Yo...... just wanted to mention that I am writing some stuff on foundational link building on the ol SR Blog - which started today with some thoughts on doing directory submissions and related strategies.

Foundational link building part I - directories

Tomorrow I will be listing some of my fav resources for directory work and then talk about article marketing and other basics for profile development....

I think one thing that I left out of the post that is important... or at least good to know; is that the number of directories I would hit depends on the site, niche and existing link profile. If you have 10k links and hardly any of them are directories, it may not be a bad idea to hit 500 or so... but even at that I am still have trepidations

Anyhoo... if anyone wants to talk to any of the points in the post of in general... go nutz

Ah Gypsy! Great to see you replenished and active after your little spell! A most helpful article, Mate!

I do have one question ( indeterminate ramble) about title and description diversity in the directory links.

Ya see, I have a set of six blogs that are the original journals of one of Australia's early inland explorers, John McDouall Stuart, plus my own journal concerning my own travels over his tracks.

Clearly, I won't get them all to the top of the SERPs, but then, I don't need to. They're all interlinked in the nav. They're all subdomains of the one domain.

My keyword research indicates that there is not a lot of available traffic for the topic and that there is really only the one worthwhile key phrase, John McDouall Stuart.

I may snag the odd targeted search with Australian explorer, outback travel and the like, but it's counter productive drawing high bounce rate traffic.

Of course, I can vary the description widely but seem to be stuck with John McDouall Stuart and Stuart, John McDouall as the title/anchor text.

It is gratifying to have got in front of some .gov and .edu sites for John McDouall Stuart with my current efforts.

One thing that makes targeting difficult is that in the journals, the main keywords are the likes of water, horses, sand dunes, rocky country, salt bush, scrub, hill, creek, bearing, north, south, and so on.

In thinking this through, it looks like it would pay me to create an introductory home page consisting of my own descriptive content, for each journal. This would allow the inclusion of a wider variety of searched on key terms to target in the directories.

Now Gypsy, a reasonable question would be: "Why am I targeting a low volume key term?" The answer is simple: "Because I want to."

You can be sure that I'll be following up the recommended extra reading and watching for the next installment in the SEO blog. But maybe you'd give me a pointer or two about link building for this rather different endeavor.

With thanks,
Laurie.

Well, from what you've described I would likely be targeting most of the links/optimization at the core domain since the others are related and connected.

So, each sub-domain is geared towards a specific journal/part of the adventure? Is that the gig?

Thanks for that Gypsy. I've been chewing this over, wondering how I may implement a derivative of your suggestion.

The Gig

Stuart made six journeys of exploration in the years 1858 to 1862, keeping daily journals on each journey. The journeys ranged from about three months to a full year. In 1864 the journals were published as one volume.

In recent times the journals have been published on the web.

There are about 10 web copies of the whole work, published as one long page. Touch the scroll bar and about 1000 journal entries go whizzing past at around 45 miles an hour.

There are a couple of sites where the journals are broken into individual journeys and one where there's about 10 or 20 days to a page.

But my version is unique! I have a WP blog for each journey's journal and one day's entry to a WP post. Much better for reading and searchable.

Less than Ideal Site Structure

Financial restraints have forced me to create the subdomains for the journals in my Wilderness Photography domain. I guess it's Dear Old Googlebot's inability to see the relevance that has caused my main domain to drop in the SERPs for the two main terms, from hovering around #2 to #7, down to #17 and #18.

Although I have a few article links out there, Google is publishing only two at present.

The Plan

1)  Write a WP page, well optimized, for each of the six journals and make it the subdomain's homepage.

Target these home pages in directory links.

2)  Redo the domain homepage, optimising primarily for the wilderness photography, but also sharing the gig with the journals in a way that explains the common ground to human visitors and hoping that Googlebot will also see the relevance.

Target the domain homepage for each concept individually, in directory links.

Note: I have a couple of photo stories about Stuart in the main domain.

So, what do ya reckon, Gypsy? Too much of a shotgun approach? Can I make it work like this.

Future Expansion

There are web versions of the journals of several other great Australian explorers, all published in one long page, just waiting to be broken up into a WP blog, the way they were originally hand written.

Maybe I should get a new domain for Australian Explorers and make a fresh start. What do ya reckon?

Photo: John McDouall Stuart, c.1863.

With thanks,
Laurie.

Well, I have always been a fan of sub folders over subdomain as treatment of them has varied from engine to engine over the years...

...anyway, I am sorting out the PS/ranking data I was collecting this week...and seeing what I have there. So drop me an email with the domains involved and I will poke about later... see where things are at...

OK. Will do.

Thanks.

Well, thanks for this Dave,

Now I have some more studying/work to do.
Appreciate your work on this.

Not a problem at all.. have been writing a new ebook on link building and figured some posts on the foundational stuff might be a good idea.

This week I am going to look more at Article Marketing and various approaches to maximize them in link building programs...

To me there is the right way, and the common lazy assed approach that most peeps take... the more you put into it, the more you get out of it.