Most experienced webmasters ( in my niche, I am referring to fellow directory owners) are aware the fact that Google is changing its algorithym to provide better relevant and high quality search results to normal searchers.

Paid links are no longer going to influence SERPs results and gain you PR. In this regard I liked a comment made by a fellow member on digitalpoint forums with his ID being InsightInc — He said

“Seriously speaking, Google doesnt work for or care about Webmasters. They work for and care about individuals who are searching websites and pages that is relevant to search and content they perform on Google Search. The webmasters are themselves to blame for putting so much value on PR in the first place. Ofcourse this has turned into a business - but this business can drive Google out of business if webmasters continue manipulating the search results via paid link and other PR infringement. Hence they are having a long and hard think about the whole PR business and how to retain their No.1 Search Engine position before it becomes widely known that NO.1 spot on Google is more relevant to a webmasters work than the relevance of website itself - makes sense to me - what do you think?”

So I was thinking to do research on Viral Marketing as a means to promote my web directories rather than buying lots of now useless advertising spaces and share my experiences with my fellow directory owners.

While doing extensive research I chanced upon the most interesting article on Viral Marketing written by marketing guru Dr. Ralph F. Wilson . To my surprise-I found that he is actually encouraging webmasters to re-produce his article for educating people like me. So here it goes in its entirity–

The Six Simple Principles of Viral Marketing

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In a few short generations, a virus population can explode.

Viral Marketing Defined

What does a virus have to do with marketing? Viral marketing describes any strategy that encourages individuals to pass on a marketing message to others, creating the potential for exponential growth in the message’s exposure and influence. Like viruses, such strategies take advantage of rapid multiplication to explode the message to thousands, to millions.

Off the Internet, viral marketing has been referred to as “word-of-mouth,” “creating a buzz,” “leveraging the media,” “network marketing.” But on the Internet, for better or worse, it’s called “viral marketing.” While others smarter than I have attempted to rename it, to somehow domesticate and tame it, I won’t try. The term “viral marketing” has stuck.

The Classic Hotmail.com Example

The classic example of viral marketing is Hotmail.com, one of the first free Web-based e-mail services. The strategy is simple:

1. Give away free e-mail addresses and services,
2. Attach a simple tag at the bottom of every free message sent out: “Get your private, free email at http://www.hotmail.com” and,
3. Then stand back while people e-mail to their own network of friends and associates,
4. Who see the message,
5. Sign up for their own free e-mail service, and then
6. Propel the message still wider to their own ever-increasing circles of friends and associates.

Like tiny waves spreading ever farther from a single pebble dropped into a pond, a carefully designed viral marketing strategy ripples outward extremely rapidly.

Elements of a Viral Marketing Strategy

Accept this fact. Some viral marketing strategies work better than others, and few work as well as the simple Hotmail.com strategy. But below are the six basic elements you hope to include in your strategy. A viral marketing strategy need not contain ALL these elements, but the more elements it embraces, the more powerful the results are likely to be. An effective viral marketing strategy:

1. Gives away products or services
2. Provides for effortless transfer to others
3. Scales easily from small to very large
4. Exploits common motivations and behaviors
5. Utilizes existing communication networks
6. Takes advantage of others’ resources

Let’s examine at each of these elements briefly.

1. Gives away valuable products or services

“Free” is the most powerful word in a marketer’s vocabulary. Most viral marketing programs give away valuable products or services to attract attention. Free e-mail services, free information, free “cool” buttons, free software programs that perform powerful functions but not as much as you get in the “pro” version. Wilson’s Second Law of Web Marketing is “The Law of Giving and Selling” (http://www.wilsonweb.com/wmta/basic-principles.htm). “Cheap” or “inexpensive” may generate a wave of interest, but “free” will usually do it much faster. Viral marketers practice delayed gratification. They may not profit today, or tomorrow, but if they can generate a groundswell of interest from something free, they know they will profit “soon and for the rest of their lives” (with apologies to “Casablanca”). Patience, my friends. Free attracts eyeballs. Eyeballs then see other desirable things that you are selling, and, presto! you earn money. Eyeballs bring valuable e-mail addresses, advertising revenue, and e-commerce sales opportunities. Give away something, sell something.

2. Provides for effortless transfer to others

Public health nurses offer sage advice at flu season: stay away from people who cough, wash your hands often, and don’t touch your eyes, nose, or mouth. Viruses only spread when they’re easy to transmit. The medium that carries your marketing message must be easy to transfer and replicate: e-mail, website, graphic, software download. Viral marketing works famously on the Internet because instant communication has become so easy and inexpensive. Digital format make copying simple. From a marketing standpoint, you must simplify your marketing message so it can be transmitted easily and without degradation. Short is better. The classic is: “Get your private, free email at http://www.hotmail.com.” The message is compelling, compressed, and copied at the bottom of every free e-mail message.

3. Scales easily from small to very large

To spread like wildfire the transmission method must be rapidly scalable from small to very large. The weakness of the Hotmail model is that a free e-mail service requires its own mailservers to transmit the message. If the strategy is wildly successful, mailservers must be added very quickly or the rapid growth will bog down and die. If the virus multiplies only to kill the host before spreading, nothing is accomplished. So long as you have planned ahead of time how you can add mailservers rapidly you’re okay. You must build in scalability to your viral model.

4. Exploits common motivations and behaviors

Clever viral marketing plans take advantage of common human motivations. What proliferated “Netscape Now” buttons in the early days of the Web? The desire to be cool. Greed drives people. So does the hunger to be popular, loved, and understood. The resulting urge to communicate produces millions of websites and billions of e-mail messages. Design a marketing strategy that builds on common motivations and behaviors for its transmission, and you have a winner.

5. Utilizes existing communication networks

Most people are social. Nerdy, basement-dwelling computer science grad students are the exception. Social scientists tell us that each person has a network of 8 to 12 people in their close network of friends, family, and associates. A person’s broader network may consist of scores, hundreds, or thousands of people, depending upon her position in society. A waitress, for example, may communicate regularly with hundreds of customers in a given week. Network marketers have long understood the power of these human networks, both the strong, close networks as well as the weaker networked relationships. People on the Internet develop networks of relationships, too. They collect e-mail addresses and favorite website URLs. Affiliate programs exploit such networks, as do permission e-mail lists. Learn to place your message into existing communications between people, and you rapidly multiply its dispersion.

6. Takes advantage of others’ resources

The most creative viral marketing plans use others’ resources to get the word out. Affiliate programs, for example, place text or graphic links on others’ websites. Authors who give away free articles, seek to position their articles on others’ webpages. A news release can be picked up by hundreds of periodicals and form the basis of articles seen by hundreds of thousands of readers. Now someone else’s newsprint or webpage is relaying your marketing message. Someone else’s resources are depleted rather than your own.

Put into practice

I grant permission for every reader to reproduce on your website the article you are now reading — “The Six Simple Principles of Viral Marketing” (see http://www.wilsonweb.com/wmt5/viral-principles-clean.htm for an HTML version you can copy). But copy this article ONLY, without any alteration whatsoever. Include the copyright statement, too, please. If you have a marketing or small business website, it’ll provide great content and help your visitors learn important strategies. (NOTE: I am giving permission to host on your website this article AND NO OTHERS. Reprinting or hosting my articles without express written permission is illegal, immoral, and a violation of my copyright.)

When I first offered this to my readers in February 2000, many took me up on it. Six months later a received a phone call:

“I want to speak to the King of Viral Marketing!”

“Well, I’m not the King,” I demurred. “I wrote an article about viral marketing a few months ago, but that’s all.”

“I’ve searched all over the Internet about viral marketing,” he said, “and your name keeps showing up. You must be the King!.”

It worked! Even five years later this webpage is ranked #1 for “viral marketing.”

To one degree or another, all successful viral marketing strategies use most of the six principles outlined above. In the next article in this series, “Viral Marketing Techniques the Typical Business Website Can Deploy Now” (http://www.wilsonweb.com/wmt5/viral-deploy.htm), we’ll move from theory to practice. But first learn these six foundational principles of viral marketing. Master them and wealth will flow your direction.

“Copyright © 2000, 2005, Ralph F. Wilson, E-Mail Marketing and Online Marketing editor, Web Marketing Today. All rights reserved. Permission granted to reprint this article on your website without alteration if you include this copyright statement and leave the hyperlinks live and in place.”

All webmasters know more or less about Google Page Rank. For those who are unaware –ideally, it is a score given by Google to every website to and measured on a scale of 1-10. Despite many controversies and lots of uninformed people/webmaster denouncing PR as being a mere number, Googe Technology notes that it is in the heart of all Google ranking. A higher PR website is said to be of higher quality.

According to commonly believed notion- Google assigns PR to a website based on the total value of votes received from other sites which in turn means summation of PR value of all inbound links to a particular website.

Recently, Google has been indexing contents almost instantly (Matt Cutts says “Minty Fresh Index” ) and crawling links regularly. It is reflected in the change of Google search results that seems to change all the time and which is known as Google dance. It is also believed by many webmasters that, PR Update is dynamic and is always adjusted internally. But Google exports the PR value to its toolbar only once every 3-4 months. Hence, every toolbar export brings in a lot of excitements, joy and heartburn among SEO and webmaster community. Most believe that, it is the result of the link-building and content development work put into the last 10-15 weeks. The previous two toolbar exports happened on 25^th January and 27^th April. But Alas! This time, the toolbar export is taking too long and the community has gone from excited to impatient to a state of surrendering their fate to Google!

So why is the toolbar PR export taking so long this time around (already the longest period in the toolbar export history)? Well there might be lots of reasons in my view.

1. Matt Cutts used his blog to get feedback from webmasters with the post “How To Report Paid Links”. It is often believed that Google uses him to communicate effectively with webmasters. There has been lots of hue-n-cry about it – but the fact remains that Google got what they wanted – Feedback. Based on that feedback – they have changed all their algorithms and are testing them.
2. Due to new Page Rank algorithm, Google is trying it out with the current PR update and testing it. This is very evident with some selective sites getting updated and most sites not getting updated. Once Google feels their new algorithms have passed all tests and should work perfectly the way they want them to work, the toolbar export will be released. will to wait till that happens.

Possible Outcome with the New Algo:

As is the case, Google will discount lots of paid links (as they might deem any) and there will be huge fluctuations of PR of sites and of course SERPs. So far, it has been quite easy to manipulate PR till PR6 as webmasters can make out how many of what PR inbound links are necessary to attain a particular PR. That kind of Page Rank manipulation will be harder.

Another possible fall-out will be that of raising the standard of PR. What I mean is, no longer will 4 PR7 inbound links be enough for gaining PR6.

Google might also bring in content factor in its Page Rank valuation. So far, there has been loud calls to omit Page Rank completely from Google’s system as anybody with little quality contents could get high Page Rank and hence SERPs.

All these will change Page Rank & SERPs hierarchy and many SEOs who have developed their business on Paid Link model will loose their jobs- there will be more heart burns.

Disclaimer: All these views are purely mine- on the basis of my study.

Traffic, Traffic, Traffic! That’s what all websites and webmaster want to generate more and more revenue online – whether from online sales or Ad Sense or by selling advertisement. Without traffic, no income is possible online.

Of late I can see a lot of debates on webmasters forums and blogs in regard to relevancy, usefulness and effectiveness of web directories in search engine optimization. Many people dismiss web directories as being mere link-farms! They argue that – web directories do not send much traffic to sites listed in them. The also accuse directories of selling page rank, of listing low quality – spammy sites if they pay the review fee. Very serious allegations indeed!

So, is it true that web directories lost their significance in SEO world after the emergence of viral marketing, press release campaigns, e-mail marketing etc. as major SEO techniques that bring huge traffic?

My answer is a BIG NO. Web directories are still the most reliable, trustable and efficient sources of optimizing a new site. They are still the most helpful resources to a new site for quick indexing and durable search engine ranking.

I this competitive world, it is next to impossible to get links from sites that deal in the same niche as most site owners fear that if they help another site, it might outrank them and hence causing a decrease in business volume. On the other-hand, web directories are sites that can list any website on categories arranged by subjects and therefore, websites, whatever their niche may be, get a relevant link that is so much scarce. And most of those links are permanent.

Now, the question is – if directories are so good – why are many webmasters and SEO professionals raising questions against them?

Well, being involved in the industry for sometime now, I have done an in-depth analysis of the situation and came up with some disturbing facts. I have found that all the allegations mentioned above are true!

As in every sphere of our life, there are lots of vultures, money sharks on the web too. Their main motive is to grab a few dollars by hook or by crook.

So who are they?

They are the members of Quick Buck Crew – a term used to refer those who are destroying the name of the web directory industry by their malicious manipulation of the good vibes of web directories which was earned by the hard work of quality web directories like BOTW, Alive, Aviva and many other high quality directories.

Their Modus-Operandi is very simple. They buy expired or unused domains with high PR and then install directory scripts on them. Then they advertise that their web directory has so and so page rank –and it is very cheap to list.

Whatever people say on the face, it is a truth that- most webmasters and SEO professionals look for high PR directories to list sites, And due to these circumstances, the whole industry is facing a crisis.

What baffles me is the fact that even experienced webmasters and hard core SEO professionals fail to differentiate between a quality high PR web directory and a duplicate web directory that is up there to con those self proclaimed experts!

It is a very basic job to differentiate between an established website (of late those conmen have been installing blogs and other sites on those condemned domains) and a duplicate one. Just go to Iwebtool or Linkvendor and use the Visual PR tool. If the sub-pages, categories of the said site has any sort of PR in inner-categories, pages (it does not matter what PR inner-pages have) – then VOILA! It’s a genuine website running for sometime. If it has only home page PR and no PR on inner-pages –the –BEWARE – you are dealing with a CONMAN –duplicate site.

Regarding allegations of web directories not sending traffic – I would like to ask those who say such things – WHAT IS THE PRIMARY ROLE OF A WEB DIRECTORY? DO YOU CONSIDER IT TO BE A LOCAL TELEPHONE INDEX OR YELLOW PAGES?

The answer is clearly A BIG NO. A web directory is neither a telephone directory now a yellow pages index. Its primary role is to help a site get indexed with search engines and help you rank high in them. Its secondary role is to provide selective catalog of quality websites listed by categories and subjects. So if some one thinks that a web directory would provide all the best web resources on the net, then Google will be out of market!!! as nobody would search Google if they find all their resources on a web directory.

Still –there are some directories that send exceptional traffic to listed sites. I recently checked the most popular sites one of the best directories online – Alive Directory — and the figure is astonishing -

Please check yourself. -

http://www.alivedirectory.com/index.php?list=top

How many visitors have those sites received and for how much? How much does it cost for to get visitor using Ad Wrods? How much SEO professional charges for marketing campaigns? Think carefully an calculate the benefits!

Now think !!- if you list in 50 quality web directories and take into account the direct traffic accumulated from them in an year –and the cost — you get your answer. Those traffic are flowing slowly but on a constant basis — all the year through. And they would keep flowing months after months –year after years.

Are we forgetting something here?

YES OFCOURSE.

We are forgetting the most important thing to list in web directories –the SERPs benefit you get. If you optimize with those 50 top quality directories -you are sure to rank on top for many keywords related to your site. And how much traffic you get from search engines?? Do you count that??

And while Adwords, viral marketing and other means of traffic generation need constant work, one has to just list once with a directory and pay a nominal review fee. If the site is of quality, then it has every chance that it gets listed on the said directory and keeps getting traffic years after years –albeit slow.

On the other hand – true quality directories could boost a site’s search engine ranking beyond imaginations. Please remember, no single directory can do it alone – not even DMOZ, Yahoo Directory, Business.com or even Google Directory. It more like “Little drops of water makes an Ocean together”: D

So web directories still ROCK – they are highly useful, effective and relevant –

Forget nay Sayers – get your strategy right, make a budget and try out my list of Authority Web Directories. The list is a personal one made on through research on all of them.

And please don’t forget my own Best Internet Resource - . Although it is still not in the top league – I can assure you that – it will join them in the near future.

PS: Just wanted to share my own technique of how I judge a quality web directory.

1. First thing I do is check the home-page PR. I like directories PR4+
2. Second thing (most important) – I check the Visual PR of the said directory. It does not matter what PR the pages have, if they have some sort of PR, then it is an established directory.
3. I then check its backlinks –and see what sites are linking to it. I use Linkvendor tool to do it.
4. I then check the listed sites in the directory. I look for the quality of the previously listed sites. If the directory has low quality sites listed – I avoid them.
5. Another very important thing to judge about a web directory is – how often the site is being indexed and if the page/category you are looking for is indexed. I believe that- a high quality site gets indexed more frequently than a low quality site.

Please also see what Matt Cuts has to say about quality web directories.

Sorry for such a long post – but being a career academician – I don’t know how to shorten my posts. I promise you – I’ll try my best to shorten my future posts.

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