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Does Directory Submission Still Work? Get Links Pro Review

by Melvin · Dec 10, 2011

Directory submission used to be one of the more popular link building techniques that people used to boost their search rankings. Back then, doing submissions was a must. However these days, many SEO experts seem to conclude that doing submissions isn’t worth it anymore. But is it really the case?

Well to help us answer that, let’s review Get Links Pro first, a company that does manual directory submissions and also other link building methods.

Get Links Pro Review

As mentioned above, Get Links Pro provides manual directory submissions and other link building services like blog comments, do-follow profile links, article submissions, local citations and etc.

Get Links Pro’s services start at $8 for 50 Social Bookmarks package and go up to $200 for 2000 Directory Submission package. They also provide a monthly type of directory package which costs a walking $25 for 250 monthly directory submissions. The owner told me that this monthly package was more popular than the other ones.

Overall, most of the categories are pretty flexible in which it allows you to choose from a small package up to a big package.

Aside from this, they also provide a combination of all of their services and this falls into their link building services. For this, they combined 5 different types of methods which help ensure diversity in link building profile. For example their ‘fantastic package’ provides 100 directory submissions, 50 article submissions, 15 profile links and 5 dofollow comments at an affordable price of $39. The higher end of these combinations is called the ‘Incredible Package’ which costs $1,455.

If you decide to go this route, I would suggest picking what’s suitable for you for the immediate moment. They have 9 different combinations for the link building service that you can choose from so if you’re just a small startup then obviously the cheaper one could work well for you. This is also ideal since links are coming from multiple sources which mean it’s much more diversified and less spammy.

Here is a screenshot of some of their link building packages:

Get Links Pro Website

If you arrive at Get Links Pro website, you can see that it’s a pretty simple and neat site. The navigation is good although it could be a bit confusing at the start. For example, you would initially think that they only do manual directory submissions since it’s the primary description on their site. Also, I think some packages could be named better like a ‘fantastic package’ for instance could be named as a ‘beginner package’ or anything that describes it better.

Another thing worth-noting is that most of their category-specific packages are not done efficiently (in my opinion). You will have to scan through a long generic pack of text before you can see the pricing and the content of the package. I definitely think that the pricing and packages should be the first thing seen when someone goes in there. The text can then come below that (like their link building services page. 😉 ). Lastly, I don’t think people would want to read a long text so it probably wouldn’t harm if they decrease the text, and get straight to the point.

Support and Other Miscelllaneous Stuff

As far as support, I think they’re just doing it fine as they have 5 “I’m online” live chats. Yes 5 different live chats. Seriously I’ve never seen any service or website that lists 5 different live chats that you could talk to so as long as these chats are for real, then I think it’s a big plus on their part.

Aside from that, I think everything is fine on their end. They have lots of pages (FAQ’s, About, Affiliates, etc.) so if you really want to know them more and the services that they provide, you can definitely spend some time reading about them first. Lastly, I think the URL structure on some of the pages is quite funny as it seems to be ‘rerouting’ some pages to a temporary link or something. A good example would be clicking on their logo (i.e. has some index.php?’parameters’ instead of just the main index url).

Conclusion

So is it still worth spending money on manual submissions? Specifically companies like Get Links Pro? My personal opinion is that directory submissions are still useful and if done correctly, it can still create a diversified link profile that can rank you well for certain key terms. In fact, I know some people that rely on this alone in getting their niche sites up in the search engines. But again, submissions must be done correctly and I don’t think there’s anything better than manual submissions like what Get Links Pro does.

So if you want to get ranked and you don’t have time to do it yourself, check out Get Links Pro. I’m sure there would be a package there that would suit your needs.

Competitive Local Searching. GeoEdge Review

by Melvin · Oct 18, 2011

This is a paid review. If you’re interested in having your product/website reviewed, kindly see our packages here.

Update: In this review, GeoEdge was compared to an outdated version of GeoSurf. The version of GeoSurf that I reviewed was version 3.0 which is now an outdated version according to them.

Viewing websites in different geographic locations has many uses. An “obvious” use is for us, online marketers who are doing research for the market that we’re targeting. Another use is for SEO’s running optimization campaigns for their clients or even for themselves. Also, we have those affiliate marketers that use pay-per-click on search engines. They want to know how their ad is performing and if it shows often. Lastly, we have these other group of people who are monitoring their brand throughout different locations and seeing if their campaigns are being ran as planned. Actually, surfing websites locally has almost unlimited uses.

The use of tools that will do all of this is starting to become a necessity. Sure, we have all those ‘free’ web proxies that are available ever since but how do we know they’re not infecting our system with all those malwares and viruses? How do we know they’re really reliable? Perhaps the reason why they’re free is because they’re not really delivering the goods.

Last month I talked about GeoSurf and how it differs from the rest by instead providing a toolbar for doing local searches. For this month, I’ll be reviewing a somehow similar service called GeoEdge.

What is GeoEdge?

GeoEdge, as a whole, is a company that specializes in creating technologies in the field of online media and specifically geo-location (targeting). Their global visibility solution is obviously the GeoEdge Pro product which I’m about to review.

GeoEdge (the PRO version) allows you to view up to over 100 locations (which is more than what GeoSurf offers) and you can do that by installing their toolbar on your browser. As of the moment, there’s a toolbar for Firefox and Chrome (beta). After installing, you are now ready to use GeoEdge.

Aside from GeoEdge Pro, they also have other tools that you can associate with it. One is GeoEdge search and the other one is GeoEdge Analytics. The first one is basically just a package that’s more suited for search optimizers and marketers. The second one is more targeted to Ad networks and Media Buyers. Let’s have a look on what’s inside.

Inside GeoEdge

GeoEdge gave me a free trial wherein I was able to explore in many different countries. My experience with the toolbar is mostly good and I would say its pretty accurate. A quick test that I conducted is browsing Google.com on several locations and GeoEdge never failed in delivering me to right Google page based on the location that I selected.

The toolbar is sleek and I like that its organized by continents. You don’t need to scroll down to a list of gazillion countries. Instead, they’ve grouped them accordingly so if I want to select ‘Argentina’ as my location, I can simply just go to Latin America and then select Argentina.

Aside from this, there’s also a mobile emulation feature wherein you can see the look of a page on a specific mobile handset. I cannot speak on its accuracy since I only own an Android phone so I don’t really know if the page looks the same in Symbian or iOS.

Since GeoEdge is a browser add-on, they need to keep up with endless updates from the browser it is supporting. I think they’ve done a good job of that since the version that I tried seemed to work with three different Firefox versions without having any problems at all.

I was also using an internet connection through a USB when I tested GeoEdge and it just worked fine (GeoSurf didn’t work well with a USB dongle btw.) As an aside, there are some other Firefox plugins (like Foursquarefox) that don’t work well with USB dongles so kudos to the creators of GeoEdge for that.

As far as the connection speed, not sure if its normal but when you change to some other locations, the page loads slower. I know that the servers are located on different places that might have been far from my location so that’s probably the reason why it happens.

I would say all in all that I like GeoEdge. The toolbar idea is superb and I like how they have the details organized in the toolbar. Aside from that there’s this ‘Snap-it’ thing that looks real unique. What this does is build a consolidated view of pages and ads from several geographical location. The view will be based on your selection of locations. I haven’t tried this extensively but a quick look on Snap-it would lead you to their bigger product called GeoEdge Analytics which I will not be discussing anymore.

For a good demo, you can also visit the GeoEdge demo page to see how it works.

Plans and Pricing

GeoEdge has interesting packages as compared to GeoSurf. They actually have a free version called GeoEdge Search where you can access up to 8 locations but you can only use these locations on search engine ranking page. That means you cannot really use it to a specific URL but rather to search results only. Its very limited in that sense but still I know lots of people can benefit from this. And hey its for FREE.

As for the pro package, the cheapest one starts at $59/month where you can view up to 3 locations and have a search limit of 200mb. Here’s a screenshot of their entire packages:

They have this unique package which is the custom one wherein you can choose your own combinations and build it your own way. The price for this obviously depends on that certain combinations that you want.

Lastly, every package has a free trial option so within that specified period you can cancel when you feel its not worth it.

Conclusion

GeoEdge is actually almost identical with GeoSurf. They both make use of toolbar and they’re pretty expensive if you’re gonna use them and you’re not really making any money. However, if you are in the industry wherein tracking locally is always a task, then this is definitely a must have. If you are working on a large company, you can also suggest to use this tool. In short, tools like this is not for everyone.

Overall, I find GeoEdge just fine. I’m a web guy that has gotten used to using proxies from websites and having the privilege to use a tool like this, I would say its almost always refreshing. Maybe they can roll out more features that would further more set them apart from the competition but right now its already solid. Also, finishing that Google Chrome toolbar would help a lot since lots of users are using Chrome these days.

How about you? Do you think GeoEdge can help you do your local searches more competitive?

Facebook Timeline and Small Business Brands

by Melvin · Oct 13, 2011

This is a guest post by Jess Wagner

The new Facebook Timeline is drawing all sorts of privacy concerns with users. When the social media network begins to make all users switch over to the new design no one will have as much privacy as they want. People will be able to see photos, status updates, videos, and oddball posts that you might have made as far back as 2004. While privacy concerns might hinder the website’s use for the average user, brands and businesses are salivating at the new possibilities the Timeline will afford them.

Customized Design

Facebook is the second most visited website on the Internet after Google. With people spending so much time on the social media network, it is almost as important to build an incredibly designed Facebook page as it acts as a secondary home page. If a brand hires an interactive agency for web design, they will want to carry elements of their site over to the new cover photo that sits on top of the new Timeline layout which is 840 x 310 pixels. This photo can contain important information or just be consistent with the overall marketing strategy.

The Big Picture

With photo blog websites like Tumblr and Instagram becoming more popular, people are getting most of their information from photos instead of the written word. The Facebook Timeline design lets photos stand out much better in profiles than the old layout did. Instead of brands relying on having conversations with their customers, they can post pictures and view the comments that are coming in. Instead of writing a detailed status update, brands can create an infographic which will rest beautifully in the Timeline profile.

Brand History

Because it is so much easier to access information previously posted, Facebook Timeline will take the pressure off brands to get featured in the News Feed. According to Zeny Huang of Mashable, the new Facebook design will rely more on content than on immediately grabbing the viewer’s attention. Brands can stick to their story instead of relying on shock tactics in order to get more people to view their profile.

Subscription Features

Users who have had a Facebook account for a long time probably have a bloated friend list filled with college acquaintances, forgettable encounters, and even some old enemies. People are beginning to filter out their profiles and delete people they do not know. With the subscribe feature, brands can get featured in the News Feed without cluttering up any friend counts, groups, or interests users might be worried about.

While the average user might be complaining about the constant changes and privacy abuse Facebook deals to its users, there is no doubt brands are going to be able to adapt to the new layout with ease. Small businesses will also be able to document the history they have with the community with the easily accessible Timeline feature. Whatever opinions users might have of the changes, Facebook has adapted to compete with other social media websites.

Why a Blog is your Best Marketing Asset

by Melvin · Oct 10, 2011

I have been blogging for about 4 years now and it still never ceases to amaze me how a blog can be utilized as a powerful marketing asset for whatever you’re doing. For example, this blog alone has helped me do a ton of things just because I write here. It has that leverage that gives you a pretty good advantage over your other competitors in your market. Aside from that it allows you to do direct response marketing better than ever since you’re hardly pitching them anything but rather just giving out good content.

Anyway there’s a huge contest over at SEM-GROUP in w/c I am currently participating right now. My writing entry to that contest is entitled Your Best Internet Marketing Asset – Your Blog. It’s a detailed blog post about what I said above. It also tackles how blogging alone covers all of the other components that you probably already need in order to succeed in marketing your business online. Again you can help me win the contest by reading my contest entry.

It’s not a traffic-getting contest actually but rather just a writing contest. However, its one of those rarely lengthy blog entries that I usually do and I think you can benefit greatly from that.

——————————————————————————————————————————————–

Contest Media Partner

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The Tech Blog TechnoZeast

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SEO Prize Sponsors

David Harry A full years membership at SEO Dojo, a value of $250.SEO Training Dojo

Lifetime membership to: My Blog Guest. MyBlogGuest.com is the free guest post exchange community where users meet to exchange guest posts and network.

Link-Assistant.Com SEO PowerSuite Enterprise (max. functionality license) SEO tools

SEMrush.com – the best tool to spy on your competitors ($210 value) www.semrush.com

3 month Pro subscription to Raven Internet Marketing Tools ($297 value) Raven Internet Marketing Tools

What’s Your View on Facebook Timeline?

by Melvin · Sep 28, 2011

Mark Zuckerburg announced in F8 Conference that the profile page in Facebook will change dramatically and the change will be known as Facebook Timeline. Little later after that, Techcrunch posted a trick that will make you enable your Facebook Timeline even though its not released yet. The limitation though is that only your ‘fellow’ testers will see that effect on your profile. But even still, lots of people rushed into it just so they could try. Obviously I was one of those many people.

Facebook Timeline has received a bunch of chatter over the past few days. Some people think its heading towards Myspace wherein its starting to clutter itself more and more while some others plainly just like the new timeline.

Aside from this, let’s also not forget that Facebook implemented some new designs on their homepage that drew ire from lots of its users. The biggest concern regarding the new design is the fact that it gives little importance to privacy and that it seems it would benefit stalkers a lot. Also its very easy to get lost in the process considering there’s too much to look at the same time.

Considering all those things, truth is Facebook has been successful in forcing us to adjust to ALL of their changes. People who are currently complaining will only do that for about 2 and a half weeks up until Facebook rolls out new changes again. I guess its a cycle.

Views on Facebook Timeline?

I first saw the Timeline from a beautiful woman named Lisa Bettany who happens to be a contact of mine in Facebook. When I first saw it I was like ‘are you kidding me’. I researched for it and like many of you, I was able to do so successfully.

I view the timeline profile positively. To be honest, it instantly made me melancholic and emotional. I joined Facebook in mid-2008 and for me to see my old posts so easily, that’s so appealing to me. I laughed a bunch of times when I saw some of my ‘retarded’ posts in those old days, when I was just getting started with this blog and spam promoting the hell of my friends, when I was bullying some college friend of mine, there’s just a lot to look back.

I know there’s a lot of people on the hate bandwagon of this new Facebook Timeline thing but for me I view this new feature entirely positive. Sure there’s a bunch of bugs and flaws for now, but that’s fixable. Also, it made Facebook much more cluttered but I’m sure people will adjust, just like forever. It’s not like its really like MySpace where you can put a bunch of widgets and glittered images right?

Lastly, productivity issues will always count. I wasted like 1.5 hours just by scanning my entire timeline and while we’re not gonna look at it everyday, we’re still going to use Facebook as how we’re trained to use it. Nothing’s changing as far as Facebook being a big distraction.

That’s my view on the Facebook Timeline. How about you?

A Guide on Doing Blog Marketing

by Melvin · Sep 19, 2011

It’s been a while since I created a guide on blog marketing/driving traffic to a blog and obviously the need to update the material has occurred to me. Especially with the fact that I got lots of feedback based on the old one that I created and those feedback that I received were really good.

Now if you haven’t been reading my blog since last year, then the book that I’m referring to is the one entitled ‘Blog Marketing for Fame’. This free guide generally received positive feedback from most of my readers and I was happy with how it turned out. There were a couple of good suggestions that I put into work with regards to the new one.

So there I upgraded the guide and it has been rebranded as …

‘Blog Marketing Guide’

Aside from the old one having a long flimsy name, another reason for the renaming of the book is the fact that there’s really no guide on blog marketing in general available. And perhaps, ‘Blog Marketing Guide‘ as a name is pretty good and something easy to remember. It may not really be the perfect name for now but its something that’s good to start with.

The book just like most of my guides are free if you subscribe to my newsletter which is totally a no-brainer if you ask me. :p. The book has 5 general sections on how and where you can get traffic plus a detailed explanation/elaboration of the different things that I do that has worked extremely well for myself and hopefully can also work for you.

But the book isn’t really just the cool stuff here as the newsletter is the one that I would say I’m pretty proud of. Over the past few years I haven’t really had gotten a huge amount of people on my list. I have a couple of hundreds to be honest but I’m very proud to say that the community in my newsletter is a tightly-knit interactive group. Lastly, I usually put out lots of great advice and tips that I normally don’t publish here. And hey there were a couple of times that I even gave free goodies there. 🙂

Why Blog Marketing?

Pretty simple. Just like in my old post about most bloggers failing at marketing, the reason I created this thing is to be able to help out lots of bloggers on how they can market their blogs competitively.

Not much has really changed. Most bloggers aren’t still good at marketing their stuff and its pretty understandable. When I was getting started I looked at blogging as just writing and I believe this is how most bloggers trying to carve their niche look at blogging as well. Obviously its the wrong way to look at it.

We, bloggers have to be somehow in the middle of ‘writers’ and internet marketers (salesmen). We need to write out our usual selves while being good enough to promote it and get enough people in our community. But we don’t need to sound like those marketers right? Nor do we need to push out one product after the other just to get affiliate sales. In short, we don’t want any part of being salesy yet we want to know how to market.

Hopefully that’s what the Blog Marketing Guide brings to the table.

So that’s my reason. Again, your feedback is highly appreciated and feel free to get this guide across the blogosphere.

Confirm You Are Not a Spammer – Seriously?

by Melvin · Sep 13, 2011

I’m seeing this plugin in LOTS of blogs that I’m reading and commenting to and I wasn’t really that much concerned about it, initially. However when I started commenting again on lots of blogs as part of my back to blogging tasks, I started getting annoyed with this plugin. Why is that so?

Confirm you are not a spammer

What I’m talking about is this plugin called Anti-Spambot created by GrowMap and Andy w/c are people that I know and respect a lot. The way this plugin works is that there’s a checkbox in a comment form and before you can submit your comment, you will need to tick the checkbox to indeed confirm that you are not a spammer. How much sense does that make?

Well its not really that much of a big deal for me actually. I just find that its a workflow killer. I mean, you’re typing comments and doing this and that and when you click submit, you will get this notice that you have to confirm. Not that its annoying but it just gives me the ‘wtf’ look on my face. It doesn’t reload the page either so your comment will still be there but I guess its just human nature to get the ‘what’ look when you submit something and it doesn’t get submitted immediately. lols.

The other side

I haven’t tried the plugin yet so I haven’t had a chance to see what’s behind it yet. However from a bloggers perspective, I can’t really see much the value of it. I mean, what makes it different from a captcha? It requires you to do a thing before submitting your comment. Is it not making it hard for your reader to do commenting? Or maybe its just being lazy to moderate comments all in all?

If you’re reading this blog for a while you know that I value comments a lot and that I make it easy for people to interact (I always ask for their take, whatnot). With that I’m thinking having this ‘confirm you’re not a spammer’ box will only give your readers a step more before they can do what they want to do. And that maybe there’s a conversion part there that gets unconverted instead.

But again that’s just my opinion. Or maybe is there something that I misunderstood with regards to the plugin? Is Akismet not enough?