Niche Switch

On directory forums and other professional discussion forums, it’s more and more being talked about low-cost bulk directory submission services that are ruining the directory owner’s joy from running their pet projects (a.k.a. directories), by submitting hundreds and hundreds of bottom quality websites, and generally doing rather poor job with submissions for their clients.

Thus The Pagerank God came forth and ruled, “though shall be your ten commandments from now on”:

1. Thou shalt not ignore each directory’s rules.
2. Thou shalt not put your interests before your client’s.
3. Thou shalt not use autosubmitters.
4. Thou shalt not promise unrealistic acceptance rates, and generally misguide the client, just to get the job.
5. Thou shalt not use one email address for all your clients jobs.
6. Thou shalt not accept clients with junk websites.
7. Thou shalt not submit to top categories, when relevant subcategories are available.
8. Ask your clients to ammend their websites, description and titles, whenever you think it is appropriate.
9. Honour the directory list you use.
10. Do not worship the Pagerank God.

Hey….you see that Pagerank God is a tough guy, but has some sense of humour at least . What? Nah, that’s not me, I just helped him transcribe for us earthlings (either telepathy or sql injection vulnerability in my brain’s operation system, not sure what it was). And no, I don’t worship him (I’m almost certain it’s him, not her).
That’s what happens to those who worship the directory devil. It has something to do with the Holy Hand Grenade, hehe.

Every single time I login to any webmaster or seo forum, there is someone looking for secrets. Because, it surely can’t be hard work coupled with a bit of publically accessible knowledge that’s behind the success of most. There are virtually thousands of people (who will ask, and millions hanging out who don’t even bother) out there who think you need to know a special sleight of hand, that you need to trick search engines into whatever to rank well.
Shoemoney runned a 6 tips to having a successful website podcast, and, oh well, besides the six tips, he talks about if you come up with something that really works, don’t tell anybody.

Now forget you are the one on the search for pain-free tricks, try to put on the shoes of the “seo guru” who just hit the nail:
1] Yahoo and Google and other big players, are reactionary. They are closely observing the playground. If you tell your secrets on any popular forum, be prepared that that leak or whatever you found, will be fixed quickly. Especially when everyone who listened to what you was disclosing, will use your idea on the battlefield. Which brings us to next point:

2] Even if it will not or cannot be fixed, expect tens if not hundreds of people to jump on your idea - let me introduce you your new competitors.

If you still think someone will tell their secrets, reread the above two paragraphs. If they had enough business sense to make any money, they would have more than enough brainmatter to figure out what’s going to happen if they told their secrets in the public.

Too bad this is the only thing I picked up from Shoemoney’s podcast 6 Tips to Having A Successful Website.

oh wait…

here is one secret:

make a tiny progress with your website every day

I have always enjoyed Dan’s insightful comments on directories, seo and marketing, and admired his writing style on his other sites, so finding out his freshly started SEO friendly blog was a good news. Though so far it seems it will be mostly technical one (there is even no welcome, no hello world, starting right out with the list updates) , dealing with aspects of updates to his famous list of directories, I’m sure there will be some valuable tidbit of information posted every now and then. In my book, this is one of those hidden secret places (it will not even be promoted probably, just being a small slightly hidden corner of his site) that you might want to bookmark right now or subscribe to the rss feed.