Directory Submissions

For the past couple of hours, I’ve been getting down to directory submissions. In the past, I’ve done the whole “reciprocal linking” thing but, with playsolidpoker.com, I’m trying to focus strictly on one way links. I’ve realized a few things regarding SEO and it’s not all about backlinks, but that’s for another post.

I found this list while checking out digitalpoint and it got me started down the slow road of submitting to directories. I’m being very picky, trying to only pick quality directories with decent PR. I have submitted to a few of the lower PR directories (PR isn’t everything after all) due to the fact that they were heavily indexed in G.

Remember: A backlink doesn’t count unless the page it’s on is indexed.

The directory at http://www.avedirectory.com/ is one such directory. Zero PR, but lots of pages indexed by google. Perfect example of why PR from Google doesn’t matter (at least not that little toolbar).

Interesting Sidenote: If you are new to blogging these terms are an absolute must.

General SEO

I’ve learned quite a lot in the first year of internet marketing, one of the biggest things is SEO.  Short for search engine optimization, SEO is probably the most important tool when it comes to internet marketing.  You can build the best website in the world, with tons and tons of useful information but if no one finds it and uses it, you’ve wasted your time.

Take playsolidpoker.com, for instance.  This site is optimized, in every aspect, for the search engines.  From the url structure, to the internal linking within the site, it is completely perfect in every way.  I have, of course, used wordpress as the backbone of the site.  However, it has been tweaked so much, you can hardly notice it.

WordPress is famous for the SEO, but there are a few things that you must do to improve it even further.  Here is a short list of the most important “tweaks” for SEO purposes:

1. Permalinks – under option, permalinks.  You must use search engine friendly urls.
2. Title tags – wordpress needs some tweaking here, but this plugin will take care of that for you.
3. Interlinking – the more links to your pages, the more of a chance that the SEs will find it.  This Related Posts plugin, takes care of that for you and it’s fully customizable.
4. Other Tweaks – These are not completely required, in my opinion, but they go a long way to helping you finish the job.
   • Stattraq – an advanced blog statistics plugin
   • Most Popular Posts – a “plugin within a plugin” that uses Stattraq to display the most popular posts.

Using these plugins and doing a few tweaks will go a very long way to helping you improve your search engine rankings, thus increasing your traffic. 

Outkast, one of the great bands of our generation

So, I have this new blog and decided to surf around a bit on it and came across this post “Ian is an iceberg » Outkast: Idlewild Blues” and I suddenly realized how far this group goes and the boundaries that they have crossed.

Truly a great band.

Mike’s Life

Welcome to Mike’s Life, the only blog authorized by me, Mike Bradley.

Who am I? Nobody really. Just a normal guy, with a wife and two kids. I happen to be serving my Country and trying to make a little money on the side with some internet marketing. I consider myself fairly smart, but extremely dedicated. When I put my mind to something, there is no stopping me until I acheive my goals.

Why blog? Well, I just want to document this time of my life. This year, 2006, has been one of the busiest years of my life. My oldest daughter, Madison Bradley,, turned two this year. Me and Leigh-Ann (my wife), recently bought a house, had our second daughter, Sierra Bradley, and I have started two online marketing businesses. Poker30.net, is my first attempt at online marketing. I’ve always enjoyed playing poker and affiliate marketing is a huge way to make money online. The natural evolution was, PlaySolidPoker.com, a much more advanced design, aimed at taking my skills to the next level. I’ve added a poker news feed, which is updated daily and a poker strategy articles feed which is updated as I write new articles on various poker games.

I think that’s enough for the first post, let’s get this thing started. If you’ve happened upon this blog by accident, welcome to my life. If you want to get to know more about me, bookmark me and come back often.