Toronto SEO Firm
Search Engine Optimization Marketing Services

March 31, 2009 - Ontario, Canada

Top URL search, the well known bid web directory has reached a milestone this week - topping sales of one thousand dollars. This uniquely styled web directory was launched in 2007 at the height of the directory market. Although Google has penalized the home page by removing it’s visible page rank this web directory has remained popular because of it’s elegant but simple styling and as a unique resource containing web directory listings and articles.

Owner, Mark Russoni also commented on the achievement, “We came to market with a unique offer and the industry responded positively giving us the longevity we currently enjoy in an segment of the market that has come under a lot of pressure.

As background, the web directory industry exploded in 2007 with well over ten thousand new directories being created. Because of this boom many unscrupulous companies got involved and low quality directories began to dominate the industry. Over the past two years we have seen a huge retreat with thousands of directories going out-of-business. This consolidation is expected to continue for this year.

This myth has been around for as long as I have been involved with SEO, so about 8 years.  I recently replied to a thread on DigitalPoint forums concerning this myth.  The original poster mentioned that they recently bought a domain name and a hosting package and the hosting company was offering them a fantastic deal of 50% off search engine submission.  The offer read something like this:

For a limited time receive 50% off the regular price of search engine submission for SEO, we submit to 13 of the top search engines to get  your website indexed quickly.  Regular price is $99.99 - sale price is only $49.99.

My response was that not only is search engine submission unnecessary but I think it is a ‘red flag’ for a company that does not have a clue what SEO actually is.  It seems Rand over at SEOmoz agree because he is redoing Beginner’s Guide to Search Engine Optimization over there and he states:

Since 2001-2, search engine submission has not only not been required, but is actually virtually useless. The engines have all publicly noted that they rarely use the “submission” URL lists, and that the best practice is to earn links from other sites, as this will expose the engines to your content naturally.

So be careful and don’t waste you money on useless services.

A blog post over at www.marketingpilgrim.com caught my eye because it is something I have been pondering for a while now.  It seems big business is having a really hard time ranking for imporant keywords (including their own names and brands).  One quote in particular seemed to sum up the problem;

“the pace of change and implementation for big companies is often slow or non-existent. In addition, there are so many people / departments that have some ownership stake in the company site that it can take a committee meeting to decide the next time the committee meets to set a committee meeting.”

I think there are some additional problems with some of the traditional marketing folks being more than a little afraid of looking ‘old’ by bringing in hot-shot SEO folks.  But competition should force these changes over the next few years and will hopefully keep us SEO’s busy as bee’s.