⇒ Tips and Tricks

If you have a home broadband connection, odds are you have a dynamic IP address -- one that changes every so often. This is fine until you feel the need to connect to your home computer from somewhere outside your house. Without a constant, static, never-changing IP address, you don't have a reliable way to find your home computer on the internet.

Why would you want to do such a thing? There are many possibilities. Maybe you want to make a Remote Desktop connection to your grandma's computer to help her find a document she lost. Or maybe you want to stream music from your home media server to your office across town. Using Dynamic DNS, you can do anything that would normally require a static IP address without paying the extra monthly fees your broadband provider would usually charge for such a service.

Link building is one of the cornerstones of ranking on the first page of Google, Yahoo, Microsoft Live and other search engines. Many directories and websites will give you a link in exchange for you linking to them a practice known as reciprocal linking. Although this works you can get more SEO benefit from a site that links to you without a link back which is known as a one way link. You may be thinking, oh great, another list of places to buy links but put your pocketbook away because all you have to spend is your time.

 Before going through each directory there are a few ground rules for directory link building. Always search the directory for your business name and URL to make sure your site is not already listed. It is very common to get removed from a directory because you submitted twice and the directory webmaster thinks you are spamming. Because of this keep a log (I prefer spreadsheets) with the directory URL submitted, date of submission, title & description used. Completely read the submission guidelines and terms of use since each directory has its own editorial guidelines. Failure to follow submission guidelines may result in your site getting rejected. You also want to change up the site title and description you give to the directories. This can be variations of your business name or a keyword phrase coupled with your business name. Only submit your website to a directory once, even if you don't get accepted.