Simple Article Submission Guidelines

1) The articles that you submit must be your own work:

You may not submit articles written by other authors and the content must be unique. No rebranded articles allowed, you must be the sole copyright holder for each article you submit. Articles written by a ghost writer are perfectly acceptable as long as they are being used only by yourself.

2) No affiliate links:

The articles that you submit to LinkDirectory.com should not contain affiliate links. It is acceptable, however, to mention the URL's of helpful sites or your own website which redirects to the recommended affiliate product.

3) Spelling and Grammar:

Articles must be spell checked and proof read for grammatical errors prior to submitting.
Do not submit articles filled with spelling errors and bad grammar. We do monitor article submissions and we will reject content that doesn't meet this requirement.

4) Links:
Html links are allowed only in the article body, don't overdo it. An article with a bunch of links simply looks like an advertisement, and will not be accepted. A good limit is two or three links.

5) Title:
Do not use ALL CAPS for the title. If you submit a title using all caps, we will change it to upper and lower caps, or we might reject the article all together. Html is not allowed in the title

6) Article Body:
Please keep your article a reasonable length. The preferred length of an article is 400 to 900 words.

And lastly, please make sure that the category you are submitting your article to relates to the topic of the article you are submitting.

Google launches video chat for Gmail

Google is rolling out video and voice capabilities for the chat function that is embedded in the Gmail interface. It's a bare-bones voice and video-conferencing service, but it's simple to install and use and is a very good addition to Gmail.

It's no Skype, though. Gmail Video and Voice, as it's called, can't connect to the plain phone network, as Skype's paid service can. And there are plenty of other optional features missing, like a voice call recorder.

Gmail gets video. (And either the person who showed me the app can't be seen in public, or Google can't afford lights.)

I found a demo of voice and video quality on the service excellent, although to be fair I was connected from CNET's corporate network to someone at the Google campus. I do expect Gmail Video quality to be a bit more consistent than Skype, since unlike the point-to-point architecture of Skype, Gmail Video traffic all runs through Google servers. I expect that Google has the bandwidth and server capacity needed.

But the service was a resource hog on my 2-year-old computer; it used up all my available CPU resources and made other apps slow to respond. I've had better luck with Skype. Newer computers would probably not have this problem.

Unlike many current video chat products, Gmail Video and Voice uses a proprietary plug-in, not Flash. The small (2MB) download supports Firefox, IE, and Chrome on the PC, and Firefox on the Mac. Support for other browsers and platforms (Linux and mobile) may come later.

Gmail Video and Voice will be made available to all Gmail users starting Tuesday at noon PST. Global rollout should be complete by the end of the day. To see if you have it, open a chat with someone (you don't actually have to message them). If your account is video-enabled, at the lower left of the chat window, there will be an interface element labeled "Video & more." When you click on that it will walk you through installing the plug-in. If you want to make a video call to someone who hasn't yet installed the plug-in, you'll be able to invite them to do so. (In my early test of the service, this feature wasn't yet enabled).

The existing downloadable Google Talk application, which has supported voice chat for a while, only later may get the video capability. The Google people I spoke with were noncommittal.

Upshot: The addition of voice and video makes Gmail a more compelling product. It's very nice to have all the major communications channels (e-mail, chat, voice, video, and soon, SMS) in one place and under one log-on. Google could, though, layer in some more connectivity into its own apps (like YouTube, Google Docs presentations, and Android) to make it even richer. And the lack of an interface to the standard phone system is limiting.

But Google got the first release of its videophone pretty much right. It works, it's easy, and if you're a Gmail user, the service is right where you want it.

List of Web Blogs

Web blogs

http://www.blogcode.com/-5
http://www.xpdig.com/ -4
http://www.webloglines.com/-5
http://blo.gs/ -7
http://gnoos.com.au/-3
http://www.dandelife.com/-6
http://writetomyblog.com/-6
http://www.bitty.com/-6
http://www.blogger.com/home-4
http://www.post282.com/p282/-3
http://www.opinmind.com/-6
http://typolis.net/-5
http://netweather.accuweather.com/ -6
http://www.extrapounds.com/-4
http://homepagenow.com/#homepage-3
http://www.weblogsinc.com/-7
http://www.metafilter.com/-7
http://www.bloglines.com/-9
http://www.jaxtr.com/user/index.jsp-6
http://www.blogsome.com/-6
http://twitthis.com/-6
http://www.eurekster.com/-7
http://tailrank.com/-6
http://www.blogdigger.com/index.html-7
http://www.addthis.com/-9
http://www.lijit.com/-7

Rules for Web or Content writing

Writing for the Web is not the same as writing for print. People read differently on the Web. They scan read—jumping quickly from one piece of content to the next. People are much more action-orientated on the Web. They get online to get something done. Words should always be driving actions.

Rules for writing effective web content:
1) Know your reader
2) Take a publishing approach
3) Keep content short and simple
4) Write active content
5) Put content in context
6) Write for how people search
7) Write great headings
8) Write great summaries
9) Write great metadata
10) Edit. Edit. Edit.
1) Know your reader
All effective writing begins with knowing your reader. Write for your reader, not for your ego. Your reader is not everybody. The most effective writing is keenly focused on the specific needs of a clearly defined reader type. Is your reader a middle class, female American, with two kids, who lives in the suburbs?
Think like your reader thinks. Get to meet her. Once a month, talk to your reader. Read what she reads. Is there a common style and tone being used to reach her? Use it. Put a picture of your readers up on your wall. You shouldn't have more than 3-5 core reader types.
2) Take a publishing approach
Publishing is about getting the right content to the right person at the right time at the right cost. It's about getting and keeping attention with content. It's about driving actions.
Publishing is about selling with content.
Back around 1995, if you went to many airline websites, you found a big picture of an
aeroplane on the homepage. Now, you will find a booking process and special offers.Killer content. The first thing publishers must get right is their killer content. What content
do you have that will really drive actions? Put that on your homepage.
3) Keep content short and simple
In publishing, less is nearly always more. Remember, the one word that describes the
scan reader is impatient. Here are some guidelines for the length of your content:
• Headings: 8 words or less
• Sentences: 15-20 words
• Paragraphs: 40-70 words
• Documents: 500 words or less
Get rid of all your fancy words. Get rid of your ego. Writing effectively is not about showing off. It's about communicating. It's about driving actions. Write simply. Get to the point. Then stop.
4) Write active content
The most powerful word in the English language is 'YOU.' Write from the point of view of the reader. The reader has come to your website to do something. Your content should be written in an action-orientated style. Every sentence should be moving them towards a purchase, a subscription, a solution.
5) Put content in context
The Web is about links and connections. Web content is classified and linked content.
Never leave your reader at a dead-end on your website.
I wrote this article to impress you about what I know about writing for the Web. Here's
the type of actions I'd like you to consider:
6) Write for how people search
Write to be found when people are searching. That means using the words your target
readership is using. Before you begin writing, you need to sit down and plan the keywords you will use in your content. There are two excellent websites that will help you do this: Wordtracker :- www.wordtracker.com
7) Write great headings
Headings are the most important piece of content you will write. That's because:
• People scan read and the first piece of content they often read is the heading. If it's not interesting, they're gone.
• The heading is often used as title metadata. This is what the search engines use
on the search results page.
• The heading may be placed on a homepage as a link to the content.
When writing headings:
• Keep them to eight words or less
• Make sure you include the most important keywords
• Cut out as many adjectives and prepositions as possible (and, the, a, of)
• Be clear and precise. Avoid Shakespearean references. Avoid being clever
8) Write great summaries, sentences, paragraphs
The summary is the: who, what, where, when, how. It's about getting the facts across in 50 words or less. An objective of a summary is to make people want to read on. Keep them punchy and factual.
Sentences should be between 15-20 words. Paragraphs should be between 40-70 words. Remember, people scan read. If the first sentence in the paragraph is not interesting, they'll move on. So, always lead off a paragraph with a factual sentence.
9) Write great metadata
If you can't write good metadata, you can't write for the Web. Metadata gives web content context. You need to see metadata as an extension of grammar. You might say that metadata is web grammar.
Classification (categorization) is metadata. Focus on what classification terms are used on your website. Focus on how your content is classified. It is your responsibility to ensure that your content is properly classified. Misclassified web content might as well not have been written.
Headings and summaries are metadata. Date of publication and author information are metadata. If there's one piece of metadata that every webpage must have, it’s title metadata. Every webpage should have a unique title that precisely describes the content on that page.
10) Edit. Edit. Edit.
If at all possible, get someone else to edit your content. If you are editing someone else's content:
• Take your time. Good editing can take anything from 30-50 percent of the time it
took to write the original content.
• Aim to do about three edits.
• Edit first for style and tone. Ask these questions: Is it clear? Is it necessary? Is
there a shorter way to say this? Is there a simpler way to say this?
• Leave the checking of grammar and spelling until last. For a thorough edit, print out the content. Get a ruler. Place the ruler at the end of the content and read backwards.

Conversion Tracking:

Different keywords lead to conversions of varied frequencies, hence it is vital to know about the performance of a particular keyword as it affects your bid. In short, Conversion Tracking helps you improve your ROI (return on investment).
Methodology:
Usually, a small snippet of a code is embedded into specific pages on your websites, that denotes the occurrence of any important event. For example, when a user reaches the order confirmation page after a purchase, AdWords registers it as a Conversion. This data is then sent to your account and you can view it as account statistics and reports.
Improvements:
You can now define and track multiple conversions, which empowers you with more specific details about how conversions occur on your website. Use of AdWords Conversion Tracking brings you one step closer to Conversion Optimizer.

What is directory submission?

Website directories are web-based resources that list websites according to topic/niche. You might have heard of the DMOZ and Yahoo directories; they are human edited directories where any website owner can submit their websites to these directories and editors will manually review and approve the listings. The reason that directories like Yahoo and DMOZ are called human edited directories is because of the manual review process.
Directory submissions are a procedure where your website is submitted to different directories
according to their quality guidelines. In order to even get reviewed by a human editor, let alone
approved – you must follow the submission guidelines for each directory that your website is submitted
to.
There are hundreds of QUALITY web directories on the internet today. If you don’t know
what a directory is exactly - a directory is simply a categorized list of websites sorted by topic. As an
example, visit www.dmoz.org and you’ll find a number of categories on the home page and hundreds of
sub-categories for each category as you dig deeper into the website. DMOZ is a good example of what
a quality directory should be – and it’s free to submit to. But, there are hundreds of smaller directories
online where you can submit your website for free as well. Once you get your website listed in these
online directories, your website can get free traffic and other benefits – such as permanent one-way
backlinks, which can help improve your website’s search engine rankings.

Benefits of listing your website with free quality directories
• Provides permanent links, which improves your link popularity.
Once your website is listed in a directory, it’s there to stay.
• Improves keyword relevancy for your website with “themed” submissions and targeted anchor text.
Directory submissions allow you to get links from related pages. For example, if your website is
related to real estate, your directory submission will only be approved if you submit your website to
real estate directory, or at least a real estate category within a general directory.

Social Media Optimization

"Social media" describes the online technologies and practices that people use to share opinions, insights, experiences, perspectives and media itself.

Social media can take many different forms, including text, images,audio, and video. These sites typically use technologies such as blogs, message boards, podcasts, wikis, and vlogs to allow users to interact.

A few prominent examples of social media applications are:-

• Wikipedia (reference),
• MySpace (social networking),
• Gather.com (socialnetworking),
• YouTube (video sharing),
• Second Life (virtual reality),
• Digg (news sharing),
• Flickr (photo sharing) and
• Miniclip (game sharing)
• Blogtv, Justin.tv, and Ustream (livecasting),
• Stickham, YourTrumanShow (episodic online video),
• Izimi and Pownce (media sharing),
• del.icio.us (bookmarking) and
• World of Warcraft (online gaming)."

Social Media Sites

any media that invites interaction

ex:-blogs, MySpace, Facebook, wikis, discussion boards

Social Networking Sites

social media for which the goal is real world contact

ex:-MySpace, Facebook

When you create a profile, link, tag, article or other content on a social media website, other people from that website can view it. If they are interested in what you have to say, they will click through to your website.
In this way, you will gain organic traffic from your social media activities.That is, real people will view your social media pages, absorb your messages, visit your web sites and become your customers, fans and subscribers.
Every time you create content on a social media website that links back to you website, the search engines see that link. Every time the search engines see a link to your site,When the search engines think your site is important, they will make your listing appear higher in the results. These are called backlinks, and the more you have, the better.
So, you will benefit from social media by both the real people who visit your site from the links you leave all over the internet, but also from increased search engine rank from those backlinks.

Communities are the goal, conversations are the verb.

Social Media can be used to reach and connect with customers, you can participate in communities. An obvious output of this community are the digital and real life conversations that will manifest. You can read, join, and even measure those conversations, this is your currency.

Share a little information on the differences between social media sites.

Digg

Unquestionably the powerhouse traffic driver of them all, Digg traffic on the surface is actually not usually the kind of traffic that converts into subscribers, customers, or ad-clickers (unless you write about Digg topic favorites such as Google, Wii, Apple, and Macs).

• Grow a thick skin because Digg users are notoriously cruel commenters. The Digg crowd tends to be younger and male, and sometimes less than mature (though they do surprise me with their intelligence and wittiness from time to time

• Digg traffic comes in a big burst and dies out quickly - so it’s not going to put you on the map unless you can continue to write good content.

• Beware of MFD (Made For Digg) posts that can get rather addicting - the traffic is nice, but your own audience needs to come first.

• Lastly, I thought I had Digg pretty much figured out - and only had hopes of Digg success on very rare posts (as a mom blogger!). But when my post about Keeping Kids Busy on Summer Break got to the front page yesterday, I can only say that there is always another (extremely surprising) road to success.

• StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon is really the raving favorite of most bloggers I know. The traffic can come in tens of thousands, the ‘Stumbers’ are genuinely nice people, and the system is somehow set up to continue to send traffic to popular posts for weeks.

• StumbleUpon traffic tends to bring longer-term benefits such as subscribers, repeat visitors and customers. This is because the StumbleUpon algorithm is set up so that users will only see pages they have previously expressed an interest in learning more about, or are recommended by friends.

• Beware of abusing the system - if you keep ‘Stumbling’ your own site, after a while you’ll reach your quota. Be sure to both participate in the community and share other great finds to get the best benefits and add the most value.

Netscape

• Netscape users tend to be mostly interested in politics and traditional news stories. Their topic categories rather defy logic, as there isn’t even a business section.

• Your topic can influence your Netscape success tremendously - Dan from AskDanAndJennifer.com reports results up to 2500% higher than what I have seen from the site.

del.icio.us

del.icio.us is slightly different than the others in that the bookmarking features are a bit less social than on the other sites.

• Frankly, I’ve only had success on this site as a carry-over from getting onto the front page of Digg or Netscape - so I’m no expert on what it takes to master the process here.

• I love using del.icio.us simply as my own bookmarking site - so the added benefit of organizing your favorite resources easily in one place makes it one to use for other reasons besides driving traffic.

Since the social web allows you to interact with others, create and promote content that can get links and viral attraction, you can - with the right strategy - reach key influencers using this medium.
Social Media Optimization is one of the most common methods for getting significant exposure for bloggers. Sites like Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit, and Delicious are constantly sending large volumes of traffic to submissions that are the most popular with users.

An effective Social Media Marketing plan can help to take a blog from nowhere to being well-known in a short amount of time. However, social media isn’t a good fit for every blog, and not all bloggers choose to participate. For those who would rather draw traffic in other ways, there are some traffic sources that are capable of giving you the same type of exposure as a front page appearance on a major social media site.

In this post we’ll look at five ways that bloggers can quickly gain tremendous exposure without social media, and without paying for any advertising. Just like social media, these methods won’t be for everyone either, but you may find something that fits very well for your niche and for your audience.

De^!l$ @dv0c@te

ON-PAGE FACTORS

Factors that relate to code of a website including its content, meta tags, html tags and internal linking structure are known as on-page.
As we compare our sites rankings,process links,and other on page factors with three search engines 1. Google 2.Yahoo 3. Msn.

* In Google it will cut off the display in the Title itself based on the word break, but not a specific character count.
*If the site is listed in the Yahoo! Directory, the description in the directory takes priority.

* MSN will use the first 100 characters of the description and then it will shift to the first text in the body of the document.

* We need to validate the HTML code.
* The description tag should be related with the Title to get the searcher to 'click' on the listing.
* Every page should have a unique Title & Description.
* focusing on the page should be placed in the following areas:

a. Title Tag
b. Meta Description
c. H1 tag to begin the content
d. First paragraph of content
e. Appearing in Bold or Italic in the first three paragraphs of content
f. Appearing in the filename (with hyphens not underscores)
g. Used in anchor text to either an internal page or relevant external site.

* Check for bad links. Xenu or Dead Links.
* Fix bad links and create XML Sitemap and submit to Google.

Link Building - Effectively and Efficiently

Linking is one of the most important components of increasing traffic to your web site.

Submit your site to Web Directories-
Submit your site in the paid and free quality directories
Submit Press Releases to PR sites-
If your interest is in news then you may submits some recent news to the news sites which offers news from various parts of the world, if you want it for links then it is tough job for you to write some recent news so hire a news writer and call him to write some quality news and then submit press release to following news sites.

Reciprocal Links with Similar Websites--
If you blog or site has some sort of RSS feed functionality, submit it to RSS feed directories, you should also make available for aggregators that would like to include your content with linkback to the original posts. Here is a list you can start with.


One way link building: You will get links from site, you will not provide any link in return.
Two way link building: You will link the site of your partner somewhere on your website, and your partner will give link to your site from somewhere on their site.
Three way link building: Your partner will link your site and you will give him link from your other site its looks like more natural and more beneficial than other link building methods. It is better way for linking, because Google changed their algorithm and start banning the sites which has two way linking.
Squidoo Lenses-This is an web page where we create a Squidoo page and promote it.

Article Submissions-
Write original, unique and quality articles which are relevant to your site content and submit to the quality article to directories. Many of the article directories give credit to the author so you can give the link in the author profile which will be published with your articles which will you submit. I am mentioning some quality article directories here where you may submit your articles.

Ezinearticles
Articlealley
Articlesfactory

Social Media Profiles-

Social Bookmarking/Voting Websites-

submit your blog posts and other high value content to social bookmarking sites such as Digg, Reddit and StumbleUpon. Aside from the one-way link you’ll get and the (short-term) top Google ranking, you can hit the ‘jackpot’ by getting to the first page of digg.com, where you’ll receive thousands of one-way links.

Forum Signatures.-

Register in different related forums and participate in the discussion and place your signature links their, you will find a huge traffic from there and back links. Well, many SEO says that the signature links may devalue your site but I think this will give you number of back links just be sure to use your website business name instead of using a keyword rich anchor text in the signature. I’ve seen that using anchor text links doesn’t help much as too many links coming single place is not liked by Google.

Create a Tool, Theme or Widget--

Blogs on Other Blog Platforms.-
post high value comments on other blogs in your industry to spark discussion. Even if the comments are ‘nofollowed’, you can still get links to your site from other bloggers that refer to your posts.

Comment on Other Blogs.-

use RSS Submit software to submit your blog to blog directories. Use both the automatic and manual submission tools.

Guest posting on other blogs-This is another effective link building method even it is costlier than others it may give you huge benefits. You may ask some review sites and some bloggers for review your site for your required niche. You may find the bloggers on many forums who are ready for blog review at affordable costs.

Hold Contests- Some websites often offer contests in a bid to attract anchor text links from bloggers.

Collaborative Projects- Go for good collaborative projects

How Search Engines Operate

Search engines have a short list of critical operations that allows them to provide relevant web results when searchers use their system to find information.

1. Crawling the Web
   Search engines run automated programs, called "bots" or "spiders" that use the hyperlink structure of the web to "crawl" the pages and documents that make up the World Wide Web. Estimates are that of the approximately 20 billion existing pages, search engines have crawled between 8 and 10 billion.
2. Indexing Documents
   Once a page has been crawled, it's contents can be "indexed" - stored in a giant database of documents that makes up a search engine's "index". This index needs to be tightly managed, so that requests which must search and sort billions of documents can be completed in fractions of a second.
3. Processing Queries
   When a request for information comes into the search engine (hundreds of millions do each day), the engine retrieves from its index all the document that match the query. A match is determined if the terms or phrase is found on the page in the manner specified by the user. For example, a search for car and driver magzine at Google returns 8.25 million results, but a search for the same phrase in quotes ("car and driver magzine") returns only 166 thousand results. In the first system, commonly called "Find all" mode, Google returned all documents which had the terms "car" "driver" and "magazine" (they ignore the term "and" because it's not useful to narrowing the results), while in the second search, only those pages with the exact phrase "car and driver magazine" were returned. Other advanced operators can change which results a search engine will consider a match for a given query.
4. Ranking Results
   Once the search engine has determined which results are a match for the query, the engine's algorithm (a mathematical equation commonly used for sorting) runs calculations on each of the results to determine which is most relevant to the given query. They sort these on the results pages in order from most relevant to least so that users can make a choice about which to select.

Although a search engine's operations are not particularly lengthy, systems like Google, Yahoo!, Ask Jeeves and MSN are among the most complex, processing-intensive computers in the world, managing millions of calculations each second and funneling demands for information to an enormous group of users.

What is an SEO

SEO is the active practice of optimizing a web site by improving internal and external aspects in order to increase the traffic the site receives from search engines. Firms that practice SEO can vary; some have a highly specialized focus while others take a more broad and general approach. Optimizing a web site for search engines can require looking at so many unique elements that many practitioners of SEO (SEOs) consider themselves to be in the broad field of website optimization (since so many of those elements intertwine).
This guide is designed to describe all areas of SEO - from discovery of the terms and phrases that will generate traffic, to making a site search engine friendly to building the links and marketing the unique value of the site/organization's offerings.