URL of a website is very important not only for business branding but also for Search Engine Optimization. With the popularity of Internet and booming online business there is now acute shortage of right and relevant urls. Selecting right url is becoming more complicated. In this post I would describe some of the points which you should consider while selecting right URL.

The points below are based on my own personal experience and don't serve as an Industry standard.

Following are some of the guidelines which one shall follow while selecting relevant URL.

The URLs are case insensitive, the capital letters used in the example URLs are just for better readability.

1. The URL must contain the main keyword. A website containing the main keyword has higher chances of getting higher ranks on Google, MSN, Yahoo and other search engines.

Example: If we have to get an URL for a Web Design related website then we must get URL with Web Design in it. Prefixing/suffixing with another relevant keyword might be a good idea.

2. Main keyword must be in the URL

3. URL shall not be too long. There is no rule for how many characters we can have in the URL. It is depends on common sense.

YouDoNotWantToHaveAnURLLikeThisForYourBusiness.com is certainly not a good URL.

4. If possible keep the Main keyword in the beginning of URL

E.g. WebDesignExperts.com is better than ExpertWebDesign.com

5. If your business is focused to certain countries then you must get country level domains rather than relying on .com provided that .com is not available. Still most of people prefer to have .com domain even if their business is focused on a specific country. As per my observation a country level domain is much more powerful than .com domain.

6. If plain URLs are not available then try to get URLs with hyphen in it

E.g. Web-Design-Experts.com. However don't add more than 1 or 2 hyphens in URL

Directory submission is one of the first step towards external link building and very important in Search Engine Optimization. However it is not absolutely free of controversy.

Question: Are directory submissions any good?
Answer: Yes.

Question: Are there any good directories?
Answer: Yes but rare.

Question: Should I submit websites only to high PR directories?
Answer: This is one of the dumbest question I ever come across. There is no such thing as high PR directory.

The PR is one of the most misunderstood concept in SEO world and it seems more we try to explain it worse it gets in terms of clearing doubts.

As far as PR and directories are concerned the PR of a directory is only for the home page and a directory doesn't not necessarily has all the pages with same high PR. Your website will be listed on one of those sub pages and hence wouldn't benefit from the high PR (home page) of directory.

DMOZ - The grand daddy of directories

DMOZ need no introduction. Good news is it is still alive and being scrapped/used by plenty of other web sites which keep on scrapping its pages. The bad news is it is being hijacked by SEO vultures. And the worst news is that you can't get your submissions approved any more.

However we shall not loose hope and try our best who know we are lucky ones.

Submitting to DMOZ requires a bit of skills and shall be done with utmost care.

Yahoo Directory - Money making machine

Yahoo directory is not free and you have to spent huge sum of money. I couldn't recommend submitting to Yahoo directory un till and unless you are a large establishment and can easily afford it.

Free Internet Directories

There are approximately 2000+ odd free one way directories and this is the area where expert directory submitters like us come into existence. Submitting to directory is not simple task and requires a lot of patience, perseverance, dedication and skills.

Auto submissions vs. Manual submissions

Auto submissions might get your website banned.by Google. Reason is simple. You launched your website today and you have 0 back links and by the end of next day you get hundreds of back link which is suicide. Never do automatic submissions. However be careful with SEO sharks offering you manual submissions which turns out to be automatic submissions behind the curtain.

Many of my clients have complained that they got banned or ranked lower despite having huge amount of back links (built overnight in hope to get into Google Top 10 quickly). I'm not surprised to see why it happened to them.

Manual submissions are the only way out of it.

How to submit website to free Internet directories

Basically you need to have following information handy before you shall start submitting website to directories

1. Title
2. Description
3. Keywords
4. E-mail - this must be in same domain.as your website
5. Account Creation - Some of directories require you to create account, you should have details ready in advance to speed up directory submission

Conclusion
Directory submission is very simple and laborious process. If done carefully it can give you higher ranking on Google. however if you are not 100% sure what you are doing then you should think of getting an affordable directory submission services from experts.

Generating an effective SEO Report is one of the first step and most important aspect of SEO process. Before you start Search Engine Optimization you need to have a full SEO report prepared for your website. You also keep in mind which reports you would like to generate.

Title Tag Report
Title tag is important not only from SEO perspective but also from readability aspect. Title tag tells us all about your web page. A page title is like a human name and provides us much valuable information about the web page. It is vital to know that the tile for each page should be different and shall be coherent with that page content only. The title tag is enclosed in title tag

E.g.
<title>SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engine Optimization | SwamiSEO</title>

Note that the main website name is added in the last.

Meta tag Keyword Report
The keywords are undoubtedly the most important part of the search engine optimization. The older search engine robots heavily relied on meta tags and keywords played a very important role in letting robots find out the information about a web page. Most modern robots still rely on it but they now also utilize other methods to find out the most relevant page for any given keyword. The keyword meta tag is enclosed in following element. Below is an example of keyword meta tag

<meta name="keywords" content="SEO, SEO Report, PPC, SEM, Search Engine Optimization, Pay Per Click, Search Engine Optimization" />

There are no fixed guidelines for the number of keywords which you can include but obviously you should not end up in over utilizing this feature which can jeopardize your SERPS position.

Meta tag Description Report
Description meta tag is brief details about the page and it shall be kept brief. An example of description meta tag.

<meta name="description" content="SwamiSEO is London based SEO Company offering Guaranteed top 10 position in search engines." />

Body Text
All the content between tags constitutes the body of any web page. This is the place where all of your main body contents are. It is noteworthy to remember that the search engine robots do not see the page in same way as human eyes see. They read the page in an order. So the order of body text is also important and you should take care of it. A good SEO report shall generate the body contents and should provide a description of it.

H1 tag
Some of search engines give importance to H1 tags so you should insert H1 tag which can be the main keyword of that page also the placement of the H1 tag is important.

H2 tag
Though optional you should also check for the existence of H2 tag in the page Body.

H3-H5 tags
I would not recommend to use H3-H5 tags as they do not offer any value addition and instead you are forced to use these tags instead of normal <div> tags which are easy to work with.

URL
Though optional but choosing the URL for your website should be considered with utmost importance. If you gave already have your URL registered then you can do nothing about it. But if you are still thinking of a suitable URL then keeps it matching with your website's main keywords.

To sum up a complete SEO report shall consist of followings

• Title tag Analysis
• Keyword Density Report
• Keyword Meta tag Report
• Description Meta tag Report
• Body Text Report
• In page Link Report
• Link Popularity Report
• Outbound Link Report
• IMG ALT Attribute Report
• Top 1o inbound Link Optimizer Report
• Keyword Density Report
• Keyword Prominence Report
• Page Rank Report
• Anchor Text Report
• Comprehensive Summary
• Suggestions for Optimization

Tools for generating SEO Report

There are many useful SEO Report generating tools, most of them are commercial but you can also find a lot of free tools which could be very useful. However you can't generate all reports for any SEO tool you need to do some manual work by yourself to prepare the report for your need.

SEO Resources
SwamiSEO has plenty of free useful resources available on SEO report.