If you want your site to be effective, active online promotion is a necessity. In case you have no experience with promoting your site, you’re probably reaching out for some Aspirin now. But promoting websites isn’t only a simple task, you can even do so much without spending a dime!

The links below provide many opportunities to promote your site for free. It will take just a little of your time, but it can seriously increase your site’s traffic.

Directories:

Directories are like phone books or Yellow Pages, except online. Submitting your site to online directories is highly recommended as it improves your site’s SEO (directories link back to your website). Make sure you also submit your site to regional, local and niche directories where your clients are most likely looking for you.

Scrub The Web

DMOZ

Entire Web

Exact Seek

Amfibi

Directorise

Hitalyzer

WhatUSeek

Link Centre

So Much

Social Bookmarking:

Bookmarking your content in popular Social Bookmarking sites is a great way of gaining quality backlinks as well as exposing your content to a broader audience.

Stumble Upon

Delicious

Clip Marks

Blink List

Tagza

Diigo

My Link Vault

Connotea

Links Marker

Faves

Search Engines

Getting search engines to index your site quickly is a key part of gaining more traffic. Make sure these engines know that your site exists by submitting the link directly to them.

Google

Bing

Yahoo

Photo-Sharing Sites

Photo-sharing sites give you an amazing opportunity to display visual content that is related to your business, which you can later use to refer and link back to your site. You can post images of events, coworkers, news and everything that is connected to your biz.

Flickr

Picasa

Photo-Bucket

Zooomr

Article-Submission Sites

Just like with photo-sharing, article-submission is a terrific way to promote your site. All you need to do is write an article related to your work, organization or services, and submit it to these sites. It’s important to keep these articles actually informative. The less aggressive marketing in the article, the better the chances that readers will be interested in your site.

eZine Articles

Article Wheel

Article Geek

Spring’s here, and it’s a great opportunity for a quick SEO refresh for your website. Take a break from cleaning out your closet and add some water + sunshine to your site’s SEO. By the time summer rolls around, you could be reeling in a fresh new stream of traffic!

Optimize Your Site Settings

When building a new free website with Wix, default text is populated into the site’s SEO settings. If you don’t customize the Title and Description of your website, you miss out on the most effective (and easiest) way to present your website to online visitors and search engines.

From the top menu of the website builder: click Settings > Site Optimization.

1. Site Title

Below is what a website’s title looks like, in a search for “spring dresses”:

> Enter a straightforward title with your name and basic description of what you offer. If you’re a local business, include your city, or “regional” location.

2. Site Description

This text is referred by Google as a “snippet”. It is the text that appears below a site title in a search result:

> Enter in 1-2 sentences that describe your services or product. Use simple, catchy languages that appeals to visitors and makes them want to click.

3. Allow search engines to see your site

There’s an option that allows website owners to block search engines from site. It’s a good tool for sites under construction or website owners experimenting with different versions of a site before selecting the winner.

> Make sure the box “Let search engines find my website” is checked. Be sure to Save!

Optimize Content

The meat of your site is the on-page content. All the text that explains or promotes what you offer is hugely important. The goal is to offer quality and relevant information that provides one thing: value.

4. Refresh your on-page text

Show that a real flesh-and-blood person is behind your website.

> Do a quick sweep over your on-page content.

> Make sure dates are updated to 2011

> Offer updates about about new products or industry-relevant changes

> Fix any grammar or spelling mistakes

5. No spam

It’s easy for search engines (and human visitors) to detect spam content and to leave your site as soon as they enter. Google is getting better and better at spotting spammers.

> Make sure all content is original. Do not “hide” text or links by making them the same color as the background. This is a cheap trick that search engines have been able to detect for years.

6. Use keywords smartly

“Keywords” are words describing your site, that visitors are likely to type into a search.

> Use keywords organically, so it doesn’t seem you’re “packing” them in.

> Check out the free Google AdWords Keyword Tool for new trends or words to consider using.

> Use them in both Site Settings AND on-page text.

Reinvent Your Link-building Campaign

Getting other websites to link back to yours is still the most powerful way to get higher rankings in search engines. However, it’s also one of the toughest parts of SEO since it’s not directly under your control.

7.  Content is king. Add unique, quality content to your site and give people a genuine reason to want to link to you!

8.  Tap into your online community. Find sites, blogs, forums, etc. in your field/industry, and build a name for yourself by offering comments, answering questions.

9.  E-mail or call people. Networking on the web is similar to the real-world model it’s based on. Organize partnerships, joint events, cooperative promotions, etc.

10. Customize your social media profiles. Make it as easy as possible for others to find you by linking your site to Facebook, Twitter and other social media networks. Check out this earlier post on top 5 Facebook apps for businesses (Wix’ new free app is # 1!)

Spring is upon us – welcome it with an SEO refresh!

What is Site Architecture?

Your site’s architecture can have a significant effect on the way your site is perceived by visitors – and search engines. Site architecture is the structure of your website, or how the pages connect to one another.

The easier it is for visitors to find your content, the longer they’ll spend inside your site – and the more likely they are to take action. Filling out a contact form, making a purchase or clicking a Facebook Like button are all actions made by happy visitors…not lost, confused or frustrated visitors who are more likely to press the Back button on their browser.

So, just like the boy in the 1970′s commercials for Tootsie Roll asked Mr. Owl: “How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll Pop?” you should be asking yourself:

“How many clicks does it take to get to the center of my website?”

Tootsie Roll's Mr. Owl

(Rule of thumb: it should take a visitor no more than 3 clicks to access your deepest content!)

Here are some ways to improve the way your site is built:

1. There’s No Place like Home

Is your homepage really a “homepage?” Or is it the 1st page your visitors land on, never to return to again once they dive into your actual content?

If you’re creating a free website from scratch, or are customizing your page/menu options, make sure your visitors can arrive home in 1 click from any page.

2. Link your Logo

This is a neat little trick that taps into something site visitors naturally expect. Clicking a website’s logo should immediately transport a visitor to the homepage. Whether your company logo is an image file, your name in bold text, animated clip art, or a mixed bag – it’s easy to link any item in your website to your homepage.

3. Cross-link Pages

Visitors shouldn’t have to “dig” to reach your deepest content. Linking related pages to one another opens up the navigation flow – for your users and search engines.

Cross-links for Photography / Artist Portfolios:

• Most popular photos
• Recently added galleries
• About this Gallery

For eCommerce Sites:

• Top products
• Promotional packages linked from HP
• Customers who bought THIS also bought THESE
• Recently reviewed items

For blogs / Personal / Article Websites:

• Similar posts
• Most popular posts
• Latest posts

4. Text Works Best

For your menu buttons and page navigation, try to use text-based links as much as possible, over images / icons / animations, etc. It’s cute to use a funky CD player icon to link to your music page, but guess what? It means squat to Googlebot. Search engine crawlers cannot “read” anything but text, so elements that are crucial to your site’s architecture should be expressed with words:

5. Save the Personal Expression for your Content

We see too many portfolios with impressive artwork that takes too long to find. We know Wix’ free website editor makes it tempting to express your creativity. But when it comes to providing online visitors with content – don’t be a unique rebel.

Instead, treat your visitors to a headache-free experience with:

• Easy-to-spot links
• Good old-fashioned fonts like Arial and Times New Roman
• Link colors in high-contrast with background colors

A Few Final Words

Most of Wix’ free website templates are pre-built with user-friendly navigation. There is usually a homepage and a menu set up and linked to four or five other pages. If you are using several master pages, it’s especially important to make sure people and search engines can get around easily! Go over these 5 steps.

Make your website is easy to get around, and everyone goes home happy…even robots.

A few months ago, a news story broke out about a company that took a different approach to attracting Google’s attention. DecorMyEyes.com is an online seller of designer eyeglasses, whose owner – Vitaly Borker – harrassed and bullied his customers in an attempt to improve his company’s online visibility.

“Organic Link-Building” on a New Level

As angry customers posted furious comments about their DecorMyEyes experience on forums, blogs and consumer review sites, more and more backlinks to the company’s site were created. This type of activity attracted Googlebot…and new orders were placed from uninformed consumers conducting online searches for designer eyeglasses.

This was precisely the result anticipated by Borker, who himself posted a response on one of the forums stating:

“I just wanted to let you guys know that the more replies you people post, the more business and the more hits and sales I get. My goal is NEGATIVE advertisement.”

Unreal, right??

Art Imitates Web

The whole sleazy scam was actually reenacted in a single scene of a recent episode of Law & Order, SVU. From his hospital bed — after getting shot by an angry customer!–, the owner of a fictitious leather goods company explained his actions to Detectives Benson and Stabler.

Here’s the excerpt from the episode (titled “Bully”), summarized on the show’s website:

Alvarez shows no remorse about his tactics, explaining that the more comments his site generates, positive or negative, the higher his Google ranking and the more traffic to his website. Stabler determines that while Alvarez is a terrible, remorseless person, he has an alibi for the time of Ellen’s murder, as he was harassing yet another customer.

Being a Bully Doesn’t Pay Off

The real-life creep who pulled this stunt, Vitaly Borker, was arrested in December 2010 for fraud and harassment. As of this post, he awaits sentencing. He can face up to 20 years in prison.

A few weeks before the arrest, Google posted “Being bad to your customers is bad for business” on its blog. The post was a response to the DecorMyEyes scandal. Google announced that it had made a slight change to its algorithm in order to detect merchants who provide “an extremely poor user experience,” to avoid a repeat-offense.

Word to the wise: you can’t fool Google in the long-run.

We recommend instead that you play nice, don’t stalk or threaten your customers, and practice organic, civilized link-building.  :-)

While many people still don’t associatively link between social media and SEO, fact is most professional web SEO agencies are integrating social media into their SEO strategies.

The Merging of Social Media and SEO

So when and how did social media become symbiotic with SEO? Here’s a little timeline showing the main events:

• 2009: Google Social Search is added to Google’s algorithm, as a feature that finds “relevant public content from your friends and contacts and highlights it for you at the bottom of your search results.” When you search for something, you may find content written by someone you know, at the bottom of your search results with relevant links to Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, blogs, etc.

For example, when planning a trip to the south of France, my friend Brittany’s Flickr album pops up at the bottom of my search results:

• Dec. 2, 2010: Google and Bing both confirm that links from Twitter and Facebook can affect SEO. (Check it out in this article from SEOMoz.)

• Feb. 17, 2011: Google made a tune-up to Social Search, lifting social content so it appears higher on a page, mixed in with organic search results.

• Feb. 17, 2011: Bing released the Bing Bar – a tool that lets you access Facebook from inside Bing. Users can check their news feeds, notifications, update their statuses, and more. This was a sort-of “power move” by Bing, as Google Social Search does not include Facebook content.

What This All Means or Google vs. Facebook

Let’s face it: many of us learn about breaking-news and current events from Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. By combining social web content with organic search results, Google and Bing are trying to get people back into the search box, and away from the “time-suck” of pure social media.

This merging of worlds could bring us more quality, comprehensive search results than we would receive from using only social media, or only search. The implications are huge. We could turn into more informed consumers, world-citizens. We may even find ourselves connecting to people in interesting new ways. Or we might just crack open a Bud and stare aimlessly.

How to Maximize Your Visibility on the New Social Web

1. Customize your social media for the web. Wix recently released a great app for fully customized Facebook fan pages. Use it.
2. Become an “authority” on social media sites. When someone you know searches for something you mention or offer inside your website, now you can boost the chances of appearing inside results. Post a relevant video on YouTube, a photo album on Flickr, maintain a blog, a Tweet-schedule and a Facebook campaign. Link all of these back to your website.
3. Continue practicing SEO. If people wind up spending more time searching the web and less time stalking their Facebook friends, that means more search volume inside Google and Bing.

1.  Go to the Source

If you really want to optimize your Wix website, get acquainted with your site’s HTML code. This is what Google sees, and where Google will look for your keywords. The website builder by Wix translates the Flash on your website (what users see) into HTML (what search engines see).

To view the HTML version of your site, visit your site in a browser. Hit CTRL + U on your keyboard.

You’ll see something like this, but with your content:

HTML Source Code of www.wix.com

2. Set Your Title Tag

Near the top of the HTML code you’re viewing, you’ll notice a <Title> tag. This is the name of your website. It’s the first thing search engines (and visitors) use to figure out what your site is about.

To change your site’s title in the website builder, click the Settings button at the top and go into Site Settings.

• Titles should be no longer than 70 characters.
• Include a brief description of you or your company, and what type of website or company you are.
• 1 or 2 of your keywords

The <Title> Tag in Search Results Tag in Search Results

3. Use <H> Tags

<H> tags, or “header” tags, are like on-page headlines in your site. Google loves headers, so you should take advantage of this element. To add an <h> tag to your Wix website, go to Add > Text > Title.

Sidenote: There are 2 very different uses of the word “Title” when talking about your site and SEO. Let’s clarify these right now:

<Title> tag : the name of your website that sits at the top of your site’s HTML code. This is the linked text in your site’s listing on a result page in Google.

Title texts : When adding text to your website in the website builder, you can choose “Titles” or “Paragraphs”.

Every time you add a “Title” instead of a “Paragraph”, you’re actually adding an <h> tag.

Tips on Adding <H> Tags:

• Think of “Title” texts as the headlines of your website
• Use “Paragraph” text for the other 95% of your text
• Titles should be short – no more than 1 sentence or fragment of a sentence
• Use keywords in your titles
• There should only be one <h1> tag per web page. Check your source code and see how many <h1> tags you have.

Title Text on a Wix Website

For more info on <H> tags in Wix, check out this post.

Otherwise, congrats! You should now have a better understanding of the way search engines view your Wix website. Use this knowledge to tweak your site accordingly.

Gaining links to your website is a challenging task. No nicer way to put it. This also happens to be the key to getting Google to find and index your site.

Search Engines Crawl on Links

Visitors will only discover your site through Google, Bing and the other search engines if those search engines already know about your site in advance. Search engines send “crawlers” all around the web to locate and retrieve data about new sites. This data is used to match a user’s query in a search, in order to provide him or her with the most relevant results.

Getting a new site noticed by the search engines can take time. Submitting your site to the search engines directly can help speed up the process. But this method pales in comparison to the power of link-building. “Link-bait” is the most powerful way to attract search engines.

4 Ways to Gain Links:

1.       Submit Site URL to Directories

Directories are like online libraries of sites. They are themselves websites that categorize and list other sites, based on topic. Getting listed in a directory can boost your site’s visibility with a valuable backlink. DMoz is the web’s largest and most popular directory. It’s somewhat of a challenge to get listed, and there are specific instructions on the DMoz site. Smaller, niche-based directories can be powerful as well. For instance, if you’re an art gallery, try searching the web for art-based directories.

2.       Submit Content to Article Databases

Article databases like EzineArticles.com and Squidoo.com have loads of articles written on a variety of topics. Write a few quality articles relating to your website’s niche, and include some backlinks to your website. Try to use keywords as the anchor text for your links. Here’s a list of the Top 50 article directories.

3.       Write and Release Press Releases

Same concept as the article submissions, only the content must be announcing something news-worthy related to your website, or industry. A product release, a special event or promotion, a new partnership, etc. are all great fodder for press releases. Include backlinks to your website. PRWeb and 24-7 Press Release are great PR sites to use. They cost money, but can lead to valuable links.

4.       Social Networking

Getting involved in an online community related to your niche can lead to many link-building opportunities. Blogs, forums and social media sites are full of people interested in the same topics as you, looking to connect and form business relationships. Join as many of these groups as you can, and make yourself known as someone offering value to the community. Guest blogging and affiliate marketing are two great ways to gain back-links to your Flash website.

Check out this post for more tips and advice on link-building strategies, including how to check the amount of back-links your Wix site has.

At the risk of boring you with yet another countdown of 2010…we shortened the list to an easy-to-digest 5.

These trends in SEO were noticed by webmasters and SEO pros all around, throughout 2010. They’re good things to keep in mind when planning your website’s next year of success on the web.

1. Local is Golden.
   Google is definitely putting a huge investment on local searches. Google Places was launched this year, giving small business owners more control over how they are listed in Google and Google Maps. Google tried (unsuccessfully) to purchase Groupon – a popular, location-based “deal of the day” site. Basically, if you offer something to a local market, the odds are in your favor when trying to gain traffic.
   • Make sure your Wix website includes your regional location. That means on-page contact info, and your state / city / region in your site’s Title tag!!!
2. Spam Detection is Going Strong.
   Google and the other search engines are still on the war path to eliminate spam and spammy SEO techniques from search. Manipulative link techniques (link exchange, link farms and purchased links) won’t help in the long run. Google’s chief of webspam Matt Cutts, spoke recently of Google’s plan to devote more resources into spam detection. He estimates that by 2012, Google will be able to integrate link quality and authenticity into its algorithm. There’s talk of a new tool that will block link juice from passing through paid links on a page. For more on Cutts’ claims, check out this post by Search Engine Land. Otherwise, just keep it classy, and stick to genuine link-building.
3. Social Networking Helps SEO – Bigtime.
   Getting “Likes” and “Tweets” for your website can go a long way for your ranking in the search engines. Evidence shows that at least Facebook and Twitter signal to Google and Bing which pages to rank, and where to rank them. Putting your site out there on the social web can work wonders for your SEO, and we’re seeing examples of this more and more.
   • Log into your website builder and slap a Facebook Like widget on your homepage. It’s free and easy and here’s a quick video to walk you through it!
   • Add a social footer to your Wix site – a super slick row of social icons that sits at the bottom of your site. Visitors can click on the items to instantly post your site to their Facebook walls, Twitter feeds, and more.
4. Companies are Investing More in Paid Search
   Paid search results are those little ads that appear on top and to the right of organic (non-paid) Google search results.

   Every time you click on one of those ads, Google pockets a bit of change. 2010 estimates show that between Google and Bing, around $20 billion advertising dollars were spent on paid search, versus under $2 billion on SEO. What’s shocking is the fact that paid ads receive 15% of clicks, while organic links get 85%. People tend to “trust” organic search results more, since they’re not sponsored.

   • Invest a little bit on paid search. It’s likely that your competitors already are!!
5. People are Searching Online More than Ever
   People are using the internet more than ever to find information, products and services. The days of calling a friend to find a good [restaurant/plumber/travel agent/hotel] are dwindling. At least, you’re likely to verify that friend’s recommendation by searching online for reviews and a legitimate-looking website before making a call.

Search is here to stay. 2011 won’t mark the end of SEO. Happy New Year!!!

Once you’ve absorbed the wisdom of Commandments I through V, you are ready to receive the second and final installment of SEO rules to live optimize by:

VI. Thou Shall Not Steal
All of your content must be original. Google can detect duplicate content, or two different pages with exactly the same text. This can cause you to suddenly drop in your rankings, or get removed entirely from Google’s index. Write your own, original content and do not let the same text appear in more than one place inside your own website.

VII. Thou Shall Not Stuff

You must also be wary of using too many keywords. Don’t “stuff” them into your text – think of it more as “seasoning”. Your keywords should make up between 3-5% of your on-page content.

Keep the flow of your writing as natural as possible, and place keywords only where it makes sense. Write in a way so as not be obvious that this is precisely what you’re doing.

VIII. Thou Shall Be User-Friendly

Get into your visitor’s head. What is he or she searching for? Is this easy to find inside your website?
Split your personality if you have to – just make sure that your visitor understands what you’re about, can easily get around your website, and can quickly locate what he or she is after.

Present your link structure clearly so visitors won’t get lost. Provide your inner links clearly on your homepage, and use good descriptions for buttons. Don’t try to be witty or clever with site navigation. You want users to make as few clicks as possible to locate the meat of your content, your sales page, your artwork, whatever. Make your links obvious by coloring them with a different color than surrounding text. Create user-friendly text by choosing easy-to-read fonts, and easy-to-digest paragraphs. And don’t forget to include a link to the homepage from every inner page!

IX. Thou Shall Track Your Site’s Performance

If you know how your site is performing you are better able to target what SEO measures to focus on. Google Analytics is a terrific application you can use to track your performance. Site stats show you from where your visitors are coming, and how they’re behaving once inside your website. You can determine which of your keywords are working for you, which pages are the most interesting, and much more.

Google Analytics is free when you connect your Wix website to your own domain by upgrading to a Premium package.

Or, if you are one of our beloved free website owners, our awesome SEO Monitoring Tool works for both free and premium domains. This brand new tool pinpoints exact areas of your Flash website that aren’t optimized for SEO. It’s still in open alpha testing, so any feedback is much appreciated!

X. Thou Shall Perform Regular Tune-Ups

Keep your website in tip-top shape. Check periodically how it’s doing. Make sure all the sites you link to are in fact still online, and those links aren’t broken. Make sure your contact forms are connected to your most updated e-mail address.

If you have calendar dates on your website, make sure everything is updated to the most recent year. Don’t let banners get dusty with old years or irrelevant information (a banner announcing “1,000 Happy Customers!” is silly, once you’ve expanded to 10,000!). Also, graphics can get old and tired and visitors will want to see a refresh for evidence that you’re involved and are constantly making improvements. Use our website builder to quickly whip up a fresh new look every once in awhile.
Adding fresh textual content also sends a red flag to search engines that something new is cooking on your site and their spiders will crawl and re-index your site for future searches.

Final Command: Thou Shall Be Patient!

Optimization takes time. It can take time to get ranked in the first place, and it can take even longer to rank well for your keywords. But it will bring you the traffic you’re looking for, if you obey every Commandment listed here. Updating your content, adding back links and generating a buzz in the online community will all speed up the process of getting ranked for your keywords.
Keep in mind that SEO is always changing, as the web itself evolves, new tools emerge and new tactics are promoted or devalued. Review these Commandments regularly and check back on the Wix blog for important updates on getting more organic, search engine traffic for your Wix website!

One effective technique for promoting your business online is having your site appear in diverse listing directories around the web. Search engines include these directories in their search algorithm, and factor in a site’s appearance in those listings when displaying results.

As Google, Yahoo, Bing or any other search engine scan the latest make-up of the web, the directories listings help point to websites that actually exist and are in good standing. In other words, listing your site on directories demonstrates to search engines that your site is genuine, functioning, and is worthy of traffic.

Which Way to the Directory?

There are many directories flying around in cyberspace. Some are well known and highly selective of the sites they list; some are free, some charge a fee for listing; some are user-generated while others are managed by companies who run the listing service as a business.

Where Do I Start? How Do I Get Listed?

Below I have listed several directory services with which all site owners should be familiar. You should begin your SEO listing efforts by investigating these sites. As you learn about additional directory services, you should build a goal list of directories on which you want your site to be listed. From that point, it’s a matter of opening the lines of communication, contacting the site, and following up.

Classic, highly-selective, and for-a-fee directories:

The Open Directory Project (DMOZ) – free, but very hard to get listed.

The ipl2 – a recent merger of the Internet Public Library and the Librarians’ Internet Index.

Yahoo Directory – selective due to cost, listing on the Yahoo Directory is $299 per year.

Best of the Web – offers listing for a fee, but no guarantee of inclusion in the directory.

User-friendly, user-generated:

Google Places – Google’s directory of businesses. Results are shown as locations on a map, or in a Google search.

Yelp – Better known as the people-powered review website for restaurants, shopping, nightlife, etc., Yelp is an easy entrance point for listing your website.

InsiderPages – Similar to Yelp, but focusing on reviews for businesses such as health and wellness providers, home and garden stores, and beauty services.

A Last Word on Linking, Listing, and Integrity

Incoming and outgoing links to and from your website are quite important in your SEO efforts, and directory listings are simply one side of the linking coin. As the lines are blurred between linking on user-generated reviews websites and directory listings, it’s important for site-owners to be aware of all the possible options for spreading links responsibly.

As with other SEO techniques, spammy practices will do you more harm than good. It’s in your best interest to maintain link integrity while submitting to directories and other listing sites. This means that you should refrain from submitting the same link multiple times, or disguising the same link with different URLs, or posting irrelevant links in user-generated sites. People don’t want to read spam, and search engines certainly don’t want to serve it.