Hi Everyone,

As Old Man Winter works his magic, time keeps ticking, which means the early bird registration deadline for Small Business Marketing Unleashed is quickly approaching! March 15 will be here before we know it and spots are filling up for our limited-attendance conference. Come party, play and of course, learn Search Engine Guide style. See you in Houston!

Rachel Phillips

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Sage is on the road this week so no videos.

In response to The Art of Creating a Post That Draws Traffic and Links to Your Blog

"The blog posts that have received the most play from me are almost always a mystery to me. Meaning, I write something and think it's going to be the Best.Post.Ever, and nothing happens. Then, I write something and some dozen or more folks find something of resonance, and we're off to the races."

"My *only* little repeatable secret is that I try my hardest to put something "useful" in every post. I call them "idea handles" and that means things you can pick up and take with you and use. Feels to me that these posts are the ones that do the best for me."

"Never EVER when I try to draw artificial interest (and by that, I mean beg for sphinns, stumbles, diggs, and the like) does it ever work for me. Not sure why. I mean, when I've hit the digg front page, it hasn't been bad, but it's always a spike with zero longer term impact."

"Thanks for the post. It got me thinking."

"Hello from super rainy Boston."

Chris Brogan
ChrisBrogan.com

"Any useful post has a chance to make it big. The key is to make sure enough people hear about it in the first place in order to give it the push needed to make it big. Sometimes you hit lucky and someone of note notices you and gives you a big push."

Tom Beaton
Technogumption

In response to 6 Tips for Blogging in 2008

"Thanks for the reminder to revisit popular topics to keep the traffic coming back and using serial post to keep them coming back and back again."

writeonbro
Brother to Brother

In response to Do Directory Submissions Still Hold Any Value?

"Thanks for these well put points."

"I think the real basis of the whole article can be summed up simply by saying: 'Look for quality links.'"

"As you said before, it's not a case of gaining link popularity all the time, sometimes you can actually gain traffic from the link - which is what Google keep punting - if it is a good quality link, it's well worth it."

"As you have listed above, there is no point in submitting to directories that aren't indexed, that don't send traffic or that have the NOFOLLOW on everything. The point is that you need to have a strategy and work with that. Sometimes you want the "link juice" other times the traffic."

"I am a big fan of using directories with new sites, often you can link to specific deep pages and this helps index the whole site that much quicker."

Robert
Prop Data

"Very nice article David! I think webmasters are going to find that long established directories are still offering value in most of their topics and are continually working to get more and deeper topics cached."

"One directory I am affiliated with has 1.9 million cached pages in Google and over 6 million in Yahoo but it has taken years of work to get it to this point."

"The advice you gave regarding what to look for in a directory is very sound advice and basically what I have recommended for quite some time."

"There are also a lot of scams and fraud related to directories and directory submission services roving the internet that inexperienced webmasters need to be aware of and watch out for."

WoW Website Directory
Bruce Stone

"I couldn't agree more that mass submission is a complete waste of time as at least 98% of them do nothing except stroke the ego of their respective owners. But this shouldn't be seen as universal, as there are indeed a few diamonds in the rough out there that will if not now then later provide v.f.m. (Value for money)."

"The one good thing about the self implosion of the directory scene as it stands is it made companies like mine stand up and take stock of what is needed, and without linkbaiting we've decided the only way to win back SEO experts approval and confidence is to basically rebuild from the ground up learning on others mistakes."

"Directories aren't dead, they are just in a cocoon period where only the strongest will come through this rebirth."

Jamie
CantUfind.com

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More than just bid management, Adapt SEM helps you:

• research competitors
• track progress
• test & optimize ads

Become a more effective paid search manager. Register today!

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