Link builders, start your engines.

If you are just getting started, remember to track your ROI by first installing this analytics bad boy.

Big guys

• Give getlisted.org a shot
• If you do nothing else, get in to Google Local Business Center. It ties into Google search and maps.
• I keep seeing DMOZ Open Directory Project being recommended, but I have no personal testimonial for it.. yet.
  
• Yahoo Directory – not free; is it worth it? It is Yahoo, at least.

Physically local directories, chambers of commerce

• One near me would be the Orange County Chamber.  Where’s your Chamber of Commerce?

Customer review sites

• Yelp
• Trip Advisor for the travel-related service

Listen

• Set up Google Alerts so you can immediately see where your business is popping up

Beware

As with all things web, there are countless no-name sites that are probably just harvesting your data for a nasty spam blast.  Be skeptical; I would stick with the big guys.

Just getting started

Getting into web directories should only be one part of your online marketing strategy and ROI’s will vary.  There is no silver bullet with link building.  Keep looking for ways to be visible online.

From here I might progress to popping up in:

• Yahoo Answers
• Squidoo
• Facebook’s Pages
• and, uh, maybe Twitter.  One note about Twitter: it seems whatever keywords are in your  Twitter username will rank favorably in Google for those keywords.  Twice I’ve seen Twitter users be the first results in my searches, regardless of follower count.

I should mention one little thing: your website should be awesome, useful and worth linking to! Good luck with that.

Please leave comments with your own suggestions!

I spent the morning of my day off at the local coffee shop. Not Starbucks. I wanted to blow the battery on my laptop with some free wifi. Good coffee. Free internet for my laptop. Did I mention free internet. Get a clue, other coffee place.

So I’m Googling for OC Blogs. What did I expect to find? Something personal and relevant. Better luck next time. Politics and real estate. Where are the normal people? You know, the other people with enough free time to update their blogs with regularity. The jobless of the OC – haha as if. Not the housewives. Not the kids. Not the churches. Not the power plant battle.

It’s the first time I got into negative searches. Put a “-” in front of words you don’t want.

Started with Googling “blogs ladera ranch” and got 166,000 results. Doh.

Got better results with
blogs “ladera ranch” -estate -homes -power -church -weather -school -kids -pets -apartments -photography -directory
30,000 results.

Got 4,000 results with
blogs “ladera ranch” -estate -homes -power -store -doctor -consulting -dentist -salon -law -insurance -church -weather -travel -school -kids -pets -hotel -apartments -photography -directory -restaurant me

The first results are worthless, so I’m probably looking for something that doesn’t exist.

Okay it isn’t enough to be negative. Let’s try Google’s “Search Within Results” link. I think that just tacks another word on the end of my search string. Cool enough.

Other tips. Put quotes around phrases. Use the “+” in front of words to require them. Capitalization doesn’t matter. Use SafeSearch filtering to exclude bad stuff. Set that in Preferences next to the text field. Increase the results per page to minimize page refreshes. Use Subscribed Links to get authoritative results.

Here’s a funny result. “Barack Obama is my homeboy.” Give me a break. Democrats in Ladera. The horror.
http://www.barackobamaismyhomeboy.com/California-LaderaRanch

Ever heard of a “scrapper”? It’s a person who copies your blog entries, and pastes them into her own – or just sucks your RSS feed. Ask them to delete the entries. If they don’t then tell their hosting service. Learned about that at http://blogmarketingjournal.com/, along with some other good blogging tips.

Also promising blog stuff at http://www.toprankblog.com/.

Here is alexa.com’s list of personal blogs. http://www.alexa.com/browse?&CategoryID=255985 I wish they’d just list them so I wouldn’t have to do all that clicking. My non-coffee hand is getting a work out.

dmoz.org looks like a good directory. Also associated with Google and friends.

http://www.dmoz.org/Computers/Internet/Web_Design_and_Development/Promotion/Weblogs/

More later. Word. Peace. Bye.