As competitive as the online world becomes, it also is crucial that a website is noticed online.
As repetitive as this might be, Search Engine Optimization ensures that your web content appears when a user is searching for it. It is essential that search engines can read the content from a website therefore optimizing PDF files as well as normal HTML/ XHTML web content would be an excellent step to take.
Search Engines rate websites based on their relevancy to content and keywords, but also on many quality links the sites has - outgoing and incoming. The same way Search Engine Optimization specialists can optimize websites, PDF documents can be optimized too.
How to optimize a PDF file:
* Make all PDF's in text format, so that the search engine can read it;
* Complete the document's properties, (especially the title) - what usually happens is that people forget to set a title, that way the search engine will pick content from the PDF file and it might not be exactly what you would want.
* Optimize text, by making sure that selected keywords are there and can easily be identified;
* Add links to PDF files, so that readers can always be redirected to your website;
* Save files at the lowest possible Acrobat version, so that readers can easily open it, and search engines can find it;
* Sizes should be kept as small as possible, if files take too long to download users will abandon the site;
* Place links to your files on your web page where it can easily be found, i.e. closer to the root level of the site’s file structure.
* Specify reading order, in terms of text and headlines;
* Publish articles in different directories that directly link to your PDF documents
In order to achieve a higher ranking, it is important to use a set of well chosen keywords and relevant content, by optimizing PDF files. They can achieve a higher number of links and the opportunity to have more content associated with your website and your business, which would ultimately affect one's ranking on the most popular search engines.
http://www.articlebase.info/Article/Optimize-PDFs-for-search-engines/2540
Friday, October 19, 2007
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Organic SEO methods ensure your success on the web
Does the term sound confusing? Well don’t be, as this is nothing drastically different from the usual methods that are implemented by online business owners for search engine optimization of their site on the web. Organic SEO are the simple natural methods that are used for promoting a site on the web. The web is populated with numerous sites that provide different kinds of services to clients. Visitors always look out for information and if you manage to reach out to such visitors, you can surely do good business. After all, this is exactly what all online business owners aim to do through their online business sites.
To be successful on the web, you have to understand search engines really well. So understanding search engines is very crucial, if you want to be successful in this business. Search engines work very differently and they do not view and receive a site like we do. Search engines have certain criteria and guidelines, and if a site fulfills those requirements search engines receive those sites very favorably. It is very important for you to understand what search engines like to see and what they do not like to see on a site. Taking care of all these factors will ensure that the organic SEO methods that you use for your site will be successful.
Search engines change their algorithms very frequently. There are several reasons behind this, and the most obvious among them is the fact that they want to improve their results. The results are concluded after making a study of the users who are active on the web. Organic search engine optimization methods involve using all the legal and white hat methods for the optimization of a site on the web. If you make use of all the legal methods, it will ensure that you will never be tangled in any kind of legal mess.
It is not humanely possible for search engines to crawl the huge number of websites on the web. So it is not a person rather automated software called spiders or bots used to crawl the sites. The relevance and importance of a site is determined based on the results of the crawling done by the software. Since search engines keep on changing their algorithm and criteria for giving rankings to sites, you must be fully aware of what is needed to attract the attention of all the major search engines.
There are several methods and technique that can be used for optimizing your site on the web. The idea is to announce to everyone that you have entered the market and are interested in doing serious business on the web. Well if you do not tell anyone about you, how do you expect others to know and find out about your business? Ultimately, it is your call to determine what methods you feel will be the best for your site. However, it can be safely said that organic SEO are one of the best methods that can be used for the promotion of your online business site.
http://www.articlejoe.com/Article/Organic-SEO-methods-ensure-your-success-on-the-web/35014
To be successful on the web, you have to understand search engines really well. So understanding search engines is very crucial, if you want to be successful in this business. Search engines work very differently and they do not view and receive a site like we do. Search engines have certain criteria and guidelines, and if a site fulfills those requirements search engines receive those sites very favorably. It is very important for you to understand what search engines like to see and what they do not like to see on a site. Taking care of all these factors will ensure that the organic SEO methods that you use for your site will be successful.
Search engines change their algorithms very frequently. There are several reasons behind this, and the most obvious among them is the fact that they want to improve their results. The results are concluded after making a study of the users who are active on the web. Organic search engine optimization methods involve using all the legal and white hat methods for the optimization of a site on the web. If you make use of all the legal methods, it will ensure that you will never be tangled in any kind of legal mess.
It is not humanely possible for search engines to crawl the huge number of websites on the web. So it is not a person rather automated software called spiders or bots used to crawl the sites. The relevance and importance of a site is determined based on the results of the crawling done by the software. Since search engines keep on changing their algorithm and criteria for giving rankings to sites, you must be fully aware of what is needed to attract the attention of all the major search engines.
There are several methods and technique that can be used for optimizing your site on the web. The idea is to announce to everyone that you have entered the market and are interested in doing serious business on the web. Well if you do not tell anyone about you, how do you expect others to know and find out about your business? Ultimately, it is your call to determine what methods you feel will be the best for your site. However, it can be safely said that organic SEO are one of the best methods that can be used for the promotion of your online business site.
http://www.articlejoe.com/Article/Organic-SEO-methods-ensure-your-success-on-the-web/35014
SEO: Proving Your Keywords Are Worth Investing Search Engine Optimisation Time
One of the key skills you must develop when undertaking Search Engine Optimisation is the ability to identify and choose keywords that your clients are going to use, or I should say, most likely going to use to visit your website or to search for in a search engine. There are lots of great tools out there that will help you find the right keywords but be warned always test the results you get because there are anomalies in some of these tools that can cost you time and money. I want to examine a number of steps to follow to test that you have the right keywords.
There are a range of tools that you can use to work out what keywords are going to be most appropriate for your market, some of them are free, some of them you need to register and some you have to pay for. The tools include -
1. Wordtracker
2. Google Adwords
3. Overture
4. Free Keywords
5. Your Website Session Logs
6. Yahoo Advertising
7. Keyword Locator
8. Keyword Elite
9. Good Keywords
10. Competitors Websites
Before investing in the keywords you have found always check to see if the keyword is in fact as popular as the resources tell you in that search.
Why?
I recently had a situation recently where one keyword we found "advanced wealth planning techniques" was supposed to have 250 hits a day coming in from Google. We garnered this information from a range of different sources however what we found was that this was not the case, in fact those keywords prior to writing this article actually only get between 2 and 5 hits per day.
One of the most important lessons both I and my team learned from this was to ensure that you run a trial of the keywords in pay-per-click programs before you actually purchase any domains that use the keywords to ensure that the keywords really do get the traffic the keyword tools tell you. The way my team achieves this, is we will create the sales pages for the product or service that we want to sell and trial it on the key search engine we want to optimize the new website for using one of our existing websites.
For example, if we know that a certain keyword will get the most traffic on Google, then we will certainly use Adwords to prove that the traffic really is there. If we new that Yahoo was the major source of traffic for the keywords then we would use Overture.
Generally we will test the keywords for 2 to 3 days. Longer tests maybe necessary but two to three days is normally a good indicator. Once we are confident that the keywords get the volume of traffic we are looking for, we will then stop the advertising, secure the domain name and then implement our products onto that domain and optimize the webpages for that product or service. This ensures we are not caught in a situation, which we have been in the past, where we have domain name which contains keywords that are totally useless.
The best tool I have found for quick testing your keywords is Google Adwords. One of the core reasons I like using this resource is that you can immediately test your keywords rather than waiting anywhere up to 5 days for the other Pay-Per-Click engines like Overture.
One of the other ways that we look to see if the keywords we have chosen are in fact worthwhile is to look at what our competitors are doing. However, use this technique merely as a guide because they could be making the same mistakes as you. We know of a few people who copied what we were doing with the keywords mentioned before and they would have been achieving no traffic off those keywords just as we were.
The key to success in any business whether it be online or in the traditional world is to test and measure. The way we test to make sure that the keywords are being used is to check our logs and see who is actually referring traffic to our site. In ASP code there are a number of Session Values that will contain this information. We check our sites each day to ensure that the traffic is coming from our target keywords.
If they are not coming from the keywords we are targeting and the customers are buying our products we will then look at the keywords that are being used and find out how competitive they are and whether we should be optimizing our site for those keywords. Search Engine Optimisation and Internet marketing is really a science and like all science, you need facts and figures to make decisions so the better quality statistics you can collect the easier it is to make a direction change.
For example, we recently had a situation where we started getting a couple of hundred hits per day for a 5 word statement that was being used in both Google and Yahoo to find our site. Whilst a couple of hundred hits per day may not seem very many our conversion rate on that key statement was running around 70% which is huge for any Internet business. The bizarre part was that our website was actually place at number 97 in the search engine results for both Google and Yahoo.
What we did at this point was to simply write a number of articles on the keyword topics. Submit the articles to related sites, including article directories and then ensured in the Author Bio Section we included Hypertext that included the Key Word Statement back to the associated page. The result was that we increased our ranking from 97 to the top 5 and we gained a 70% conversion rate on all people who visited that webpage.
The key issue though is to make sure that the keywords you are using are what your buyers associate with. Sometimes I find that a client's perception of what keywords a person would use to search for a product is far more different to what their clients are actually using. Whenever we are looking at that issue, we simply go back to the client's logs for the last 6 months and troll through the data and find out how their clients are finding them.
The secret to search engine optimization for any website is in the logs because it will tell you very clearly what people are using to get to your site and more so which search engines they are using.
When you are looking at buying a new domain or building a new site, make sure that you really do your homework to identify the right keywords that people will use to find your products or services. Before committing to buying a new domain that contains your keywords always test to see that the keywords are actually being used and that there is sufficient volume to justify the purchase.
Remember, the reason why we test and measure is to ensure that you are making a sound investment. If you get it wrong, you are going to have to spend more money to correct your mistake and nobody likes having to spend their own hard earned money.
http://www.articlejoe.com/Article/SEO--Proving-Your-Keywords-Are-Worth-Investing-Search-Engine-Optimisation-Time/35030
There are a range of tools that you can use to work out what keywords are going to be most appropriate for your market, some of them are free, some of them you need to register and some you have to pay for. The tools include -
1. Wordtracker
2. Google Adwords
3. Overture
4. Free Keywords
5. Your Website Session Logs
6. Yahoo Advertising
7. Keyword Locator
8. Keyword Elite
9. Good Keywords
10. Competitors Websites
Before investing in the keywords you have found always check to see if the keyword is in fact as popular as the resources tell you in that search.
Why?
I recently had a situation recently where one keyword we found "advanced wealth planning techniques" was supposed to have 250 hits a day coming in from Google. We garnered this information from a range of different sources however what we found was that this was not the case, in fact those keywords prior to writing this article actually only get between 2 and 5 hits per day.
One of the most important lessons both I and my team learned from this was to ensure that you run a trial of the keywords in pay-per-click programs before you actually purchase any domains that use the keywords to ensure that the keywords really do get the traffic the keyword tools tell you. The way my team achieves this, is we will create the sales pages for the product or service that we want to sell and trial it on the key search engine we want to optimize the new website for using one of our existing websites.
For example, if we know that a certain keyword will get the most traffic on Google, then we will certainly use Adwords to prove that the traffic really is there. If we new that Yahoo was the major source of traffic for the keywords then we would use Overture.
Generally we will test the keywords for 2 to 3 days. Longer tests maybe necessary but two to three days is normally a good indicator. Once we are confident that the keywords get the volume of traffic we are looking for, we will then stop the advertising, secure the domain name and then implement our products onto that domain and optimize the webpages for that product or service. This ensures we are not caught in a situation, which we have been in the past, where we have domain name which contains keywords that are totally useless.
The best tool I have found for quick testing your keywords is Google Adwords. One of the core reasons I like using this resource is that you can immediately test your keywords rather than waiting anywhere up to 5 days for the other Pay-Per-Click engines like Overture.
One of the other ways that we look to see if the keywords we have chosen are in fact worthwhile is to look at what our competitors are doing. However, use this technique merely as a guide because they could be making the same mistakes as you. We know of a few people who copied what we were doing with the keywords mentioned before and they would have been achieving no traffic off those keywords just as we were.
The key to success in any business whether it be online or in the traditional world is to test and measure. The way we test to make sure that the keywords are being used is to check our logs and see who is actually referring traffic to our site. In ASP code there are a number of Session Values that will contain this information. We check our sites each day to ensure that the traffic is coming from our target keywords.
If they are not coming from the keywords we are targeting and the customers are buying our products we will then look at the keywords that are being used and find out how competitive they are and whether we should be optimizing our site for those keywords. Search Engine Optimisation and Internet marketing is really a science and like all science, you need facts and figures to make decisions so the better quality statistics you can collect the easier it is to make a direction change.
For example, we recently had a situation where we started getting a couple of hundred hits per day for a 5 word statement that was being used in both Google and Yahoo to find our site. Whilst a couple of hundred hits per day may not seem very many our conversion rate on that key statement was running around 70% which is huge for any Internet business. The bizarre part was that our website was actually place at number 97 in the search engine results for both Google and Yahoo.
What we did at this point was to simply write a number of articles on the keyword topics. Submit the articles to related sites, including article directories and then ensured in the Author Bio Section we included Hypertext that included the Key Word Statement back to the associated page. The result was that we increased our ranking from 97 to the top 5 and we gained a 70% conversion rate on all people who visited that webpage.
The key issue though is to make sure that the keywords you are using are what your buyers associate with. Sometimes I find that a client's perception of what keywords a person would use to search for a product is far more different to what their clients are actually using. Whenever we are looking at that issue, we simply go back to the client's logs for the last 6 months and troll through the data and find out how their clients are finding them.
The secret to search engine optimization for any website is in the logs because it will tell you very clearly what people are using to get to your site and more so which search engines they are using.
When you are looking at buying a new domain or building a new site, make sure that you really do your homework to identify the right keywords that people will use to find your products or services. Before committing to buying a new domain that contains your keywords always test to see that the keywords are actually being used and that there is sufficient volume to justify the purchase.
Remember, the reason why we test and measure is to ensure that you are making a sound investment. If you get it wrong, you are going to have to spend more money to correct your mistake and nobody likes having to spend their own hard earned money.
http://www.articlejoe.com/Article/SEO--Proving-Your-Keywords-Are-Worth-Investing-Search-Engine-Optimisation-Time/35030
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
The New Directory: Articles, Peer Review, and Deeplinks
The New Directory: Articles, Peer Review, and Deeplinks
The SEO world has been following with rapt attention the news of dozens of directories' penalization by Google. For a very long time, directories were the mainstay of linkbuilding, and they do retain an important role in linkbuilding to this day, albeit a diminished one. So with the news that some of the best-known directories around were being slapped by the Internet’s most popular search engine, the debate about the ongoing relevancy of directories has been reopened.
In this article, I will propose my answer to a question that has been bothering search marketers for so long and introduce the New Directory.
For those of you who might not have known, one of the most perennially popular questions on SEO forums and blogs is whether directory submissions are worthwhile. With search engines counting decreasingly on directories as part of their algorithms, should SEOs still bother submitting? Or will other tactics provide a better ROI? (The subsequent question for those convinced of its worthiness as an SEO tactic is which directories to submit to.
Underlying the debate is the question of the value that directories offer surfers. The question can be put thus: “Why would a random surfer visit a directory?” The answer for most directories is … there is no reason.
Offline, the Yellow Pages help people find businesses. Search engines fill this role online in a much more effective way than directories ever could. The engines have taken away the raison-d’être of online directories as we know them. Why would you bother digging through 5 levels of a directory – in what may turn out to be an irrelevant category so that you will need to start over – when you could just type your keywords into MSN Live and get your answer instantly?
You wouldn’t.
That’s why directories need to have their purpose re-examined.
As we have just seen, the purpose of a directory offline is to provide searchers with an index of various options relevant to their search. If you look up “cabinet makers” in the yellow pages, you’ll find some phone numbers (and email addresses for the smart cabinet makers) that you can call for more information. In this paradigm, directories function as the starting point of a search.
But directories are obsolete as the starting point of a search in the online world, because of search engines. So what’s a directory to do?
Directories will become the end points of searches, if they want to remain relevant. Rather than list websites, directories will provide answers. The business model is already out there, and you’ve probably seen it around: About and Wikipedia are masters of it. Yes, I’m talking about articles. Not just your uncle’s “Here, go post the text of my brochure on Ezine Articles” type of articles, though.
Presenting … The New Directory: peer-reviewed articles with deeplinking.
The New Directory is a destination, not a starting point. It no longer serves as an intermediary for a person to ask a question to and deliver up an answer from its list of businesses/people. The New Directory serves as a destination where the question is answered. To answer the question, the New Directory relies on articles submitted to it.
Let’s compare About, Wikipedia and Ezine Articles to get a better handle on where the New Directory situates itself.
About and Wikipedia rank on the peaks and summits of the SERPs because they provide genuine value to users. Their articles are well-written, informative and generally feature proper spelling and grammar.
By comparison, Ezine Articles ranks on occasion, but mostly it doesn’t. This is because the overwhelming majority of its articles are of average-to-mediocre quality. The difference is not just in awareness, where Wikipedia will get links to its articles due to brand awareness that Ezine’s lesser brand awareness might not get it. It’s the quality of the writing.
To give you an example, I once found a fairly informative piece on Canada’s Constitution. It almost didn’t get reposted on my site because the grammar and style were such a headache and required so much editing.
Directory Owner Challenge One: Quality Control
The first challenge facing New Directory owners and promoters then is to ensure that the articles their directory features are only high quality pieces. How can that be done?
The solution I offer to ensure quality control is
• anonymous,
• randomized,
• peer-review
• overseen by an editorial team.
(To the folks at Avenue Q: That’s what you can do with a Bachelor of Arts, with an English major.)
Peer Review
I’ll be honest here: this isn’t entirely an original solution. I borrowed the idea from web design forums like Sitepoint (want to review my new corporate site?) where those people who want a review of their website must first review the work of others. I had to review three other sites before I could submit my own for review.
Similarly, The New Directory requires people to read and review other people’s writing before submitting their own. It requires a minimum amount of commentary on certain set aspects of the work – other aspects can also be discussed but there is a baseline set that must be reviewed - and a grade from 0-10, 10 being the best.
For example, The New Directory might ask for a minimum 150 words covering originality, style, grammar, quality of analysis and depth of research. This would then be rounded out by a grade. In this way, the New Directory can ensure a minimum substance to each review.
Anonymous and Randomized
The reviewer’s name is not available to the author, nor is the author’s name available to the reviewer, though both are available to the editors (we’ll get to them in a moment). This ensures that reviews are not biased upwards or downwards based on friendship/adversity/admiration/loathing between parties.
Once an author has written a certain number of reviews, they can submit one article. This article will in turn be randomly distributed to other would-be-submitters for review. Once a minimum number of reviews have been written on the article, it will have its average grade calculated. In order to gain admission into the directory, the average grade must be above a certain mark.
Editorial Oversight
This system is further reinforced by the oversight of human editors. Their role is to control for unusual circumstances and thus
maintain the directory’s quality. They would do this by checking on those articles that narrowly miss admission and those that display some strange characteristic.
Articles that narrowly miss are those within half a mark (a mark if you’re lenient) of the minimum required average. Editors would have the power to admit them to the directory if they deemed them good enough.
Strange characteristics might include oddities like four out of five reviews giving the piece a 10 and the fifth giving it a 3 – a large discrepancy between what most of the reviews said and what one or two of the reviews opined. Overly harsh or lenient reviewers would see their other reviews checked out by editors as well.
Note: Editors’ work should be limited by the fact that this system requires people to write detailed reviews before posting their own article. Further reducing their workload is the fact that potential submitters know that only good writing will be admitted into the directory.
Thus your submitter is someone confident in the quality of the article they’re about to post. And they’re dedicated enough to getting it into the directory that they’ll take the time to write reviews of others’ articles.
The sluggishness and slow-death of the ODP (taken as an example for being the largest human-edited free directory around) is avoided by The New Directory as editors needn’t personally look at each submission, but only at the strange ones. The directory would be regularly populated with new content independent of the editors’ work. Editors’ contribution would just be to help populate The New Directory with even more content.
Directory Owner Challenge Two: Attracting Quality
I’ve just shown that it’s possible to ensure you only accept quality into your directory. But now that you have a moderation system in place, how do you attract quality writers to begin with? You need to give them something they want.
Deeplinks
Most people submit to directories because they want links. That’s why many SEOs were so bothered by Google’s assault on such a great number of the directories that they had relied upon. Previously effective sources of links were now useless.
So attracting quality can be done by giving links to your authors (those whose articles achieve the minimum required grade). But you want to ensure that you offer your visitors good value now that they’re on your site (recall that a random surfer has no reason to visit old-style directories in the era of search engines).
So don’t just let the links be generic: make them deeplinks to quality content the authors posted on their own sites. You can include these in a bio paragraph at the start/end of the article or on a separate author bio page (and rank for the author’s name so that people who look them up will find an answer in your New Directory).
These links will be more valuable to authors than regular directory links for two reasons. First, they will be able to funnel traffic to the authors’ sites, which is the ultimate sign of an editorial quality link. Second, they will link to pages with little outside link popularity.
Alternatives
Other ideas to attract talented writers to submit their pieces to you: Offer cash or prizes for the best article of the week/month. It could get authors to edit their piece a little more thoroughly or even submit a better piece that they had wanted to save for their own site.
Directory Owner Challenge Three: Attract and Retain Editors
The editors of The New Directory are linguistically proficient experts interested in creating/developing a name for themselves as a topical authority. So the first place to look for editors is in places where their writing may already be published. Look at niche magazines, industry-specific websites and so on. Check out About.com and Wikipedia too.
Once you’ve identified your targets, you’ll need to pitch them on becoming editors. The benefit to them is an author bio page accessible from the homepage, with links to their own sites, publications and so on. In addition, they won’t need to write individual reviews before submitting their own articles (since they’ll already be reading plenty of articles as part of their editorial duties) and will see their articles passed on to regular contributors faster – skipping the line, if you will. Again, cash or prizes doesn’t hurt if you have the budget.
Managing Your Editorial Team
Retaining editors could probably be an article in itself. From my own experience as a soccer coach (similar role to human resources) and as a moblog owner/manager, I can suggest generous amounts of recognition, constructive criticism and a relationship that goes beyond strict business.
For instance, I always praised my players when they showed they had acquired a new skill or were working hard at such acquisition. Compliments go a long way, especially when you’re on a budget.
Constructive criticism addresses work done, not persons. You might say: “Way to find those three obscure articles we almost relegated to the bin. Try and do it faster in the future if you can so we get that content available to our users sooner.” Notice that the critique didn’t say they were a slow editor?
Other points of note are that it started with some kind words, to soften the blow. It also avoided the word ‘but’ so that the advice doesn’t come off as criticism (which everyone hates) but rather a suggestion for future improvement (perceived neutrally or as an appreciated tip). Not only will such criticism help you improve your editors’ work, it will motivate them to keep it up as they see somebody is paying attention.
Finally, I recall that with both my coaching and my moblogging, I regularly chatted with my team about non-work issues. For example, some of my players told me about their weekend up north before our semi-final. A fellow blogger would fill me in on the celebs he’d met/spoken to and the important work he was doing at Wikipedia as an admin.
Conclusions on The New Directory
I hope that this article has helped convince you about the direction the directory industry needs to go. Plain old site listing directories are going to die out eventually for all but a worthy core that are already established, because there’s just no more reason for these directories to exist – nobody uses them.
The New Directory gives visitors a reason to surf it by being a destination, rather than a starting point. It answers questions rather than serving as a medium to ask them through.
For its functioning, The New Directory relies on its would-be-submitters to also play the role of reviewers. They will provide the core content of the directory while remaining anonymous to each other [until their article is posted]. Editors will provide some oversight to ensure quality articles don’t somehow get left out.
I don’t pretend to claim that The New Directory is infallible. There are certainly minds more clever than my own out there that could figure out how to spam it despite the quality control system. I wasn’t trying to make the claim that my concept for a new type of directory is spam-proof. All I did was try to incorporate some safeguards into it.
I do think, however, that directories as they currently stand are obsolete old sites in the era of my search engines. My further claim is that by changing their paradigm of the purpose to be served by their directories, directory owners can make their sites relevant to surfers again. And by providing answers – who knows? They might yet reclaim their place as the starting point in a search as people bypass the search engines entirely in favor of their favorite directory. That is The New Directory.
http://www.isedb.com/db/articles/1725/1/The-New-Directory-Articles-Peer-Review-and-Deeplinks-/Page1.html
The SEO world has been following with rapt attention the news of dozens of directories' penalization by Google. For a very long time, directories were the mainstay of linkbuilding, and they do retain an important role in linkbuilding to this day, albeit a diminished one. So with the news that some of the best-known directories around were being slapped by the Internet’s most popular search engine, the debate about the ongoing relevancy of directories has been reopened.
In this article, I will propose my answer to a question that has been bothering search marketers for so long and introduce the New Directory.
For those of you who might not have known, one of the most perennially popular questions on SEO forums and blogs is whether directory submissions are worthwhile. With search engines counting decreasingly on directories as part of their algorithms, should SEOs still bother submitting? Or will other tactics provide a better ROI? (The subsequent question for those convinced of its worthiness as an SEO tactic is which directories to submit to.
Underlying the debate is the question of the value that directories offer surfers. The question can be put thus: “Why would a random surfer visit a directory?” The answer for most directories is … there is no reason.
Offline, the Yellow Pages help people find businesses. Search engines fill this role online in a much more effective way than directories ever could. The engines have taken away the raison-d’être of online directories as we know them. Why would you bother digging through 5 levels of a directory – in what may turn out to be an irrelevant category so that you will need to start over – when you could just type your keywords into MSN Live and get your answer instantly?
You wouldn’t.
That’s why directories need to have their purpose re-examined.
As we have just seen, the purpose of a directory offline is to provide searchers with an index of various options relevant to their search. If you look up “cabinet makers” in the yellow pages, you’ll find some phone numbers (and email addresses for the smart cabinet makers) that you can call for more information. In this paradigm, directories function as the starting point of a search.
But directories are obsolete as the starting point of a search in the online world, because of search engines. So what’s a directory to do?
Directories will become the end points of searches, if they want to remain relevant. Rather than list websites, directories will provide answers. The business model is already out there, and you’ve probably seen it around: About and Wikipedia are masters of it. Yes, I’m talking about articles. Not just your uncle’s “Here, go post the text of my brochure on Ezine Articles” type of articles, though.
Presenting … The New Directory: peer-reviewed articles with deeplinking.
The New Directory is a destination, not a starting point. It no longer serves as an intermediary for a person to ask a question to and deliver up an answer from its list of businesses/people. The New Directory serves as a destination where the question is answered. To answer the question, the New Directory relies on articles submitted to it.
Let’s compare About, Wikipedia and Ezine Articles to get a better handle on where the New Directory situates itself.
About and Wikipedia rank on the peaks and summits of the SERPs because they provide genuine value to users. Their articles are well-written, informative and generally feature proper spelling and grammar.
By comparison, Ezine Articles ranks on occasion, but mostly it doesn’t. This is because the overwhelming majority of its articles are of average-to-mediocre quality. The difference is not just in awareness, where Wikipedia will get links to its articles due to brand awareness that Ezine’s lesser brand awareness might not get it. It’s the quality of the writing.
To give you an example, I once found a fairly informative piece on Canada’s Constitution. It almost didn’t get reposted on my site because the grammar and style were such a headache and required so much editing.
Directory Owner Challenge One: Quality Control
The first challenge facing New Directory owners and promoters then is to ensure that the articles their directory features are only high quality pieces. How can that be done?
The solution I offer to ensure quality control is
• anonymous,
• randomized,
• peer-review
• overseen by an editorial team.
(To the folks at Avenue Q: That’s what you can do with a Bachelor of Arts, with an English major.)
Peer Review
I’ll be honest here: this isn’t entirely an original solution. I borrowed the idea from web design forums like Sitepoint (want to review my new corporate site?) where those people who want a review of their website must first review the work of others. I had to review three other sites before I could submit my own for review.
Similarly, The New Directory requires people to read and review other people’s writing before submitting their own. It requires a minimum amount of commentary on certain set aspects of the work – other aspects can also be discussed but there is a baseline set that must be reviewed - and a grade from 0-10, 10 being the best.
For example, The New Directory might ask for a minimum 150 words covering originality, style, grammar, quality of analysis and depth of research. This would then be rounded out by a grade. In this way, the New Directory can ensure a minimum substance to each review.
Anonymous and Randomized
The reviewer’s name is not available to the author, nor is the author’s name available to the reviewer, though both are available to the editors (we’ll get to them in a moment). This ensures that reviews are not biased upwards or downwards based on friendship/adversity/admiration/loathing between parties.
Once an author has written a certain number of reviews, they can submit one article. This article will in turn be randomly distributed to other would-be-submitters for review. Once a minimum number of reviews have been written on the article, it will have its average grade calculated. In order to gain admission into the directory, the average grade must be above a certain mark.
Editorial Oversight
This system is further reinforced by the oversight of human editors. Their role is to control for unusual circumstances and thus
maintain the directory’s quality. They would do this by checking on those articles that narrowly miss admission and those that display some strange characteristic.
Articles that narrowly miss are those within half a mark (a mark if you’re lenient) of the minimum required average. Editors would have the power to admit them to the directory if they deemed them good enough.
Strange characteristics might include oddities like four out of five reviews giving the piece a 10 and the fifth giving it a 3 – a large discrepancy between what most of the reviews said and what one or two of the reviews opined. Overly harsh or lenient reviewers would see their other reviews checked out by editors as well.
Note: Editors’ work should be limited by the fact that this system requires people to write detailed reviews before posting their own article. Further reducing their workload is the fact that potential submitters know that only good writing will be admitted into the directory.
Thus your submitter is someone confident in the quality of the article they’re about to post. And they’re dedicated enough to getting it into the directory that they’ll take the time to write reviews of others’ articles.
The sluggishness and slow-death of the ODP (taken as an example for being the largest human-edited free directory around) is avoided by The New Directory as editors needn’t personally look at each submission, but only at the strange ones. The directory would be regularly populated with new content independent of the editors’ work. Editors’ contribution would just be to help populate The New Directory with even more content.
Directory Owner Challenge Two: Attracting Quality
I’ve just shown that it’s possible to ensure you only accept quality into your directory. But now that you have a moderation system in place, how do you attract quality writers to begin with? You need to give them something they want.
Deeplinks
Most people submit to directories because they want links. That’s why many SEOs were so bothered by Google’s assault on such a great number of the directories that they had relied upon. Previously effective sources of links were now useless.
So attracting quality can be done by giving links to your authors (those whose articles achieve the minimum required grade). But you want to ensure that you offer your visitors good value now that they’re on your site (recall that a random surfer has no reason to visit old-style directories in the era of search engines).
So don’t just let the links be generic: make them deeplinks to quality content the authors posted on their own sites. You can include these in a bio paragraph at the start/end of the article or on a separate author bio page (and rank for the author’s name so that people who look them up will find an answer in your New Directory).
These links will be more valuable to authors than regular directory links for two reasons. First, they will be able to funnel traffic to the authors’ sites, which is the ultimate sign of an editorial quality link. Second, they will link to pages with little outside link popularity.
Alternatives
Other ideas to attract talented writers to submit their pieces to you: Offer cash or prizes for the best article of the week/month. It could get authors to edit their piece a little more thoroughly or even submit a better piece that they had wanted to save for their own site.
Directory Owner Challenge Three: Attract and Retain Editors
The editors of The New Directory are linguistically proficient experts interested in creating/developing a name for themselves as a topical authority. So the first place to look for editors is in places where their writing may already be published. Look at niche magazines, industry-specific websites and so on. Check out About.com and Wikipedia too.
Once you’ve identified your targets, you’ll need to pitch them on becoming editors. The benefit to them is an author bio page accessible from the homepage, with links to their own sites, publications and so on. In addition, they won’t need to write individual reviews before submitting their own articles (since they’ll already be reading plenty of articles as part of their editorial duties) and will see their articles passed on to regular contributors faster – skipping the line, if you will. Again, cash or prizes doesn’t hurt if you have the budget.
Managing Your Editorial Team
Retaining editors could probably be an article in itself. From my own experience as a soccer coach (similar role to human resources) and as a moblog owner/manager, I can suggest generous amounts of recognition, constructive criticism and a relationship that goes beyond strict business.
For instance, I always praised my players when they showed they had acquired a new skill or were working hard at such acquisition. Compliments go a long way, especially when you’re on a budget.
Constructive criticism addresses work done, not persons. You might say: “Way to find those three obscure articles we almost relegated to the bin. Try and do it faster in the future if you can so we get that content available to our users sooner.” Notice that the critique didn’t say they were a slow editor?
Other points of note are that it started with some kind words, to soften the blow. It also avoided the word ‘but’ so that the advice doesn’t come off as criticism (which everyone hates) but rather a suggestion for future improvement (perceived neutrally or as an appreciated tip). Not only will such criticism help you improve your editors’ work, it will motivate them to keep it up as they see somebody is paying attention.
Finally, I recall that with both my coaching and my moblogging, I regularly chatted with my team about non-work issues. For example, some of my players told me about their weekend up north before our semi-final. A fellow blogger would fill me in on the celebs he’d met/spoken to and the important work he was doing at Wikipedia as an admin.
Conclusions on The New Directory
I hope that this article has helped convince you about the direction the directory industry needs to go. Plain old site listing directories are going to die out eventually for all but a worthy core that are already established, because there’s just no more reason for these directories to exist – nobody uses them.
The New Directory gives visitors a reason to surf it by being a destination, rather than a starting point. It answers questions rather than serving as a medium to ask them through.
For its functioning, The New Directory relies on its would-be-submitters to also play the role of reviewers. They will provide the core content of the directory while remaining anonymous to each other [until their article is posted]. Editors will provide some oversight to ensure quality articles don’t somehow get left out.
I don’t pretend to claim that The New Directory is infallible. There are certainly minds more clever than my own out there that could figure out how to spam it despite the quality control system. I wasn’t trying to make the claim that my concept for a new type of directory is spam-proof. All I did was try to incorporate some safeguards into it.
I do think, however, that directories as they currently stand are obsolete old sites in the era of my search engines. My further claim is that by changing their paradigm of the purpose to be served by their directories, directory owners can make their sites relevant to surfers again. And by providing answers – who knows? They might yet reclaim their place as the starting point in a search as people bypass the search engines entirely in favor of their favorite directory. That is The New Directory.
http://www.isedb.com/db/articles/1725/1/The-New-Directory-Articles-Peer-Review-and-Deeplinks-/Page1.html
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
5 Ways To Make Money With Blogs
There are hundreds of ways to make money on the internet, but most oversee the idea of making money with blogs. Blogs are a great way to promote articles, discuss various ideas, and promote your website itself. However, there are several ways you can make money with blogs as well. Here are 5 ways to make money with blogs.
1. Sell advertising
The most common way people make money with blogs is selling advertising. If you build a large blog you can sell advertising space for people to put their ads on your blog. However, a majority of people aren’t capable of building a blog big enough to do this. That is where Google AdSense and BlogAds can help you. It is free and they pay you based on the number of people that click their ads for further information.
2. Sell your products
A blog is a great place to discuss advice and opinions on various subjects. It can also be a great place to promote your product and tell them how it can benefit them. Whether it’s your blog or someone else’s, look at it as an opportunity to fulfill peoples’ needs, not that you are just selling your product.
3. Affiliate programs
This is a great way to make money with blogs that hardly anyone even considers. By mentioning the product, the affiliate program will provide you with a clickable link to hyperlink the word with. This way if people are interested in your blog post and click on the product word, they are directed to the affiliate program website where you make commission on all products they buy.
4. Sell your website
It may seem cliché because everyone sells their own website and business through blogs. However, it is your approach that can mean the difference of you making money with blogs or not. If you spend the whole time talking you will seem uninterested in others’ insight. If you incorporate others’ thoughts and opinions and strike up a conversation with little bits and pieces about your business, you soon will have them reeled in. By talking about their business and showing interest you will find that more people are interested in your business in turn.
5. Consistency
The more you post the more chances people have to see you and your website link. It is vital that you make one post a day or at minimum a few a week. This way people become accustomed to seeing your posts and hearing your advice or questions. This is a great way to build relationships, which will help you sell your product, share ideas, and promote your website.
If you take the time to put in the effort in blogs you can easily make money with blogs. There are some people that make a living through making money with blogs. However it is commitment, consistency, and your approach that can either break your or make you money with blogs.
http://www.articlejoe.com/Article/5-Ways-To-Make-Money-With-Blogs/27636
1. Sell advertising
The most common way people make money with blogs is selling advertising. If you build a large blog you can sell advertising space for people to put their ads on your blog. However, a majority of people aren’t capable of building a blog big enough to do this. That is where Google AdSense and BlogAds can help you. It is free and they pay you based on the number of people that click their ads for further information.
2. Sell your products
A blog is a great place to discuss advice and opinions on various subjects. It can also be a great place to promote your product and tell them how it can benefit them. Whether it’s your blog or someone else’s, look at it as an opportunity to fulfill peoples’ needs, not that you are just selling your product.
3. Affiliate programs
This is a great way to make money with blogs that hardly anyone even considers. By mentioning the product, the affiliate program will provide you with a clickable link to hyperlink the word with. This way if people are interested in your blog post and click on the product word, they are directed to the affiliate program website where you make commission on all products they buy.
4. Sell your website
It may seem cliché because everyone sells their own website and business through blogs. However, it is your approach that can mean the difference of you making money with blogs or not. If you spend the whole time talking you will seem uninterested in others’ insight. If you incorporate others’ thoughts and opinions and strike up a conversation with little bits and pieces about your business, you soon will have them reeled in. By talking about their business and showing interest you will find that more people are interested in your business in turn.
5. Consistency
The more you post the more chances people have to see you and your website link. It is vital that you make one post a day or at minimum a few a week. This way people become accustomed to seeing your posts and hearing your advice or questions. This is a great way to build relationships, which will help you sell your product, share ideas, and promote your website.
If you take the time to put in the effort in blogs you can easily make money with blogs. There are some people that make a living through making money with blogs. However it is commitment, consistency, and your approach that can either break your or make you money with blogs.
http://www.articlejoe.com/Article/5-Ways-To-Make-Money-With-Blogs/27636
How To Determine A Name For Your Business Blog
The growing popularity of blogging by the general public is making business blogging a necessary marketing tool to stay competitive. There are many factors that can determine the success or failure of business blogging, and how successful it is with the business's target market. These factors include how well the blog is marketed, how easy it is to comprehend the blog content, and how well the blog entices people to take action. Determining the name for the blog is one important factor in driving the right kind of targeted visitors to the business website.
Why the name of the blog is important
The name of your blog is important because it sets the tone for the blog and it is the first line of marketing for your desired visitors. If a business names their blog 'Jim's Blog' or 'Jane's Blog', it isn't descriptive enough for people at a first glance to decide if they even want to visit your blog.
Another important result of how you name your business blog, is that most blogging software will put the name of the blog in the title of the browser. Many search engines will list the title of a web page in their results page. If your blog name isn't very descriptive and accurate, you will risk losing potential customers or prospects coming to your site if they stumble upon your blog from a search engine results page.
Research the keywords for your blog:
This is an important step because you will want to include some keywords in your business blog name to get maximum results. In order to determin which keywords you should use in the name of your blog, you will need to research the viable keywords for your industry. There are many free and paid tools that you can use that will tell you what keyword phrases are being used in searches. This information will tell you what phrases your target market uses to find businesses in your industry.
While performing your research, you will find many results for keyword phrases. The ones you should be most interested in are the keyword phrases that don't have too many words (no more than 4), as we will be adding more to the name if possible. You will also want to pick the keyword phrases that have a relatively high number of total searches for the month (10,000 or more).
Once you have decided upon a few keyword phrases, experiment with some different arrangements of the words to create the beginnings of a compelling business blog name.
Pick a clear benefit of your services to use in your blog name:
You are in business to fill a need or pain for your target market. If you aren't doing that, you won't be in business for long. Pick a clear and concise solution to a problem that your business provides for your target market, and try to incorporate that benefit into the name of your blog. You should end up with a name that will include relevant keywords and also contain a benefit for your clients or customers. Following these steps will give the title of your business blog a more relevant and enticing name.
How to put all the elements together for the name of your business blog:
How do you put together a keyword phrase and a clear benefit to create a powerful blog name? Let us go over an example for the travel industry. We will use a hypothetical company that provides travel insurance to travelers. A common problem for travelers that need travel insurance is to replace lost property and luggage. The benefit of this particular travel insurance business is that it provides coverage that is over and above what the other travel companies provide, or provides a service that makes it quicker and easier to process claims.
Our keyword research for this industry finds that 'travel insurance online' has just over 10,000 total keyword searches for the month (total of all 3 of the major search engines). So in creating the name for the blog, we could call it 'Quick Claims in Online Travel Insurance' or 'More Than You Expect From Online Travel Insurance'. We have included a benefit, and the keyword phrase in one short sentence, and we did not make the name too long to make it look awkward.
As you have seen, the name of your business blog serves a couple of functions. The biggest one is that it can be used to help drive targeted visitors to your website, but the name also plays a role in search engine optimization for your business blog. When choosing a name of your business blog, don't leave out the fact that it should also fit into the branding strategy of your business. Choose wisely and do your research well and you could reap the benefits and rewards for your business.
http://www.articlejoe.com/Article/How-To-Determine-A-Name-For-Your-Business-Blog/28199
Why the name of the blog is important
The name of your blog is important because it sets the tone for the blog and it is the first line of marketing for your desired visitors. If a business names their blog 'Jim's Blog' or 'Jane's Blog', it isn't descriptive enough for people at a first glance to decide if they even want to visit your blog.
Another important result of how you name your business blog, is that most blogging software will put the name of the blog in the title of the browser. Many search engines will list the title of a web page in their results page. If your blog name isn't very descriptive and accurate, you will risk losing potential customers or prospects coming to your site if they stumble upon your blog from a search engine results page.
Research the keywords for your blog:
This is an important step because you will want to include some keywords in your business blog name to get maximum results. In order to determin which keywords you should use in the name of your blog, you will need to research the viable keywords for your industry. There are many free and paid tools that you can use that will tell you what keyword phrases are being used in searches. This information will tell you what phrases your target market uses to find businesses in your industry.
While performing your research, you will find many results for keyword phrases. The ones you should be most interested in are the keyword phrases that don't have too many words (no more than 4), as we will be adding more to the name if possible. You will also want to pick the keyword phrases that have a relatively high number of total searches for the month (10,000 or more).
Once you have decided upon a few keyword phrases, experiment with some different arrangements of the words to create the beginnings of a compelling business blog name.
Pick a clear benefit of your services to use in your blog name:
You are in business to fill a need or pain for your target market. If you aren't doing that, you won't be in business for long. Pick a clear and concise solution to a problem that your business provides for your target market, and try to incorporate that benefit into the name of your blog. You should end up with a name that will include relevant keywords and also contain a benefit for your clients or customers. Following these steps will give the title of your business blog a more relevant and enticing name.
How to put all the elements together for the name of your business blog:
How do you put together a keyword phrase and a clear benefit to create a powerful blog name? Let us go over an example for the travel industry. We will use a hypothetical company that provides travel insurance to travelers. A common problem for travelers that need travel insurance is to replace lost property and luggage. The benefit of this particular travel insurance business is that it provides coverage that is over and above what the other travel companies provide, or provides a service that makes it quicker and easier to process claims.
Our keyword research for this industry finds that 'travel insurance online' has just over 10,000 total keyword searches for the month (total of all 3 of the major search engines). So in creating the name for the blog, we could call it 'Quick Claims in Online Travel Insurance' or 'More Than You Expect From Online Travel Insurance'. We have included a benefit, and the keyword phrase in one short sentence, and we did not make the name too long to make it look awkward.
As you have seen, the name of your business blog serves a couple of functions. The biggest one is that it can be used to help drive targeted visitors to your website, but the name also plays a role in search engine optimization for your business blog. When choosing a name of your business blog, don't leave out the fact that it should also fit into the branding strategy of your business. Choose wisely and do your research well and you could reap the benefits and rewards for your business.
http://www.articlejoe.com/Article/How-To-Determine-A-Name-For-Your-Business-Blog/28199
Monday, October 15, 2007
Search Engine Algorithm Quandaries
Before you make drastic changes to your website after a rocky search engine update, take time to study your web server logs, changes in traffic to your site, and your ranking in the search engines.
Making Changes Before Analysis
Making rash decisions when you are hearing one thing then another from forum postings and articles is not the best choice to make. Much of the talk about fluctuations in the search engine rankings is just that--talk. Cold hard facts come from established tests of what is going on and why. Don't jump ship before examining what is going on with your website first. Panic will lead you nowhere.
Let's talk about basic search engine fundamentals you need to know.
Search Engine Rankings Fluctuate
First, you need to know that search engine rankings fluctuate; that is just the way it is. Google is a prime example of ranking changes happening throughout the day. The best way to find out how you are faring is to study the traffic coming to your site over time. Nope, not just a day or two, try a week or two at least to see if your rankings return. A search engine update may last a week before finishing and the rankings settle. Most importantly, are you receiving traffic at your website? Are you still making sales? Okay then, something is working. Don't jump on the "change everything" bandwagon. Pay attention to what is true in regard to your website.
No One Knows Algorithms Like The Search Engines
The truth is much of the talk about organic (natural) search engine marketing information is speculative. The people who know exactly what the search engine is doing are the engineers who created it, and they are not going to give away their secrets. This means that understanding what happens when updates occur may be difficult to pin down. Keeping tabs with leaders in the industry through articles, forum postings and blogs may give you a general idea of what is happening. Take that information and then apply it to what is actually happening with your website traffic and sales.
You Need A Log Statistics Program
If you do not take anything else away with you from this article be sure you heed this advice: you need a log statistics program in place. With a good log statistics program you will be able to see various reports showing the number of unique visits taking place on your website, what keyword phrases visitors use to find your pages, what pages are being visited, which search engines are being used to find your website, and much more. Knowing what the "normal" website traffic of your website is will give you a good idea of what may be actually changing over time when updates do occur.
Resubmitting Doesn't Help
Don't resubmit your web pages in the crush of an update. Search engines have crawlers, known as search engine robots or spiders, that are able to pick up a web page through links in order to add it to the search engine databases. For this reason you do not need to submit your pages to search engines anymore. Even if you mysteriously go from "top ten" to number 500 in the rankings, the fact that you are still listed means that you are still in the search engine's database, and you do not need to resubmit. Watch search engine robot activity in your server logs and you will be able to see when your web pages are being revisited by the robots.
Google PageRank Should Not Rule Your Life
So many people fixate on Google's PageRank. I suggest you should be more concerned about the traffic coming to your website, sales, the amount of content on your site and the number of on topic or directory backlinks you have acquired. PageRank is part of a much bigger equation of over 100 ways in which Google evaluates your website. Don't forget about the traffic that comes from the other search engines as well. Google may not always be the leader in search engines, keep current with the other major search engine players in the industry.
Common Sense Makes Sense
Use common sense. If you are a small business you can ill afford to make changes that may adversely affect your bottom line. Observation and patience will gain you more than quick fixes. In my experience, the true test of an update is watching the search engine results settle over at least a week or two worth of time. Let the dust settle, analyze the situation, and see what happens from there.
Moderation may be helpful, whether in gaining backlinks, making website changes or your reactions to changes. Don't panic. If it isn't broken...don't fix it.
http://www.searchinnovation.com/search-engine-algorithm-quandaries.asp
Making Changes Before Analysis
Making rash decisions when you are hearing one thing then another from forum postings and articles is not the best choice to make. Much of the talk about fluctuations in the search engine rankings is just that--talk. Cold hard facts come from established tests of what is going on and why. Don't jump ship before examining what is going on with your website first. Panic will lead you nowhere.
Let's talk about basic search engine fundamentals you need to know.
Search Engine Rankings Fluctuate
First, you need to know that search engine rankings fluctuate; that is just the way it is. Google is a prime example of ranking changes happening throughout the day. The best way to find out how you are faring is to study the traffic coming to your site over time. Nope, not just a day or two, try a week or two at least to see if your rankings return. A search engine update may last a week before finishing and the rankings settle. Most importantly, are you receiving traffic at your website? Are you still making sales? Okay then, something is working. Don't jump on the "change everything" bandwagon. Pay attention to what is true in regard to your website.
No One Knows Algorithms Like The Search Engines
The truth is much of the talk about organic (natural) search engine marketing information is speculative. The people who know exactly what the search engine is doing are the engineers who created it, and they are not going to give away their secrets. This means that understanding what happens when updates occur may be difficult to pin down. Keeping tabs with leaders in the industry through articles, forum postings and blogs may give you a general idea of what is happening. Take that information and then apply it to what is actually happening with your website traffic and sales.
You Need A Log Statistics Program
If you do not take anything else away with you from this article be sure you heed this advice: you need a log statistics program in place. With a good log statistics program you will be able to see various reports showing the number of unique visits taking place on your website, what keyword phrases visitors use to find your pages, what pages are being visited, which search engines are being used to find your website, and much more. Knowing what the "normal" website traffic of your website is will give you a good idea of what may be actually changing over time when updates do occur.
Resubmitting Doesn't Help
Don't resubmit your web pages in the crush of an update. Search engines have crawlers, known as search engine robots or spiders, that are able to pick up a web page through links in order to add it to the search engine databases. For this reason you do not need to submit your pages to search engines anymore. Even if you mysteriously go from "top ten" to number 500 in the rankings, the fact that you are still listed means that you are still in the search engine's database, and you do not need to resubmit. Watch search engine robot activity in your server logs and you will be able to see when your web pages are being revisited by the robots.
Google PageRank Should Not Rule Your Life
So many people fixate on Google's PageRank. I suggest you should be more concerned about the traffic coming to your website, sales, the amount of content on your site and the number of on topic or directory backlinks you have acquired. PageRank is part of a much bigger equation of over 100 ways in which Google evaluates your website. Don't forget about the traffic that comes from the other search engines as well. Google may not always be the leader in search engines, keep current with the other major search engine players in the industry.
Common Sense Makes Sense
Use common sense. If you are a small business you can ill afford to make changes that may adversely affect your bottom line. Observation and patience will gain you more than quick fixes. In my experience, the true test of an update is watching the search engine results settle over at least a week or two worth of time. Let the dust settle, analyze the situation, and see what happens from there.
Moderation may be helpful, whether in gaining backlinks, making website changes or your reactions to changes. Don't panic. If it isn't broken...don't fix it.
http://www.searchinnovation.com/search-engine-algorithm-quandaries.asp
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