You are currently browsing the category archive for the ‘SEO – Google News & Commentary’ category.
The Sandbox Effect – Double Double Cross?
I have written about it. Many people have written about this grey topic that is a negative to the website designer’s vocation. The sandbox effect is real and it is currently an obstacle that stands in between you and getting a newly launched website noticed in the SERPS. There are interesting observations however that you may want to consider.
We expected Yahoo and especially Bing to employ a new site filter aggressively because of the “quality vs. quantity” mantra that Bing has exuded from the rafters of late. Google is expected to employ this type of filter also as it tries so desperately to return to organic quality results.
First, let us explore the reason for this filter and then the current implications of its use by big search. First of all it is the constant work of those who have become known as “black hats” that causes these giant purveyors of search to endeavor to control their successes. Automated linking schemes and reciprocal linking strategies threatened the very core element of big search rankings. These efforts were artificial and to get your site up there in the SERPS, you had to employ some of them because of the influences of those that hijacked the SERPS. Now everything has changed. After much activity in the shadows, the black hats evolved to hijack the pay-per-click marketplace. Finally after the threat was realized and big search recognized that real people doing real searches were getting frustrated with spammed results, Bing came out and voiced the intent to bring up the quality level of their search offering. With the merger with Yahoo, Microsoft’s intent to clean up search was taken very seriously by Google. Google took on a proactive approach even cleansing tens of thousands of paying members of its Awords program. Google also employs an aggressive new site filter. The strange part of the current state of new site SERPS placement is that Bing has opened its doors to new sites. Yahoo has also not filtered new sites out of the SERPS.
I cannot take risks with clients’ websites and their internet exposure. What I do is to take a lot of risk with my own sites. Now in launching a new site, it appears that if you are conservative about your back-linking strategy, only seeking one way back-links from high ranking sites along with social marketing and press releases, you can hit the SERPS within a week! Now this is limited to Yahoo and Bing. I have had Google crawl new websites, obviously indexing the pages but not listing them listed in Webmaster Tools. After about 24 hrs. or so, the new sites that were showing up on Google highly ranked in the SERPS, because of my expert in page and careful linking strategies. Then they drop off the face of the earth. A check of Webmaster Tools reveals that the sitemaps are updated every day as I update materials on the sites, but no listing of URL’s being indexed is available. This is certainly reflective of the reality that Google indexed my brand new sites and then employed a new site filter that has sent them to the sandbox. Below is a screen capture of the sitemap page in Webmaster Tools.
- Sitemap Page from Webmaster Tools
Is the old double-double cross that we see? Who knows exactly why but we can see what is going on right now. Think about this for a minute. Bing exudes this grand intention to make their brand of search “Bing & decide” a clean and organic new style of experience for the end user that even feels good to advertisers. Independent business owners and operators are attracted to this idea of “Bing & decide.” The powerful new look of Bing attracts people while Google maintains its clean (but now more cluttered) look. Google looks over its proverbial shoulder and decides to act after the new Bing gives Google something to focus upon. Google decides to purge itself of its junk that threatens its organic search results. Google has done a lot of work and it is actively doing “Spring cleaning.”
As Bing watches while Google begins to clean up its act, the marketplace is going through its own purging. In brick and mortar establishments across this land many companies are going belly-up and established websites are shutting down. New start-ups are getting ready to capitalize on the Spring, post-tax season, early-summer sales season. Now these are the new entrepreneurs and even the businesses are left standing that want to try a new website launch to get the exposure they need for growth. These are the businesses that will pay for the services that big search provides. Bing is looking to peel off some of the advertisers from Google. It won’t be hard to do.
Google has made a lot of people angry with its big purge of advertisers. There are many that were caught in the snare and dumped that were not guilty of anything. By opening up and reducing the burden upon new websites, Bing may just be positioned in a happier place to capitalize on this big negative.
Speaking of negatives, for a website design company or an SEO company, the divulging of the real aspects of the sandbox effect to you, a business owner may affect your decision to move on a campaign to exploit free search. The SEO’s that do not tell you the whole story are not looking out for your best interests. You should know exactly what is happening and the prospects of getting your site highly ranked in the SERPS. Now is the time to move and to get your website ranked. Engage the services of the best SEO professional you can find. I am making the argument that I am your man.
-Bob W
Social Media & Blogs
Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, Blogsites, Myspace, Buzz-Up, Digg and the list goes on and on…and a myriad of other up and coming social media websites are representing a source of fresh content for the search engines. There is a new drive to stay on top of interesting material in real time by Google. Resources are being devoted to immediate crawling of these sites for accurate information in real time.
Several politicians and many luminaries are utilizing these sites to post their sides of important issues. This is form of reporting in real time and the search engines will be following these sites with tenacity. It should be recognized that Google for one, has devoted a separate area of the SERPS for this material. These areas of the internet will continue to grow in the coming years and so will the resources put forth by the search engines and SEO experts alike to capitalize on the exposure from these sites.
Along with viable information comes the chaff or the garbage of the social networking sites. Nowhere on the internet is the percentage of junk higher. So it is reasonable to assume that internet users will clamor for good content and Organic Results.
This new trend may continue to be separated from much of search as it must to maintain the integrity of search. The search resources devoted to the social media sites will have to submit to company ROI strategies and as there are rewards for publication of this material, cost effectiveness will rule.
The aging Baby Boomers that hold the purse strings of most of the online economy will demand for a level of sophistication devoid of the chaff of new age nonsense. There is a place for social media and it would seem that it should be kept separate from organic results. It has been however, integrated carefully into organic results. This is an area in flux and as the landscape changes, we will be reporting on it.
In exploiting the new media, company blogs and automated social media accounts and real-time posts are a necessity to reach the top and stay on top of the SERPS. Writing unique and high quality content for these social postings is essential to gain human attention and appreciation. A solicitation for “fans” on Twitter or gaining several “thumbs-up” on Digg represents a more intensive campaign which is far more difficult than attracting a search crawler and manipulating a mechanical indexing from a machine. It is not as laborious in the making of connections, but the quality and the content must be carefully directed at a certain niche of a given subject. Casting a broad net at a particular segment of the internet will inevitable get your story buried. You are only allowed a blurp as volume is frowned upon, now in this ‘Buzz-in’ medium.
Seeding the various social networks with automated RSS feeds allows an entry to gain more human attention immediately. Search machines follow, indexing the content quickly, but the weighing of the content toward the SERPS is another matter. It seems that popularity of the site in the social network circles is of particular significance to big search. The social networking sites seem to have become for search what the machines were missing, a human quality of measuring the value of a site by way of a post and a link.
Seeding the various social networks with automated RSS feeds allows a blog entry to be gain human attention immediately.
Managing social sites started years ago as big search always valued content. Along came blogs and much content could be posted by many real and diverse human beings. These blog sites started to garner big traffic. Page ranks were raised because of the attention and back-linking by members of the blogs. These were the precursors to the social blogs we see today. The social blogs were gaining page rank from the content. Content was rewarded in page rank. This has changed however because of fear of the capitalists among us that would sell back-links.
Some time early circa ’07, Google having valued the sites it deemed authoritative, found that big page rank meant that these sites could sell links to other sites for profit. Google put a whammy on this by cutting the page rank in half on many good quality sites. Google did not necessarily penalize these sites in its SERPS. This has brought us to the conclusion that page-rank is only part of the picture and highly overrated. The human element is what search has needed and is required for quality results.
Social networking is harder to pinpoint as to prospective success in human interaction. This is the measure that big search has realized it must harness. Social networking is in its infancy and it will grow. Google has endeavored to create its own social networking version called “Buzz,” but it is not catching on.
One of the big mistakes of Google’s Buzz and a few others is to endeavor to link up with the email address book of clients. This is not a good way of developing clientele. People use email for private & business correspondence. Many issues or opinions or likes and dislikes are not desirable to become fodder for the associates that populate the address books of the millions of folks that use the social sites. A degree of anonymity is desirable for a lot of people that don’t want potential employers or enemies perusing through their private aspirations or expressed interests.
The desire for privacy will undoubtedly lead to some abilities of spammers to capitalize on social network sites, but the intricacies of the sign-up processes are holding down the amount of automated spamming. Social networking is the game that is on the top of the charts and the big search engine companies are trying to harness the power, but it is abundantly clear that these sites may actually threaten big search engines. As these sites grow in popularity, they become the doorway to search, rather than a participant in the SERPS, which is where search engines would like to keep them. All of this means more opportunity for all of us as the internet grows. Gaining exposure in the social networking sites is the new horizon to be exploited.
We upload and seed content related to Google Video, Youtube videos and RSS feeds. The use of the video has been a great way to get seen by millions of people if your video goes viral. It is all because of the measure of human interaction that search is challenged to meet the demand for quality. Old SEO practices are also challenged as search must deliver better quality. Standard and ethical SEO practices will continue to be very effective in many regional and industry specific arenas. Not all topics are red hot for discussion but must be available when requested. Let an expert evaluate your industry’s position relative to today’s evolving digital networks.
Stay abreast of the changing Social Site Networks without forsaking your roots. SEO works and with proper care, your site can be on top of the SERPS.
Contact us today for a free SEO evaluation by a human being.
We will get you noticed!
Google Cleansing its Adwords Advertisers
March 5, 2010
Google is working hard on improving its search as the company looks over its corporate shoulder at the Bing-Yahoo partnership. In 2011, the partnership of Bing and Yahoo will deliver a combined pay-per-click under one roof. This coming event along with the voiced promises to clean up SERPS makes for a threat for Google’s Adwords.
That is, of course, if Google sets by and does nothing to cleanse itself of the cancer of organic SERPS, the black hats that endeavor to capitalize on the giant’s achievements. Google is using its time and resources wisely, as it seems that the SERPS are more relative and free of spam from the Adwords abusers. Reports from the field claim that Google has shut down over 80,000 Adwords accounts and it is still moving to rid itself of the abusers of it services. The impetus is the heat from Bing and Yahoo and the promise for viable and organic results.
The rules are being tightened and this is a period of confusion for many Adword users. Some of these customers of Google are moving over to Yahoo for the time being so that they can shake off the confusion Google has caused by acting so swiftly and erratically.
There is no current alternative to the traffic Google can provide for pay-per-click advertisers. Yahoo and Bing are working on their own SERPS and there are some strange results turning up at both of these smaller companies. Google is on the top as far as its organic results and has bounced back from the scourge of the manipulators. Google is right on top of the social sites and this means opportunity for the savvy SEO professional.
Google is so far ahead that its competitors seem hard pressed to compete in a similar business model of free search. Google has the resources and the business intellect in leadership to fix what was broken. Basically, it would take a major breakdown for Google to be beaten out by the Yahoo-Bing partnership.
As long as free search is expected and utilized, the world of SEO has much work to do. The changing world of search means that you should keep your website alive and fresh and that you keep up with the changing times.
Cleansing the SERPS makes way for Niches
March 5, 2010
With growth, product intricacies and increasing consumer awareness, the information afforded by the internet is being managed very proficiently by the search engines. Not only is it the demand of the consumers but of business that drives free search in its quest to capitalize on the advertising dollars.
Note: As often stated, we date these articles because of the ever changing nature of our business and for the ease of our readers in searching for current information.
Currently Google has risen to the needs of the public in ridding itself of spammers and black hats. We have been very vocal regarding our disdain for the clutter interleaved within big search results. Bing and Yahoo are also following their own brand of cleansing. This all will be explained in another post.
The niches that have continued to evolve in the marketplace tends to force the internet indexing to become more sophisticated as growth and refining force more resources to be employed to make the information quest for the public easier. The cleansing of the SERPS has resulted in a new quality level beginning to surface. On Bing, Yahoo and Google a certain effort is being expended right now to perfect the SERPS, with Google leading the way with its unrivaled war chest. The perceived war against black hat activity has been theorized and pondered but it is obviously a very real and tangible effort.
Business Niches and Search Engine Niches
Your particular business niche may be geographical, product related within an industry, socio-economic, trend related, or unique in more ways than can be enumerated. The traditional business laws that apply for company size, available advertising revenue being related as to potential for growth, have never been less valid for the savvy internet marketer. There is tremendous opportunity for the business owner that recognizes it and makes the clever decisions to harness what is an unprecedented place in history for success. The niche market is the result of growth, sophistication of an informed public and modern technology. Specialization in the marketplace may seem like a burgeoning obstacle to some defeatists in the business world. The success you desire must be recognized first as opportunity. If you see opportunity, you will succeed.
Your niche may represent a part of your business as a given business may cater to several niche markets. No other industry has changed to meet the shifting business niche markets than internet search. The rewards have been great for those that have followed the predictable search marketplace. Others have fallen by the wayside never having realized what they have missed.
Geographical search has always been an area for improvement for the indexers of data. As we witness the slow death of the traditional advertising mediums such as the Yellow Pages, it is apparent that search engines have become adept at answering the call for local search. The business niche, however has been refined much more than to just a given area of coverage
The specificity of your product or service offerings may attract a very specific market. The niche market of any super-special or sub-industry offering can only survive if it has clients that number in the amount required to sustain viability of the venture. This is why many niche markets where the successes arise out of an existing industry are so common. The risk factor is less for a company that branches laterally, rather than to launch vertically which increases costs and risks.
Specialization within your website, or a separate website devoted to the niche may also be necessary in order to answer the need in the marketplace. Answering the competitors with a specific sub-directory on an existing website often makes perfect sense. The age of specialization in this post-modern world warrants a careful application of not only of available marketing dollars, but the special niches where they should be devoted for successful growth. Analyzing competitor activity gives the business owner ideas, not only on what to do in a counter assault effort, but in the market perception of the another contender. This information should be carefully weighed against the knowledge afforded by an internet and business savvy advertising professional for the results desired. A mere following your opponent may only afford very marginal results. Flanking your opponent by using the experience of an internet professional will capture more of the market than tilling the old soil already trodden upon.
Your business should not be spending money on with an “advertising order-taker.” Your ideas alone may not be enough to get the results you desire. Would you not rather deal with a mature business consultant that conducts the market research that is required for success in the marketplace? In an ever-increasing marketplace of specialization and change, make sure you are made aware of all facets of every measure taken on your behalf. You do not want to waste your company’s resources on the same recipe that returns the same marginal results year after year.
Personal Info Saved by GoogleSearch engines must continue to deliver organic results for free, if they are to continue operating under the current business model. Google’s annual gross return on internet advertising is reportedly around 12 billion dollars, so the current model is working. The current model is working but it is paradoxically and currently, broken. Monetarily the current model is working, but change is in the air. The change is to eradicate or limit the very astute enemies of organic search from access to free search. The perceived incestuous relationship between the drive for organic results being at odds with internet advertising, which is what fuels the fire, is a natural conclusion. This would in reality, kill search, so big search walks the tightrope of big success over the SERPS that are often full of garbage. “Real people search on real topics.” |
|
| “Black Hats,” as they are known are involved in a constant endeavor to trick the search engines and obtain free traffic. These tricks are frowned upon by the search engine companies for good reason. Real people search on real topics. Real people want goods and services and the spam artisans want to gain income from fluff offerings. An entire industry centers on how to make it rich by tricking the search engines.
With search moving into social networking and real time crawling, the search industry faces expending monumental resources toward the increased demand. Google, the largest, with 60% world wide market share, continually researches new product lines and models to increase its market diversity laterally. Google is set on its current search model so as the big machine goes, so will the others. Backlinks and the development of them is still viable and becoming less dominant in search. Spammers have all but killed the use of meta tags by search. Backlinks have been the focus of much activity as the Black Hats have exploited them so much that the search engines must become more aggressive in fighting their efforts. Meta’s are no longer even crawled by the major players in search. Search has no other alternative but to harness human activity to enable accurate site viability. Google will continue to log personal information to enable truly organic SERPS. “…database that holds information on every search ever done…”Under fire for its massive database that holds information on every search ever done on Google, the company maintains its non-threatening appearance with company voices stating publicly that Google only uses its data to improve its search offerings. The company also states that it only keeps specific data on location and IP addresses for a period of a several years. The public generally trusts Google as use of the information databases for direct profit would mean the general public would see Google with horns over its colorful logo. The company’s image would go into scorn and Google would be no more. The fragility of the company is very apparent to the management and image is everything to Google. “….be careful what you search for….”It is government that scares people. Google is summoned to court thousands of times a year to testify regarding search data. The company fights many of these incidences. It is the government that people fear may one day gain control of Google’s data. If Google fails, the databases may be up for grabs and the thought of government opening up the data of searches made by American citizens is a terrifying thought to some folks. So, the motto to live by on the internet is to be careful what you search for and realize as a website owner that no fast tricks lead to permanent acceptance on the SERPS. The human element will be the deciding factor. |
|
Google Superbowl Ad – A Dig at China? Feb. 8, 2110
Google, amongst 56 other advertisers ran advertising during the Superbowl 2110. Google’s ad was produced in house, not complicated and was dubbed “Parisian Love.” It highlighted simple search engine queries on by an apparent traveler contemplating all things French from education in Paris, churches in Paris, French women and cafés and chocolate in Paris. The ad ends with the search query “How to assemble a crib.” It was called “brilliant by some because it simply showed off many of the capabilities of Google. What I wanted to know was if anyone really cared.
Is Google out of touch with America? Probably so, but the ad seems to court advertising from abroad. Google certainly was not trying to impress American small businesses and those from the political right with an ad pertaining to all things French. It would not seem to appeal to a large swath of the collegiate aged youth, or their parents, at a time when spending on education is down.
| Google is probably out of touch with its 12 billion dollar annual revenue Adwords program that represents 97% of its annual gross receipts. Google is doing well despite the economic situation for businesses across the country. Google is forward thinking and makes moves to develop business opportunities and seems to have an unlimited budget for such enterprises. Google is developing all sorts of new and potential ways to use technology.
Google has mailed out bar code stickers to businesses for application to the storefront windows. These bar codes named Q Bar’s are intended for use with a handheld scanner or cell phone. When a Google enabled Nexus phone user scans a Q Bar, all sorts of information will be retrieved about the company. Google is working on a program called “Android,” a database where a phone application can be used to send a picture taken by a phone to Google and retrieve data regarding a certain area or tourist attraction. Google is forward thinking so why not believe that the expenditure of over 5 million dollars for a minute of America’s Superbowl experience was done for something in the future? Google is working hard not to allow Microsoft’ Bing take any of its market share. Bing has been advertising in Prime Time regarding its “decision search.” Both of these ad campaigns are for the purpose of attracting advertisers. Take a look at the advertisements from a marketing standpoint. Google = Out of touch, Microsoft = Less out of touch. Would Google rub a little salt in the Chinese wounds in order to create a little jealousy?Google is a worldwide company and America represents only part of the business. One thing no one has theorized to date is that Google, being embroiled in a Chinese battle for a government demand censoring search, is opposed to the Chinese government’s position. France is a thorn in China’s side with its support of Tibet. Would Google rub a little salt in the Chinese wounds in order to create a little jealousy? Who knows what power and money will cause in this world? At any rate, these search giants will go nowhere without the advertising revenue and each is poised to rip at the other’s hold on the internet, with Google having much more to loose. |
||
| Note: Things are changing and subsequent posts reflect more current conditions.
Adwords, Adsense and the current domination of these services on Google provides for the potential incestuous relationship between SERPS and publishers, or the appearance thereof. The appearances and the possibilities of favored results for publishers is the least Google has to worry about in this crazy world of website automation. How many times have you searched for something on the internet only to be led to sites that were empty of content but contained many links to other sites full of worthless stuff? What does a reasonable person do? They change search engines! This is the risk Google is running if it cannot weed out the worthless sites from its SERPS. |
|
| Even in the SEO world, a site owner that is a winner in the national or global SERPS on the search term “SEO,” which is highly competitive, finds that working an advertising campaign can be more lucrative than SEO itself. This reality tends to water down the organic results and the real people that frequent Google will begin to fall away in favor of another search engine.
Adwords are advertisements paid by the click and posted on paid publisher’s in the Adsense program. Adword ads also show up on the SERPS. When Google first unveiled its Adsense program, new frontiers were opened for entrepreneurs. Site owners actually would list tons of Adsense on their sites. The oddity that followed were those that actually bought into Adwords to bolster their site’s traffic. There were others that thought that they could put up sites and buy Adsense and that Adwords would pay for venture. Arbitrage - Is this not what Google does? Arbitrage according to Wiki: In economics and finance, arbitrage is the practice of taking advantage of a price differential between two or more markets. Google Adwords are taken out for a cheaply bid pay-per-click. The Adwords point to a page that is loaded with Adsense ads that when clicked, yield higher paid click rates. This scheme is legal but damaging to the quality of the internet. A more in depth article on these tricks is located here: Google Adsense the good the bad and the ugly. There are actually email campaigns and sites devoted to “educating” the public for a price, of course, as to how to go about exploiting the search engines and getting rich doing so. The paragraph above describes something akin to perpetual motion which is physically impossible. The only variables are for existing sites, their existing traffic and the attractiveness of keywords associated with the site. As for SEO, it is one of the most frequented terms by search engines. SEO is a necessary element and especially for the tricksters out there. There are all sorts of tricks employed on the internet. The banning of sites from the search engines would bring down the pay-per-click industry that Google thrives upon. These sites are generally without much merit as far as original content. The pay-per-click sites are the worst offenders. Organic results are adversely affected in the SERPS. Without a policing of the problem, search will see major changes in the future. We can be sure this problem will not go unanswered. It is the money that fuels the beast and pay-per-click provides revenue. It is however, losing steam. There is massive click fraud going on also and many quality sites have gotten away from Google’s Adwords program altogether in favor of SEO. Some companies swear by Adwords. The program is a repoted 12 billion dollar annual revenue generator so it is not going anywhere soon. We may continue to see bigger sites on the web moving away from Google’s Adsense, as visitors are turned off by the Google ads. There is also a grumbling from publishers that Google’s pay schedule is minimal and others are not paid at all and dropped from the program. The search engine companies employ full time people to fight the tricksters and the spammers and the phonies that threaten the organic results that attract real internet buyers. There will be further measures employed to screen out the worthless sites on the internet and the SEO tricksters will fall from sight on the SERPS. If not policed, search will see big changes from the real people that surf the web. Indiscriminate inclusion of Adsense and Adwords cause SERPS to be polluted with bad results and Google must police the indexed sites that are SEO optimized to the maximum but devoid of content and worthless to the end user. |
|
SEO – A Way Around the Sandbox Effect
March 11, 2010 in Philadelphia SEO, SEO - Google News & Commentary, SEO - news, SEO - Search News you can use, SEO Advice, SEO Articles Submission SEO | Tags: design, Effect, NJ, Pa, Philadelphia, Princeton SEO, sandbox, seo, website | 3 comments
A Way Around the Sandbox Effect
The sandbox effect has been written about by myself and many others that have followed it since ’03-’04 by many in the SEO profession. This filtering out of new sites that are “un-trusted” by the search engines are relegated to sit in obscurity until they can be verified and let out into the SERPS (search engine page results). This is a period of time that is an average of six months and can be longer or shorter according to unknown criteria employed by the search engines.
In the public service I want to comment on my successes of late in getting new sites broken out and noticed, crawled and placed in the SERPS. There are several methods I have used to do this and it is working quite effectively. Below are elements that aid in this effort and will work well to get you noticed fast. I will expound upon them after listing them below.
1. Google Webmaster Tools are essential in getting you listed on a new site on the big kahoona. You should have an existing Webmaster Tool Account with another site that is already listed.
2. A very active Blog is most effective. By active, I mean that you are posting well written articles that contain careful keyword usage. The Blog/Website should be carefully crafted with in-page optimization and cross linking for exciting ping-backs.
3. Social network submission on a daily basis for approximately a week with crafty title tags. Automate your social submissions so that all is done for you so that you can continue your written barrage of daily written articles regarding your business.
4. Write professionally for a living. Your payoff will be amazing if you can produce interesting copy about your company or offering. Do not worry about those that will try to mimic what you do. Be a trend setter not a follower.
5. Submit to smaller search engines along with the big ones.
The above four elements sound so simple to do but they are a challenge to some folks. Google Webmaster Tools is a way to get your site trusted if you already own a website. You can get noticed very quickly. Google will not always list your site as being indexed right away but who cares as long as you get into the SERPS, you will have something with which you can begin to improve upon.
A Blog is a way to get your site noticed quickly with a lot of pages. Quantity is very important because you will not go unnoticed. Your site will achieve what all the lazy black hats want for their sites but are now having trouble doing. There is no substitute for site copy and this is demonstrated by all of the angst I feel when my work is plagiarized. Content is the key to your success.
You need to write like a journalist or you need to hire a writer that can produce good clean and interesting site copy on a daily basis. This is war and the better writers are going to prevail in this battle. I received an email yesterday from a black hat offering software that “legally” scrapes content and automatically posts it on websites. The black hats are scrambling for content because it works. Links are secondary and Google is cracking down on the link spammers even having offered a new snitch program to help them in this regard.
Social networks are the new avenue to get listed. These sites are networked and everybody is using them. You can automate your social submissions so that your new articles are automatically posted on them. If you hand submit, pay close attention to the “title” tag as you want a unique tag for every submission and you want it to be relative to the keywords usage within your article and you want your pages to be titled along with your site at the biggest audience.
While big search is busy filtering out new sites, a large amount of the smaller search engines are taking listings and posting them immediately. Use this avenue to GET NOTICED!
-Bob W