Optimizing your website for search engines can be vital when you are trying to get consistent traffic to your site. Building links to your website is an essential part of SEO.

Blog Directories

A cheap and easy way to build links any blog or website is to list them in directories. This often leads to one way links to your website which is very beneficial to you. You may not get much traffic from the directories themselves, but instead from the search engine visitors. I don’t find directories as important to blogs like this one, however if you are looking to build a specific niche blog, it can be crucial to your SEO success.

You can find a list of 40 free blog directories at Mikes Money Making Mission, just to get you started. These directories have page ranks from 7 to 0. Each directory is different, some may not be right for you.

Get Listed at Bloggeries

One directory not mentioned in that list is Bloggeries. Bloggeries main page is a pr6, that is basically a one stop shop for blogging. There is of course the directory, as well as the forum and blog. The blog consists of reviews of all sorts of blogs, you can see ours here.

The Bloggeries Directory has the front page as a pr6, with categories all with different PR. The higher the pagerank, the more powerful the link to your website is (that generally holds true).

To be listed you can pay $34.99 for a permanent regular listing, that includes three deep links to your website or blog. Or you can have your website/blog featured, for $49.99 annually.

We just got listed in the Bloggeries directory. Make sure to vote for us.
Earn Money Promoting Bloggeries

Rob from Bloggeries is a great guy to have in your corner. He’s all about helping out bloggers and opens his forum to everyone, as well as his directory. He’s looking to help bloggers earn money with his new affiliate program. For everyone you refer to the directory, you will earn $20 per directory “sale”.

On top of that for every affiliate you refer, you earn $5 per every sale that they make.

The affiliate program was just announced a few days ago, so you can get in early and refer some other bloggers into your tier. Sign-up now to get approved and start promoting.

New month, new contests. Check out the latest and simples ones…

$75 Amazon Gift Card

Gather Little by Little is running an easy contest where you have the chance to win a $75 Amazon Gift card. Subscribe to his RSS feeds by mail and you are in. Don’t forget to send him the “secret code” you’ll find at the bottom of each post in the feed! Ends today! Hurry up!

A 1GB iPod Shuffle

Win great prizes (over $403) from from ConchoLakeAZ.com and ConchoValleyCC.com: a 1GB iPod Shuffle, free advertising space, entrecard credits, books and original artworks. Earn your points by writing a post about the competition, subscribing to their RSS feed and completing daily tasks.
Ends on July 4th.

Cash and Entrecard Credits

Three cash prizes from Shauryadeep: $200 (+ 1500 EC), $100 (+ 900 EC) and $50 (+ 500 EC). You have many options to join this contest: subscribe to his RSS feed by email, write a post about it, leave comment on the site.
Ends on June 20th.

f you’re looking for blog contests, if you want to promote your own competition, don’t forget to visit About Blog Contests!

We’ve been busy here, working on several new blogs hoping to hit the Google SEO jackpot. In the meantime we’ve been doing our best to keep updated here. Make sure to check out our latest posts if you’ve missed any.

If this is your first Comment Friday we give one lucky person a free weekly blogroll spot as our “blog of the week“. Along with that we are also giving that winner 200 entrecard credits.

Entrecard was great for a while. I used it everyday, I purchased items, I advertised on blogs. However, now I barely use it. Do you still use entrecard? What is your favorite thing about it?

We’ve found 5 ways to make enemies online, something I wouldn’t exactly recommend. By doing so our ‘enemies’ have found a way to get us penalized by Stumbleupon which has resulted in a huge traffic loss. So why don’t we play nice for a while and make some friends.

Respond to Comments

If you can treat your readers like you already know them, that is recipe for an easy friendship. When people leave comments you already have their name (usually) and email address. This allows you to either contact them on the comments, or directly.

Perfect for a quick email, thanks for the comment, by the way… [insert plug]

Utilize Sites Like MyBlogLog

MyBlogLog was essential in growing our network and readership. I used to spend a lot of time building up our MyBlogLog group.

Now there are plenty of other networking sites you can use. The most popular one now seems to be twitter. Everyone is twittering everything they do. Its a great way to get to know people and make friends online.

Submit Links to Social Media

Not your own links, users in similar online communities as yours. Instead of trying to ‘take out’ the competition, give them a boost every once in a while, they may do the same for you. If I find someone submitting some of our content, I usually always end up some comminucation with them as well as social media friend requests.

Link to Fellow Bloggers in Posts

There is nothing better than finding out someone liked your post enough to link to it. So why not show some of your favorite bloggers that you value their content and link to it. You can even make a round-up link post and link to several of your favorites.

Contact Anyone and Everyone

This one is kind of tricky. Some people can do this very well, however sometimes it comes off as spam. I can almost always tell when someone is just mass producing contact emails and it’s a huge turn off for me. I appreciate the time it takes, however to me, it’s spam. Isn’t email marketing spamming?

Instant Messaging

Getting someone on instant messaging (IM) can be a powerful way to network. After writing about Networking with Bloggers on Instant Messaging, I gained several new bloggers on my buddy list. That was just with writing about it.

Contacting bloggers through IM is the easiest and in my opinion the best way to network and make friends online. It’s very informal, so it’s easy to talk to people you don’t know.

How have you been able to make friends online?

Digital Point is a massive webmaster related forum. There are thousands of users that log on daily to discuss different ways to make money online, as well as being able to buy and sell links. I’ve been able to make thousands of dollars just using Digital Point alone.

With that being said, using the site itself to get links, may not be the best idea.

It is a massive forum, meaning there are tons of members. Due to it being so big, some users abuse it. You can’t stumble your own Digital Point threads since it is banned from Stumbleupon. Linking to your website, blog, or article from Digital Point may also give you penalties in Google.

De-Ranked from Google

When we had our trouble with NeverBlueAds (which is now resolved) I, of course, posted about it. That post ended up ranking on page 1 in Google for the term NeverBlueAds.

I found a thread on Digital Point discussing NeverBlueAds so I put in my two cents and linked to my article. Soon after that I realized my traffic from Digital Point was increasing but the search traffic for NeverBlueAds went down. After Googling it, I found the post was no longer ranked on page 1. Going a bit deeper I found I couldn’t find the post at all.

Figuring Digital Point may be the culprit, I tried to edit my post to remove the link. However you can’t seem to edit links that old, so I had to change the URL of the post all together. Within the next few days the post was back where it belonged, on page 1.

Linking to Digital Point?

I’m not sure what the affects could be for linking to Digital Point, however I make sure to no follow links, just in case.

Have you noticed this too with your posts? Several of our other posts have been affected due to links from DP

NeverBlueAds was one of the first affiliate networks that I joined and actually used. Their freebie offers are perfect for some of my blogs. It took some time but I’ve reached over $100+ in earnings (almost$200), with the number being steady each month.

However, it hasn’t always been smooth sailing, for a while I was no longer promoting NeverBlueAds.

My affiliate manager, Tina Chien was essentially worthless in helping me with problems that happened. She should of sent me to a manager in the first place, but instead decided to no longer work on my account with no word whatsoever. After being shorted about $36 due to different problems with the network, I had enough. I was tired of watching my earnings drop without a word as to why. So…

I wrote the post about my problems and that was that. Until…

Head Affiliate Manager to the Rescue

In my article, 6 ways to get a refund online, I mention the power of blogging. Luckily the post about NeverBlueAds bounced around on the front page of Google for that term. The power of blogging brought my answer.

One day out of nowhere I received a phone call from head affiliate manager from Leanne Thubodeau. She wanted to discuss my problems with NeverblueAds, and so we did.

The end result was a $38.50 bonus, which was actually $2.50 more than I had figured I had lost. I had a short discussion telling her my problems stressing how unsatisfied I was, especially with my affiliate manager. I didn’t really try to gain back more than I lost, even though I had probably spent a total of 2 hours disputing my case to my previous affiliate manager.

Overall, I am giving the okay to join NeverBlueAds again. With the advice that if you run in to trouble, just ask for Leanne!

Welcome back, contests are waiting you! First of all, don’t forget DNXpert giveaway with incredible prizes! Cash, domain names, free advertising and more! BAYB is one of the sponsors! Here are more blog contests from around the blogosphere:

Cash from IMBlogger

IMBlogger is giving away a total of $600 dollars (PayPal) for three lucky winners. You only have to subscribe to his RSS feed by email and then leave a comment telling that you are in. Blogging about this contest is optional, but it is of course appreciated.
Ends on June 15th.

Cash and Domain names

Enter the DiggItLive contest and win free cash and domain names of your choice. There will be a total of three winners. To enter just subscribe by mail and leave a comment.
Ends on May 30th.

Cash from Everyday Finance

To celebrate his 250th post Everyday Finance is holding a contest where 2 winners will receive $100 an $25 plus advertising space. Gain your entries by subscribing to his RSS feed, writing about it on your blog, or spreading the world over the net (in other blogs, sites, forums…).
Ends sometime in June

If you’re looking for blog contests, if you want to promote your own competition, don’t forget to visit About Blog Contests!