For some internet marketers, web directories is not something they would have preferred if only they are given a choice. But without a doubt, web directories are sure-fire ways of driving website traffic.

These directories are effective ways of building PR (page rank) that helps websites get good rankings in the Google search engine. Google uses page ranks to grade the results based from the searches that visitors are making. Having a higher PR is having a better listing compared with others.

PR are based on the backlinks that you have and its quality. So it follows that the more backlinks you have, the higher your PR will be. You will also get better rankings.

This is the essence behind using web directories and linking. Once these combination have worked successfully, you can expect an increase in your website traffic.

To get a list of web directories, all you have to do is type in the keyword in the search engine. Then, all you need to do is choose from among the number of lists given.

Linking like crazy to other websites.

Ok so maybe submitting links is not really an easy task. Since there are not many computer-generated linking technologies yet, you have to submit them manually. But if you think of the benefits you will be getting from these links, it will be worth all the trouble.

Having a good content is important in making genuine backlinks.

There are two effective ways of doing this:

First, is the use of media or downloads. It is a fact that majority of website visitors are very much inclined to downloading and media. In addition, many people welcome them as something different from the usual wordings they encounter most of the time.

You will notice that once you have created a number of these on your site, the number of websites traffic you are getting will double. People are likely to come back to check on if updates to the media that you have on your site.

The second one is article writing. The good thing about articles is that you can post them to as many sites as you can, as long as their theme is related to yours. This way, you can have your backlinks spread all over the Internet through the resource box placed at the end of each article. With your articles, you get to reach more consumers that you cannot normally do if your article is only posted on your site.

Besides, articles are well-loved by search engines. Provide them with quality contents and you are sure to be read by these engines.

Giving more of your attention to search engines.

Search engines plays an important part for all internet marketers. They are a great way of driving website traffic. Google rankings are depending heavily on the backlinks used and the page ranks of each sites.

Going to forums or discussion pages.

This is a way of getting your message out while generating website traffic in the process. Just like web directories, you can just type in the keywords on the search engines to get a list of forums you can join.

You may have noticed that some people posts questions on forums. If you find that they are somehow related to your topic, fell free to answer the query being asked.

To register in forums, put in your URL. On the signature part, put a short description about your website. If you are planning on posting regularly to these forums, you can also change signatures to display the development happening on your website.

If you maintain your posts on a regular basis, you can have a steady flow of website traffic.

These are just some of the many ways you can do to be able to drive traffic to your website. There will always be new and easier ways of doing this. But for now, these are the ones being widely used. They also have proven their usefulness in the online marketing world.

Keep on using these strategies in order to maintain your website traffic. You can always come up with your own also.

Before you set up shop on the internet, you need to find a home… page. The domain name (www.yourname.com) becomes like your physical address. It’s a big pain to pick up and move, so you want to choose the right name at the outset. Here are some tips and tools for finding your new web home.

First, let’s talk about the extension. This is the final few letters of a domain name. .COM, .NET, and .ORG are the big three. (Actually, those three are called Top-Level Domains or TLD) Originally, they stood for Commercial (business), Network (like an internet provider), and Organization (non-profit) but due to mixed use and the real-estate value of names, those meanings have basically fallen to the wayside. Ideally you want to find a .COM name. In the minds of your customers, it’s the standard. If they don’t know your website, the first thing they will guess is yourcompany.com. Even if you have a .NET domain on your business card, there’s a good chance of people typing in .COM first, just by habit. It’s worth getting a different .COM domain name rather than settling for a .NET. (Although, at about $8 per year, I encourage you to pick up multiple variations of your domain name)

The other domain extension you may consider is a country code. Every country in the world has its own domain extension. I have a .CA domain for Canada. You’ve also likely visited a .CO.UK for a site in the United Kingdom. I don’t recommend going outside your own country for a domain (to avoid confusion) but certainly check out the options.

Now comes the task of finding a domain name that is available! Chances are, the domain you really want (RyanIsCool.com) is already gone, and you need to do some creative adaptation to find a match. There are two tools I use in the hunt for a new domain. Hop on the internet and go to http://www.whois.sc/ . They offer a tool called the Name Spinner. When I type in a couple words like “your company” it tells me the availability of domain names using those words. (While yourcompany.com is taken, it offers suggestions like shopyourcompany.com and yourboxcompany.com… both of which are available) If you want to get serious, click on the next tab for the Domain Explorer. This offers a more advanced search, and more results.

The other tool I mentioned will save you when you hit a dead end on finding a good domain. It’s the new version of an old book… http://www.thesaurus.com/ ! You can find other related words to use in your search for an available domain name, and perhaps stumble upon a better name that you had to begin with.

Myth #1: The Higher Your Google PageRank (PR), the Higher You’ll be in the Search Results Listing

This myth is frequent, and is the source of many complaints. People often notice that a site with a lower PageRank than theirs is listed above them, and get upset. While pages with a higher PageRank do tend to rank better, it is perfectly normal for a site to appear higher in the results listings even though it has a lower PageRank than competing pages.

To explain this concept without going into too much technical detail, it is best to think of PageRank as being comprised of two different values. One value, which we’ll call “General PageRank” is nothing more than the weighting given to the links on your page. This is also the value shown in the Google Toolbar. This value is used to calculate the weighting of the links leaving your page, not your search position.

The other value we’ll call “Specific PageRank.” You see, if PageRank equated to search engine results rank then Yahoo, the site with the highest PR, would be listed #1 for every search result. Obviously, that wouldn’t be useful, so what Google does is examine the context of your incoming links, and only those links that relate to the specific keyword being searched on will help you achieve a higher ranking for that keyword. It’s very possible for a site with a lower PageRank to in fact have more on-topic incoming links than a site with a higher PageRank, in which case the site with a lower PageRank will be listed above its competitor in the search results for that term.

PageRank aside, there are also other factors that contribute Google search results — though PageRank remains the dominant one.

Myth #2: The Google Toolbar will List Your Actual PageRank

When Google created their toolbar it was a boon for many Webmasters as this was the first time we got to see any value related to our PageRank. However, the toolbar has also caused some confusion.

The toolbar does not show your actual PageRank, only an approximation of it. It gives you an integer rank on a scale from 1-10. We do not know exactly what the various integers correspond to, but we’re sure that their curve is similar to an exponential curve with each new “plateau” being harder to reach than the last. I have personally done some research into this, and so far the results point to an exponential base of 4. So a PR of 6 is 4 times as difficult to attain as a PR of 5.

The exponential base is important because it illustrates how broad a range of pages can be assigned a particular PR value. The difference between a high PR of 6, and a low PR of 6, could be hundreds or thousands of links. So if your PR as reported by the toolbar increases or drops, it’s important to remember that it could be the result of a small change, or a large change. Additionally, it’s possible to lose or gain links and see no change in your reported PageRank.

The other issue with the toolbar has to do with the fact that sometimes the PageRank it displays is only a guess. People will often notice pages on Geocities or another free hosting provider having a high PageRank. This is because when Google hasn’t spidered a page, but has spidered the root domain, the toolbar will guess a PageRank based on the value of the root domain. Therefor it’s common to see pages on Geocities with a PR of 6 or 7. The PageRank does not equate in any way to a high Google listing, in fact in this case it indicates the opposite: that the page isn’t even in Google. Once Google spiders the page, it will be assigned a more appropriate (and usually lower) PageRank.

Myth # 3: PageRank is a Value Based on the Number of Incoming Links to Your Site

This myth is a frequent source of incorrect assumptions about Google. People will often see that a site with fewer incoming links than their own site has a higher PageRank, and assume that PageRank is not based on incoming links.

The fact is that PageRank is based on incoming links, but not just on the number of them. Instead PageRank is based on the value of your incoming links. To find the value of an incoming link look at the PR of the source page, and divide it by the number of links on that page. It’s very possible to get a PR of 6 or 7 from only a handful of incoming links if your links are “weighty” enough.

Also remember that for PageRank calculations every page is an island. Google does not calculate PageRank on a site-wide basis — so internal links between your pages do count. This is very important, as instituting a proper structure for your internal links can drastically improve your rankings.

Myth # 4: Searching for Incoming Links on Google Using “link:” will Show you all Your Backwards Links

Similar to Myth #3, people will sometimes look for backwards links to a site on Google and fine none, but if the site does have a PR listed and it is in Google’s cache, they know that the toolbar isn’t just guessing.

The reason for this is that Google does not list all the links that it knows about, only those that contribute above a certain amount of PageRank. This is especially evident in a brand new site. By default, all pages in Google have a minimum PR. So even a page without any incoming links has a PR value, albeit a small one. If you have a brand new site with 20 or 30 pages, all of which Google has spidered, but you have no incoming links from other sites, then your pages will still have a PageRank resulting from these internal links. As your home page is likely linked to from every page on your site, it might even get a PageRank of up to 1 or 2 from all these little boosts. However, in this situation searching for incoming links will likely yield 0 results.

You can also see this happening on pages that have been around for awhile. For instance, this page has 0 incoming links listed in Google, yet it has a PageRank of 3. We can see that Google has spidered it by checking its cache, so the PageRank is not a guess. We also know that Google has spidered this page, again by checking its cache. Therefore, we can be sure that Google knows of at least 1 link to the page in question, both by its listed PR, and the fact that Google has spidered a page that links to it.

However, if you look at the DMOZ.org page with the Google Toolbar installed, you’ll notice the page has a PR of 0, which is very low. Furthermore, if you count the number of links on the page, you’ll notice it has over 20. So you’re dividing a very low PR among over 20 links. Thus each link carries very little weight, so Google doesn’t list these links when you search for them. However, Google does count the links, which is why the page in question has a PR listed.

It’s very important to remember how Google lists incoming links. Often, people see their number of incoming links drop, and they think they have lost those links. In reality, the linking page could have lost some weight and consequentially, the links might have dropped below the value threshold that’s required in order for links to be listed. Or the linking page could have added more links, causing each link’s share of the weight to be lower, and again causing the link to drop below the value threshold. In either case the link is still counted, it just isn’t listed.

Why does Google do this? Perhaps the answer has to do with technical limitations. If the average number of links per page is 20 then Google would have to deal with over 60 billion links, which might create an index that was too large to be publicly searchable.