search In part one of "The UV SEO Series", I introduced the series. In part two, I wrote about having one website address. In part three, I wrote about internal linking strategies. In part four, I emphasized meta descriptions and meta tags. In part five, I introduced keywords, keyword density and keyword placement ideas. I began with offsite SEO in part 6 with the backlink format. Although I could continue this series forever, I'm going to conclude it today with backlink sources. I plan to start the next and subsequent series with narrowly focused topics.


The Great and Powerful (or maybe not) DMOZ

In an act of providence, I received a comment from Ed Coyne of Angelo PC yesterday on a post that's nearly a year old. He said, "I don't know why, but I just can't seem to get a listing at DMOZ approved…"

While DMOZ seems to carry some weight with Google, I don't consider getting listed there as a worthwhile pursuit anymore. My site was listed as personal blog back in 2006 after a few months of waiting, but it's obviously no longer a personal site. There is no way I'm going to try to get it changed. Each category is handled by volunteer editors and some categories don't have any editors assigned at all. It could take months, even years, to get listed in the right category.

I have a better idea. Let someone, anyone, create another directory with better management. Make the listing exports free to anyone. To make it even better, set it up with AdSense or something and let each human editor monetize the areas they're responsible for. They can still be volunteer editors, but this way they'll get paid for the effort and have an incentive to actually keep it up-to-date.

There are way too many sources of good backlinks to worry about DMOZ. And that's my final answer.

Comments

Comments are always a good source of backlinks and it doesn't matter if they're "nofollow" or "dofollow" links. Yahoo, MSN and others seem to ignore that attribute while Google doesn't. It makes me think that "nofollow" was created specifically for Google.

Nevertheless, if you want your comment links to carry any weight at all with Google, they need to be made on a site where the comments have that attribute removed, effectively making them "dofollow". I have a list, which isn't that long considering how many blogs are out there, of some of the blogs that have the attribute of "nofollow" removed called the "Do Follow, CommentLuv and KeywordLuv Blog List". The list is far from complete and requires a large chunk of time each time I add to it, so I don't add to it too often. I check each and every one to make sure they are exactly what they advertise to be.

Using comments to build backlinks are fine, as long as you're contributing to the conversation. All blog owners have the ability to delete comments and many will if they consider your comments to be nothing more than comment spam.

In addition to "dofollow", many blogs are using two WordPress plugins to make commenting even more beneficial: CommentLuv and KeywordLuv (I can oh so smugly add that I was the guy who inspired KeywordLuv.)

What if a blog is "dofollow", but the blog owner isn't using KeywordLuv and doesn't allow keywords in place of author names? Try using something like this: RT Cunningham | Philippines Nursing School. The keyword is added along with the name. I, like most blog owners, like to know who I'm dealing with. I'm sorry, but just Philippines Nursing School wouldn't tell me who you are. I'm more likely to allow an "iffy" comment to remain if there's a name attached somehow. Keyword-only comment authors tend to piss off most site owners and even I, as liberal as I am with comments, get torqued by some of the inane comments I have to wade through.

Bookmarking Sites

There are some good bookmarking sites that are not "nofollow". Feel free to bookmark any or all posts from this blog (or your blog) at these sites (the list is much longer, but I haven't confirmed my own list yet):

  • backflip.com
  • bibsonomy.com (be sure to make your bookmarks public)
  • furl.net
  • ma.gnolia.com
  • rawsugar.com
  • spurl.net
  • mister-wong.com
  • spotback.com

I'll stop right there. I'll have to go through my own list and confirm them all. If and when I get it done, I'll create a page where people can tell me about more that I can add to the list.

Social Sites

While StumbleUpon is used primarily for traffic and the links are "nofollow", they still appear to carry weight with Google. Don't ask me why because I really don't know. Do NOT stumble your own posts. Have a friend do it for you or you risk getting labeled as a spammer. Here's a list of some of the other sites I submit my own posts to:

  • bloggingzoom.com
  • digg.com
  • propeller.com
  • stumpedia.com

I know, it's a short list, but it's a very effective list. Remember, I'm not looking for traffic with these, I'm looking for backlinks, and it doesn't matter if they're "dofollow" or "nofollow".

Other Sources

There are always other sources and I can't even begin to scratch the surface. You'll notice I didn't mention sites that would boost PageRank or anything like that and the reason is simple. PageRank is an over-debated topic and how much it has to do with link authority is still undetermined.

Conclusion

I hope you enjoyed this series. It was about three parts longer than I anticipated. As I said earlier, the next SEO series will be narrowly focused. I'm way behind on my other projects, so I can't say when I'll start on the next series concerning SEO.