I will relate that to Google’s recent behavior toward directories because i believe Google is in its ovulation period at this time.

All of this started in late 2007 when google entered its Premenstral Syndrome (PMS) when the first mood swing toward directories happened because before directories were loved by google and was used by most SEO Companies for their clients. This first mood swing caused google to penaltised all the highly advertised directories such as Alive, Aviva, Big Web Links, Directory Dump, and many more. This penalty caused these sites to loose their rankings in SERPs to an extent that they would not even rank for their own name. Followed by this mood swing, there was a temperature change and made google more angry toward these directories, and then Google lowered their Pagerank (PR). Most of these websites i listed were PR 6 or above, and they were lowered to pr 3 and lower.

With the penaltisation of these directories some of the new directories got high pagerank and much love from google (Sudden Mood Swing). One of this love was shown toward Directory Journal which was awarded a PR 7 in a very short time, and followed on the next update it was as well lowered to PR 6. Google’s sense of smell was becoming more sensitive as it was taking more steps into the PMS. They started sneaking in and peeking at what was going in the directory world. Many more directories were penaltised and were degraded in Pagerank. Google was smelling Paid Links which were there since the start, but Google’s sense of smell got more and more sensitive.

This article is too long, so read the full one in the post page.

Alright everyone, hold tight. This is the first contest launched by Balkhis. I have prizes for upto 8th place. All sites are allowed to participate. Blogs, Directories, or any other website.

Here is what you will have to do:

Write a blog post (bloggers), directory listing, or figure out some way to expose balkhis to your users. The site that sends me the most traffic until March 11th, 2008 wins. I will keep everyone updated on who is ranking high. Feel free to use any image from this site. I will be adding more images in a day or two.

What are the rules:

You must be subscriber to this blog.
You must have atleast one comment on the blog other than this post.
You must use the website you are putting in the contest as your main website (exception contact me).
You must use a valid email address when posting comments.
Exceptions meaning, you are allowed to enter more than websites, but to do so you need to post a comment in this post and mention your sites, and i will email you (hence why valid email) that yes it is approved or not.

Prizes:

Ladies Only: You get to spend a 2 days/nights with me. *Just kidding* Real prizes below

1st Place Winner:
Custom Website Design by Uzzz Productions. (Wordpress, phpLD or plain site) – $800 Value
468 x 60 Banner spot on balkhis on the header.
Balkhis T-Shirt
$50 Cash – (Paypal Only)
Blog review at Balkhis ($50 value)
Featured Listing on Madmouse Web Directory and Deep Link Listing Web Directory.

2nd Place Winner
468 x 60 Banner Spot on Balkhis
Custom 468 x 60 Banner Designed by Uzzz Productions
Blog review at Bloggeries
$25 Cash (Paypal Only)
Balkhis T-Shirt
Featured Listing on Madmouse Web Directory and Deep Link Listing Web Directory.

3rd Place Winner
Free phpLD Linkback License for one domain ($25 Value)
125 x 125 Banner Spot on the sidebar
Custom 125 x 125 Banner designed by Uzzz Productions
Balkhis T-Shirt
Featured Listing on Madmouse Web Directory and Deep Link Listing Web Directory.

4th Place – 8th Place
Balkhis T-Shirt
Site-Wide Text Links Under the Category Contest Winners
As you see some of these prizes are offered by other webmasters and i would like to thank them.

Steven Lincoln of Madmouse and Deep Link Listing
David Duval of PHP Link Directory (phpLD)
Rob of Bloggeries Network
Uzzz Production Team

If any other sponsors are interested in offering prizes to Balkhis Contest Winners, please contact me using the contact form, and i will make sure to get back to you as soon as i can.

Well what are you waiting for get to work, you guys have only one month to win this contest. Spread the words.

If you haven’t seen Balkhis T-Shirt, watch my video about easy money online. I am wearing that.

Hoping to see some good results here.

Often times, it becomes a questionable thought whether design matter in seo and indexing rate. Often times people double guess themselves and leave the design part out. Often because a quality design costs alot. Perhaps, that is a personal choice, but in reality does it matter or not?

This question was raised by a MOG at Digitalpoint:

I believe that YES the design matters in increasing the index rate and a better SEO. A smart SEO Company once taken a project, make adjustments toward the design and how the content is organized to shape it in a way so it is both user-friendly and Search engine friendly. While many webmasters due to various reasons could not get unique custom seo-friendly designs, but here are some advices that you might want to be looking into unique, or free designs when you get them.

Believe it or not, but the design does not have to be tableless. It helps the bot crawl faster if the site is tableless, but the structure of the content matters the most. Using the effective <h2><h3> tags respectively plays an essential role when you have the content organized.

In all cases of design how ever it looks, in the coding, the content should appear above everything, MOST IMPORTANTLY, the sidebar. Why? Because sidebar tends to contain multiple links, Site Navigation link, Sponsor links, Partner links, and such.

Even if the design is coded completely tableless, it can have the sidebar before the content. Various ways to go about it and fix this issue. Always keep the content on the left side and sidebar on the right side and that solves the problem easily eh. Make sure when inserting the <td> or <div> it comes after the content <td> or <div> tags.

We can’t all have sidebars on the left hand side, because then all websites will look the same. Well now you need a good designer because their creative minds work miracles. They can have the sidebar on the left side using the div properties, or the Master Table law to make the design SEO Friendly. In all cases you must have a valid .css file. To check the validation feel free to use the w3 services because they exist for a reson.