Years ago, directories were a great place for getting backlinks to a website (and some of them still are), but nowadays it seems that they are not playing such a great role in link building as before. Among the most authoritative directories you could find DMOZ, Yahoo Directory and Google Directory, but lately the guys at Google decided to no longer continue their “manually approved” directory.

Although Internet directories were back in the days when the www was just starting to increase in popularity a great place for finding information and websites, it seems that nowadays they are almost forgotten; when search engines deliver (almost) exactly what you are searching for, is there a need for directories?

Well, by looking at how popular local business directories have become yes, there is still a big demand for this type of resources, as well as for sub-niches ones. This was not the case with Google Directory thus it being shut down. In its place, Google folks have placed a statement:

“We believe that Web Search is the fastest way to find the information you need on the web.”

Furthermore, Google Labs is to be closed as well, according to Google SVP for Research and Systems Infrastructure Bill Coughran. He added that many “experiments” will be shut down while others will be incorporated into different areas. According to a late update on Bill’s post:

“To clarify: we don’t have any plans to change in-product experimentation channels like Gmail Labs or Maps Labs. We’ll continue to experiment with new features in each of our products.”

These latest products being shut down follow a large number of other services being closed such as Google Notebook, Google Video and so on.

Anytime Google updates PageRank thousands of webmasters joyfully open new threads claiming their websites got a higher PR, others sadly announce their PR was lowered and all in one, although PR has nothing to do with  rankings/traffic/earnings people are still loving it.

About three weeks ago the PageRank of millions of websites was updated, again forums were filled with new threads but two interesting things happened: Google’s PageRank went from 10 to 9 and Twitter’s went from 9 to 0! Each and every webmaster started asking questions regarding this and many of them saw this as an algorithmic error.

And it seems that all was a mistake as yesterday Google conducted yet another PageRank update, fixing both Twitter’s and its own PR. Yet again, Google has a PR10 and Twitter a PR9. Though you might be inclined to believe this update was only for fixing these 2 small problems, fact is that the newest PR update changed things when it comes to other thousands of websites as well.

Sites that went from PR1 to PR6 “regained” their previous PR, sites that went from PR4 to PR1 regained their PR and others kept their “positions” without any movement.

PageRank  lost its trust and “value” in the eyes of webmasters and SEOs but it is still a huge criteria on a huge market – the link selling market. It has been proven several times that high PR links (bought one) are not way better than industry-related ones from lower PR sites however many folks are still running for “high PR links”, as if they would be the Nirvana of link building.

Is this going to stop in the near future?

There are many folk hiring web design companies to create their websites or even getting a new blog with the help of the so popular WordPress. However, a big chuck of those have literally no idea what are the next steps for ensuring a quick indexation, some popularity and a little exposure.

Here are some great steps to follow after your have just launched your website into the wild:

1.      Make sure it gets indexed fast

Time is money and even if you are just publishing a new blog that will not get you any revenue in short time, make sure it gets indexed as fast as possible. The best way for doing this is to submit your sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools. Do not limit yourself to only one search engine (even if it is the most popular one) but also submit to Yahoo and Bing as well.

2.     Get some natural links

Maybe the most natural way of getting some backlinks at the beginning is to submit your website to directories. If you have a blog there are thousands of blog directories available; on the other hand, if your website is niche-related do some online searches and get yourself listed on those industry-related directories as well.

3.      Never underestimate social networks

With almost 1 billion users, Facebook and Twitter are a must for any online business or blog. Creating a page/account on both is an easy task and you are not only getting backlinks from well established websites but you can also get some loyal readers or even future prospects.

4.      Social bookmarking backlinks

This one is simple: register to the most popular social bookmarking websites, such as Digg and “share some love”.

5.      Comment on related blogs

Getting exposure through niche-related blogs is a great way for getting backlinks and potential customers. Not only that but you could also use niche-related forums for getting some highly-related backlinks and visits to your website.

Building a website and leaving it online without any future work on it is probably the worst choice an online business owner can do. Unfortunately, there are still many folks that believe just by having an online presence they will get visitors/sales from their websites, fact that is totally wrong.

Indeed, there are thousands of very specific niches with only a highly optimised website one can hold the first positions in search engines, thus getting the traffic needed for sales, but most of the times this does not happen. Traffic comes only with hard work and passion, so here are probably the most popular ways webmasters are getting targeted traffic to their websites.

1.      Search engine optimisation

Probably the most popular way for getting traffic to a website. From building a highly optimised website to building backlinks to it, search engine optimisation is a sure way for getting a real successful online business. Depending on the industry you want your website to rank higher, SEO can be extremely difficult without a huge budget but also extremely easy to be implemented with the proper keywords, links and website structure.

2.      Video Marketing

Not many folks are going with this method but as video sharing websites like YouTube are more and more popular, it is a great way for getting the right traffic to your products/services. Furthermore, applying this method along with article marketing can be a sure way for success.

3.      Pay Per Click

The most popular PPC program is without a doubt Google’s Adwords. You do not need SEO expertise, you do not need hundreds of hours of content creation (whether we are talking about videos or articles), but one thing is sure: you need quite a big advertising budget for getting the exposure you need and also a very convincing landing page. PPC can bring massive numbers of new customers that actually buy your product but also can become a huge loss in the budget if not carefully planned.

You might think the answer is quite simple when it comes to testimonials – you place a few testimonials on your website praising your product/service and that increases your credibility, thus making future prospects trust what you sell.

That is 100% right, but is that the only benefit from testimonials? Can those help in any other ways? Here are two great tips for not only publishing testimonials that increase trust but also how your own testimonial can help with your website’s SEO (did not see that coming, right?).

1.      Testimonials’ details

Although there are many folks willing to share a testimonial on your website when they are satisfied about a certain product/service, most of the times they are not using photos representing themselves, position at the company or anything else than can increase the trust. Kindly ask your happy clients to provide as many details about themselves as possible (from photo to company and position), if they do not agree no problem; you probably have more happy clients than you imagine…

2.      Building links from testimonials

Ever used a product/service that you were very satisfied of? Check out whether the vendor/distributor has a testimonials’ page, send them a positive piece of content along with your name/photo etc and add a backlink to your company/website at the bottom of your review, such as: Alex from WebCreationUK. This is a great way for getting a backlink to your own website many people omit to use.

Yet another interesting study launched by HitWise related to search engines and social networks market share. Google has increased the search share in UK with about 1.50% when compared to May 2011, thus reaching a whopping 92% of all UK searches.

Maybe the most interesting part of this latest study is that with all the Google growth within search, the sources of traffic for most websites has declined, in terms of “sources from search engines” from around 40% to 34.29% in June 2011. Computers & Internet category holds the first position among all search categories, followed by Search Engines and Social Networking and Forums.

Although this could be seen as a decline in the search market, in fact it is not – this is a big sign that social media is getting higher and higher when it comes to sending traffic to a website. And indeed, according to HitWise, Facebook’s decline seems to have stopped in June – growing with a 0.11% last month and holding the first position in social networking visits from UK with 53.72% while YouTube is continuously growing its market share, reaching 20.76% in June – a 0.24% increase.

Social networking websites are far away from reaching search engines’ popularity however their constant growth is a sign that anyone serious about expanding an online business should keep a closer eye on everything that means social websites. Whether if we are talking about YouTube, Facebook or Twitter, these are soon to become some really big competitors for Google and also they can be a great source for traffic and sales.