This is a step by step tutorial about optimizing a link directory site. I’m doing this for my one and only link directory which starts to grow old in a world of social media domination.

First of all, a basic Google Analytics metrics shows a very high bounce rate. This is understandable as users arrive, submit a site and never look back. I admit it, I do the same. That’s why I need to either motivate the user to come back, at least once – this way I’ll double my traffic – or further optimize the directory in order to make it more search engine friendly.

So, as my link directory was properly optimized for SEO, headings, metadata, paragraphs and all, I decided to research and develop new features.

I should note that I use phpLinkDirectory 2.2. If you are wondering why this old version, when phpLinkDirectory 4 is live, it’s because I worked hard for the theme and I implemented lots of mods into it. Also, I updated the phpmailer module, the Smarty template engine and the ADODB database wrapper. I don’t need the overhead of a bulkier directory engine, and I’m happy with what 2.2 does and feels like. These optimization may well be applied to other link directory scripts, as today I’m discussing ideas and concepts rather than copy/paste scripts and tutorials.

I first added some pages, like “About us”, “The importance of submitting your web site” and “Articles”. The “Articles” page resembles a mini-blog page with 4 or 5 articles. Stuffed with keywords, this page is bound to get more traffic.

I, then, optimized all categories descriptions and keywords. I have a total of 130 categories, so this optimization will pay off at the next bots visits. I did this using some template hacks and some new database fields. Pretty simple if you know what you’re doing. Do not mess with the title slug! Remember, the trick here is to improve not to change. If you touch the title slug, search engine will send traffic to non existent pages.

Adding descriptions and keywords to categories is a lengthy process, as you need to write a short, concise phrase for each category and add several keywords, other than the name of the category. Let’s say I have the category “Business and Investment”. I’ll obviously not add “business” and “investment” as keywords. I’ll find some synonyms.

The next phase was to use some .htaccess tricks and rewrite features in order to get rid of the URL parameters like “?p=d”. I replaced those with the actual name of the page. While this is good for keywords SEO, it is also good for statistics. Knowing what exact page was visited is better than having a bunch of “index.php?p=219″.

It seems that before the optimization, Google’s Intelligence report estimates less visits than I receive. That’s a good thing.

I have finally installed the new Google Analytics asynchronous code.

Now, I only need to measure the new changes.

Will Twitter open the way for lots of microblogging startups? I read about lots of such startups these months and it seems to be very profitable. Well, at least until the niche saturates.

What is microblogging? I say it’s the opposite of blogging. It’s a platform where everybody comments but with no articles. Pour in a social networking component and there you have it. Twitter is not necessarily the trend here, it’s just one facet of this blogging aspect.

You can read more about Twitter in this book from O’Reilly Media, The Twitter Book, by Tim O’Reilly and Sarah Milstein. A sneak preview is also available here.

An older report (Q4 2008) is available from HubSpot. One thing that is different about this report though is that it is not based on surveys of a few hundred people.  It is based on real data pulled from hundreds of thousands of Twitter profiles accessed through the reports generated by Twitter Grader.

You’ll find many interesting things there.

So, have I convinced you to start up a microblogging business? Let me know.

A recent post on Mashable stated that:

“Do you remember two months ago when Facebook usernames went live? Millions of avid Facebook (facebook) users waited on a Friday night for the chance to claim their own custom URL. 200,000 were claimed in 3 minutes, 500,000 in 15 minutes, a million within an hour, and 3 million usernames by the next morning.

Still, that’s just a tiny portion of the nearly 300 million users of the world’s larger social network. However, it looks as if adoption of usernames hasn’t stopped. According to a recent note from Facebook engineering, it was revealed that the company has reached over 50 million users.”

I already got mine:

http://www.facebook.com/ciprian.popescu

and I noticed that Youtube has linked its uploading feature with Facebook notifications. Cool.

At a closer look, Twitter seems a mere waste of time.

While smoking 10 cigarettes a day, you waste both money and health. The time and money invested in smoking could be used for running and exercising. Money is saved, and health is restored.

An ugly comparison with Twitter. These days bloggers are compelled to use Twitter in order not to be left behind. It’s a tag above their head saying “I’m writing on Twitter right now”. It could easily become an unbreakable loop.

I noticed people brag themselves with meaningless metrics such as “Twitter followers”. I noticed people following other people based on number of followers.

Twitter is quantity, not quality. I could call Twitter an “immature adolescent plaything”.

There’s an egomaniac making a lot of noise over there, a drama queen behind you, someone boasting about business to a large group of people they just met and someone else having a noisy emotional meltdown in the doorway. That’s what Twitter can be like. (ZDNET)

I’ll still be on Twitter, the only difference is that it’s going to be automatic. I’m using a plugin to post both to the blog and Twitter.

Finally, I signed up for a Twitter account. I’m just giving it a try. So, if you want to follow, go ahead. I’ll try to find some time to post there frequently.

I also started reading an interesting resource from Smashing Magazine, Tips to Become Successful with Twitter. I just want to see what will come out of this.

Are you successful with Twitter? How? And why?