SEO World:

I’m working on a project where not only on-page (html/content) and off-page (links) factors are key to success (traffic in this case), but also crucial is generating more or less a rising buzz factor. Buzz by definition is like the “jungle-telegraph” model–where people start talking about something and naturally share among their friends and social networks.

Just this morning, I heard about the new Papaya Dance, the “next Macarena” (Note: currently, only about 300,000 pages are returned in Google in that search–this will grow).

The idea that generating buzz or natural sharing is easier now than ever may be true from a technology standpoint–just see this screenshot (from 10e20):

… but solid content–quality, that is–with maybe a slight bit of controversy, a fun factor or simply informational pieces–still is just as important. You must learn to use it all.

One place to start your social buzz trek: Learn some related (to your business) tools at go2web20. 

When it comes to “off-page” factors (links) for SEO, their importance cannot be overstated. A mix of natural, relevant links is always a great way to go, and it’s a secret to good rankings.

You need to Always Be Link Building, with no spam. The more links, the better.

This is something you can build by offering not only good quality content (people will natually link to you), but research web locations where relevant links can be had. You should look first at your competition to discover where they get their links from and what quality sites they belong to–as it will help guide your link-building efforts. You may find that they belong to directories.

A fast, easy way to check for link popularity of a site is to use the link: command in Google (limited) and preferably  linkdomain: in Yahoo. Yahoo will show you direct links for the domain, example: linkdomain:zillow.com (more than 2 million links).

This research is important, and there is another, complementary (read: additive) way to get links to your website. It’s a form of paid links, but Google tends to value them, especially the top sites.

Since a good way to track the lists you submit to is via Excel Worksheets–I have pulled data from strongestlinks.com and broken them out into regional/subject tabs as well as global data sets on the search marketing resources site.

The worksheet lists PageRank, Alexa Rank, Fees, and more information.

===> You can download the excel sheet here.

Since this is an exhaustive list, I don’t recommend signing up for all of these–but selecting the top directories in your niche (do the research first), adding key directories every other week or so, and not overdoing it. There are free directories, but many are paid–and if you have commercial websites, most require a fee. You should sign up to get more features enabled, including searching.

I recommend DMOZ, Yahoo, Business, JoeAnt and Gimpsy to start.

You should also investigate Back Link Watch for more links detective work; and SOLO Seo Link Tool provides a powerful way to manually use search builder to find and add links using Google. A Bad Neighboorhood Links checker may be a place to review for poor link networks.

Make sure to not forget the social media, videos, blogs and more. You are ultimately doing all of this for one reason: to build an authority asset(s) on the web, one that generates trusted traffic and converts to business, 24/7, 365 days a year.

New site owners are always eager to get listed in the search engines, and why not - it’s such an ego trip to see your site in the search engines for the first time (hopefully for some relevant, searched keywords!), and to think about the amounts of money and information you can exchange online. Call your friends, partners and your business networks and just tell them you are “all over the Internet”.

However, many spend too much time doing it incorrectly, manually, or via software automation (spamming). They add 100’s of links and descriptions to as many search engines and related directories as quickly as possible. They feel that this exercise will surely avert the dreaded (and mythical) Google Sandbox, where new sites appear to be “stuck” with no ability to be searched or found - for weeks, possibly months. And, they believe that Pagerank and Authority will quickly be built.

Not only are you possible spamming the search engines and directories - but you are not going about it the right way.

First of all, the Google sandbox does not exist. While true that newer sites will receive a higher level of scrutiny from SE’s like Google - there is no real truth to that rumour. However, you should not try to fix it by adding your site to 100’s of search engines (there’s really only 4 that matter) - instead, setup and organize your site and links, and you will have no problem at all.

If you want to add to search engines and directories, use a more comprehensive strategy, and add to these sections with the top 4 engines - Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask:

Google:

• Organic sites (add url)
• Paid Advertising & Contextual (sign up url)
• Directory Listing - ODP (add url)
• Google Local (add url)
• Geo Targeting (description, signup & video)
• Shopping Portal (add products)
• Google News (recommend listing)

Yahoo:

• Submit a site (add url)
• Submit Express (add url) *other types exist on this page, including express - paid inclusion
• Paid Advertising (sign up)
• Content Match (sign up)
• The Directory! (sign up)
• Local search (sign up) * also, local enhanced
• Shopping/Products (sign up)
• Travel (sign up) and News (submit listing)

MSN:

• Submit Organic (add url)
• Paid Advertising (sign up)
• Local Search (sign up)
• Shopping (sign up)
• Travel (sign up)

Ask.com has additional links you might want to check out as well:

• pricegrabber.com
• http://sp.ask.com/docs/ajinteractive/mediasolutions.html
• http://sp.ask.com/docs/ajinteractive/searchsolutions.html

The simple secret to effective web search index inclusion uses the strategies above, but it first starts with links - get as many high quality and relevant ones as you can - and you’ll be included faster than you can say “am I out of the sandbox yet“? Do this over time, not in one day, or one week - and you’ll see your traffic and business grow.

(To this day, I have never used the links for search engine submission, I simply build links and search engines come spidering. But, for products, directories and shopping portals, you should use the above).