Net Sieve

Decent web directories that you can submit your sites to are getting pretty rare. Either they want a couple hundred dollars for each submission or what they have to offer for free is worthless. Sometimes listing your links at these sites can actually be harmful to your rankings instead of helpful. If you’re looking for a free web directory, you should look at Dirmania.

DirMania is a business web directory that provides free website advertising. The site has a PR 3, if you care about that kind of stuff and offers a direct link to your small or medium sized business/website. The directory is organized by categories and is very search engine friendly. Your listing can go live in less than 24 hours if you meet the listing requirements. (Not hard to do if you don’t try keyword stuffing or other lame 2002 tricks.) Be sure and provide a good, human friendly description of your site with appropriate keywords and a catchy title and you’re in.

The submission form has all the instructions and advice you need to determine if your submission is quality or not. Think common sense. Make sure you are submitting your link in the most relevant category to its content and make sure that the content is offering something useful to the visitor. It is, isn’t it? Then you’re good - otherwise, anything that is submitted to a blatantly wrong category or is nothing but spam will be removed from the directory.

Play by the rules and scoop up some link love. We all need it.

You don’t need to have 20 kids or 200 friends and family to figure out that buying birthday cards can get real pricey real fast. And time consuming. Well, forget that because “all life all online” is just getting better and better.

What I’m talking about today is CardsDirect’s online birthday cards. They offer a great assortment of cards (not just birthdays) at prices that are better than most store prices without the hassle of slumping out and picking a card from a disarrayed rack. Plus you can personalize the cards right online. You can even bulk up and save time and money by planning ahead and having your cards ready.

If you’re a mom, you know what a time saver this is just for birthday cards. But think about all the thank you cards you’d like to send (or knew you should have sent but didn’t have the time to get one). Mothers - for some reason - are expected to remember every holiday or otherwise important day and be there with the appropriate sentiment. What are you Super Mom now? Well, you can be with CardsDirect.

Here’s a sample card that’s one of my favorites:

OK, now you’ve saved time, made those special people happy, remembered to pick the kids up from wherever … wouldn’t some fresh-baked bread be nice?

Need to up the position of your sites? Why do I ask these questions? Of course you do. Hop on the backlink bandwagon and boost yourself up, baby.

Simply use this Backlink Tools page, which has “links to the best Backlink Tools on the internet and these tools will help you to optimize your website and move your search engine position higher. The following Backlink Tools links are selected from the top SEO tool web sites. These Backlink Tools links are the best of the best.”

You heard it.

Want to see yourself as others see you? Or at least how search engines see your pages? SEOmoz’s crawl test tool is open to the public.

This tool is used to test how accessible your site is to search engines and can help you quickly diagnose potential crawling issues and give you an overview of your site’s search friendliness.

To run the crawl test tool you just need to register for a free SEOmoz account. Basic members are limited to one report per 24 hour period and the tool will only test 5 pages at a time. Premium Members can run as many reports as they like and the crawl test will test 50 pages at a time.

Knock yerself out.

If you haven’t tapped into the hot search spot known as “Spock” you’re really missing out on a cool way to find people and things you’re looking for. Spock is not like most search engines in that it doesn’t simply return a dry list of text links.

Say you use a keyword search to look for web design or a web designer. Hit enter and Spock bring up a list of people - with their photos when available - and all of the links associated to each person. It will show you their community links like LinkedIn, MySpace, Twitter and their professional links like their education, affiliations and associations they belong to.

Spock also lets you create widgets of your searches that you can embed in your own pages or blog posts. This adds cool functionality to your site, allowing you to offer information for other searchers. Spock is still in beta but it works without a hitch. It’s definitely not a “bares bones” beta, as you can see from the widget of my search result below:

Spock’s search engine allows you to search people by their names, by tags related to their work or profession, and - this is really cool - by their email address. Try that with Google and see how far you get. You get a document not found message. Once you register with Spock (don’t worry, it’s free and easy) and try the same search you will find what and who you are looking for.

But enough from me. You’ll only get the full flavor of Spock.com by checking it out yourself. You don’t even have to register to do great searches, but once you do you can access even more features. Enjoy your search for a change. You will find what you need - and, dare I say it - “prosper”?

… hunt aliens!

When you’re in need of an Internet Service Provider, usually the last thing you have a lot of is time. But if you’re just getting out of a contract with lousy service and poor uptime, you really can’t afford to pick the wrong provider.

You need GetISP.info. This site analyzes DSL, cable, dial up, satellite and wireless connections and gives you the results that will help you decide. Pick the type of access, speed and features you need and the site brings up the companies that offer what you’re looking for and helps you make comparisons.

But that’s not all GetISP.info offers. There are numerous articles that make all the aspects of life online easier to understand and overcome. Their information on how to block spam is right on. They even have a “brief” History of the Internet page that is interesting reading and may teach you a thing or two you didn’t know.

Need to lose weight and your doctor has suggested looking into options including Laparoscopic Adjustable Gastric Banding (Lap bands)?

If so, Journey Lite’s network of specialized surgical facilities staffed by highly skilled and experienced bariatric surgeons may be a good place to start. In their experience, houston Lap band is the safest surgical weight-loss solution that can be found today. Not only is it the least invasive of procedures, it is completely reversible and adjustable.

Journey Lite doesn’t just stop at the surgery though. Their professional and caring staff also offer a comprehensive support programs for aftercare including message boards and forums, support groups, tips for success, and recipes and other nutrition education.

If you’re a financial company in need of top level employees or if your training is in finance and you don’t currently have a job (is that even possible?), I have a link to some well-placed financial job recruiters. Willis Consulting has the recruiters who have the best corporate finance jobs now available, whether you are searching for entry level jobs or executive placement.

Willis Consulting focuses solely on the financial services industry and has been serving clients since 2000. If your business is in anything from investment banking to asset management, independent brokerage to insurance and you want the best employees, this is where to look. Willis knows the recruiting process from beginning to end.