste.

Email marketing changed the game

It’s safe to say that email has completely changed the way we communicate, and email marketing has made it easier for marketers to reach potential customers at scale. With the success that stemmed from smartphones and social media, future digital innovations will only help email marketing grow and become a more optimized, prominent option for advertising.

If one thing’s for sure, it’s that email marketing isn’t going anywhere. As a marketer, it’s your job to take advantage of it and look forward to what the future has in store.

Source: https://www.brafton.com/blog/email-marketing/the-history-of-email-marketing/

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Vs ASO (App Store Optimization)

 SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Vs ASO (App Store Optimization) - Infographic

Image Credit: goo.gl/ZtN9c9

Linkedin Marketing Strategies for B2B Lead Generation

Use it as a lead generation platform: LinkedIn is THE best option for lead generation. LinkedIn marketing accounts for over 80% effective leads generated via social media. Here is how you can use LinkedIn advertising to generate leads:

• Turn your page into a lead generation page.
• Keep the content fresh and unique.
• Use relevant and catchy images.
• Incorporate engaging content.
• Make the page presentable and the content readable.
• Use separate header and landing images.

Gain a Competitive Advantage: More than 90 percent of B2B marketers are currently using LinkedIn to share and distribute content. When you start marketing with LinkedIn, you can more closely monitor your competitors’ strategies, such as how they’re serving content, what they’ve accomplished, how they’re engaging your audience, and how their employees engage your target customer.

This can help you identify trends and marketing opportunities to grow your brand and acquire new talent.

Build Visibility and Engagement With Groups: There are a few benefits for marketers when it comes to LinkedIn groups: you can engage with other existing groups to form new connections, and you can even launch your own group with ties to your company to improve visibility and authority in your industry.

Participating in groups is a smart way to market yourself on LinkedIn without directly promoting your products or services. Your main goals are to provide answers, spark up debates and discussions, and use content marketing in groups to position yourself as a thought leader. That influence carries over to your brand with the connections you make.

Keep the page active and conversion-focused: You must keep the page active with fresh content as already mentioned.

LinkedIn marketing is done to ensure that the leads generated convert to actual takers. Marketing on LinkedIn is all about getting the potential takers to click. In case the landing pages fail, the recent updates should get them. To draw people’s attention you need to:

Post regular updates: 

• Engage viewers with interactive posts and be present to cater to the attention.
• Develop a communicative bond with potential conversion targets.
• This is how you use LinkedIn marketing to engage interested people and keep them interested so that the leads can convert to clients

Grow Your Presence With Targeted Content: Unlike other social networks where consumers collect friends the way gamers collect Pokémon, professionals on LinkedIn tend to network with people that work alongside or within their industry.

Increase Your Organic Visibility: LinkedIn Careers page screenshot Company pages and posts created in LinkedIn Pulse are both indexed by search engines like Google. Optimizing your company profile and posting regularly can give you a tremendous boost in organic search visibility, unique visitor traffic, and relevant referral traffic when you link back to your landing pages in the content you distribute.

Page administrators can even view metrics and insights including:

• The engagement level of posts
• Follower demographics
• Page traffic
• Activity and engagement on your company page

Many of these insights are also available for personal LinkedIn accounts, although advanced data metrics are only available to premium users.

Transform Sales Into Thought Leaders: If you have a sales team, include them in your marketing strategy. Don’t rely on LinkedIn just for sourcing leads and hard selling. Instead, encourage your sales team to become content marketers.

By sharing great content with prospects and customers, your sales team can greatly increase their personal influence and authority. Prospects will feel like your sales team is genuinely helpful, which builds more trust in both the individual and the organization. After using this approach, I’ve seen the velocity of sales increase as the window from lead acquisition to close shrinks.

Become More Human: People like doing business with other people, not faceless brands. Optimizing your business page with awesome behind-the-scenes images and team photos adds personality to your brand that will set you apart from the competition.

Let your employees represent the human side of your marketing strategy. With great images, compelling content, and helpful contributions to the community, you’ll maintain a positive perception around your brand.

Generate More Leads: As you build your presence on LinkedIn, you can begin leveraging user-generated content to promote your brand. The customers and vendors you’ve worked with in the past can provide testimonials that make your brand and individual team members stand out within the community. Any kind of testimonials from peers are major trust signals that can help you close deals faster and generate more leads. Testimonials on LinkedIn

I go out of my way to connect people in my network together if I think they have something to offer one another in business. When you craft great relationships with your prospects and other professionals, you will experience the same kind of referrals as your connections become champions for your business.

Zero in on Decision Makers: LinkedIn offers a lot of data, which makes it easy to find and engage the right audience. Whether I promote organic content or I use the paid promotional tools for sponsoring content on LinkedIn, this platform gives me the best chance of reaching the decision makers in every campaign we run.

Grow Your List: Direct engagement and content-sharing on LinkedIn will continuously enhance the trust your followers have in you. This makes it easy to reach out to your entire network and prompt them to join your email list to receive updates whenever you publish even more valuable content. Rather than hope for opt-ins from a call-to-action on a post, directly asking can yield tremendous results.

I’ve added hundreds of people to my lists just by reaching out to connections and asking them to sign up for my newsletter after first spending time nurturing the new relationship.