In terms of promotion of your blog or website one of the most tedious and monotonous processes will be submitting your site to search engines and directories. As mentioned in a few previous posts here it's a good idea to have a text or Word document prepared with certain info about your blog or site, because many sites will ask for that same info. Despite having that info available, manually submitting your blog or site to directories can be quite a chore.
There's a great free product available, Directory Submitter Standard, which you can use to submit your blog or website to as many as 350 Directories/Search Engines. What's cool is this program lets you set up a "Project" which basically corresponds with all the info on your blog or site you want to submit. For your project, you fill in info corresponding to your blog or website (Your Name, blog URL, keywords, description, etc) and save it as a specific project (for example: Joe's Baseball Blog). Basically you're entering all the bits of info Monetizer said to keep handy in a text document. From there, you can go click on any of the 350 search engines that this program lists. The program will auto-fill most of these directory sites' "Submit sections" with your website/blog info. What's also great is it allows you to sort these directory sites by Page Rank and Alexa Rank. That way you can target those higher ranking directories right out of the gates.
Pictured Above: Directory Submitter Standard's window setup. Top window lists the directory sites you can submit your site to as well as the Page Rank and Alexa rank. Bottom Window is a web browser which takes you to the site you are submitting your info to.
The Monetizer decided to give this product a spin and delve into a little more promotion to get a blog listed in more directories. Being diligent, Monetizer submitted a blog to about 50 directories in 1-2 hours. You'll have to click on each one separately and it usually fills in most of your info when you get to the Submit section. Some sites still required info to be filled in it seemed, such as the keyword sections and of course those lovely CAPCHA codes that sites use to make sure you're a human, not a robot.
A few things of note when submitting your site with Directory Submitter:
1) Directories/search engine sites each have their own quirks - Be prepared as some directories don't want symbols in your blog title or some don't want comma-separated keywords. Some want descriptions of your blog to be under 200 words, others want as many as 500 words describing your blog or site. Some don't even accept blogs or free-hosted sites (blogspot, freewebs, etc). Some want your email address to match the domain of the site your submitting. (example: www.mikemacpherson.com / some directories want the email address to be: johndoe@mikemacpherson.com)
2) You have options for free, paid or reciprocal link submissions - There's more than a few of these site directories looking to make a buck. They do so by offering you a paid premium listing on their site for $1-5 or more per month or year, etc. Some allow you to submit free URL's then require you to put HTML code into your blog or site, linking back to them. Going for the plain, old "free" option is a good idea and cost effective, but many sites say it takes MUCH longer for your site to be listed (possibly a 3 month wait)!
3) Figure out a few different categories for your blog/site - The directory sites can all differ in the way they categorize sites. Some require you to find the most specific category and subcategory for your site to be listed under. Others provide very broad categorical listings. Keep this in mind when submitting, you may have to search around under various categories to find a good place to list your site. An example would be some sites have a "Sports" category with as many as 30 subcategories (baseball, football, hockey, etc). Some directory sites have a "Recreations and Hobbies" category, etc. You may have to poke around to find the best spot to list your blog or site.
4) Think carefully about the site title you provide - For example, you may want to use your current blog or site title when submitting to these directories, but why not add a few more keywords in? For example if your site is "Priscilla's Photo Galleries" consider adding a few more words after that such as "Priscilla's Photo Galleries - digital photography site". Be aware that again some sites only allow titles of up to 30 characters, some allow more. Implementing a few more keywords into your site title may help your site rank in Google or other search engines for those extra terms or phrases. This would also apply to the keywords you are supplying. Choose them carefully, as they can help your site get discovered.
Overall, this appears to be a great free way to manually add your blog or site to a few hundred directories. There were some broken directory sites, directory sites with expired domains, sites that no longer accept submissions, and those that only accept paid submissions. You may also need to check your email that you provide as some directories want you to verify your site submission via email. But if you want to get your blog or site noticed more, give Directory Submitter a try and at least submit to the higher PR or Alexa ranking directories as a start. Make yourself a goal of 15-20 or more submissions a day. Some directories take over 4-6 weeks to even start listing you, so keep this in mind for your overall promotional plan. There is also the option to purchase their Premium version of the program, which gives you about 2,000 sites to submit to. 350 for free isn't a bad start at all.
Making money with a blog or website should be seen as an ongoing process, where you are constantly working, learning and tweaking what you to do, to improve your success. What the Monetizer notices amongst many "rookie" blogs is the addition of things like Adsense in a way that makes the ads stick out like a sore thumb. The main focus should always be on integrating your ads into your blog or site, so that the design flows, and the blog's content itself stands out. While some may argue this concept saying you want ads to be more visible and stand out, the key to converting PPC ads is always going to be traffic rates for your site and targeting the right audience for your content.
The popular topic of a day or so ago, or for the next few days it seems, is how Google has dropped the PageRank of many top notch bloggers and other sites around the world wide web. It was an unexpected and sudden drop that maybe several weren't expecting, but Google is well known as "masters of the unexpected". The Monetizer is pleased to say this blog is new (under 3 months) on Blogspot and has a Page Rank of "n/a". Google can't drop me below that, but maybe they will develop a reason to.
