Everything Else

Some of you might have noticed that there is a small directory of web development and SEO resources located here on Talmir.info and have wondered what it is about. The short answer is that it is my web guide of permanent bookmarks to SEO and web dev resources which I thought I would share with everyone rather than keeping them private. Although I could use a social bookmarking service, I really prefer to build content for myself. I also wanted an easy way to look up and post lists of links to resources for beginners in my forums posts and the directory categories provide a quick shorthand way of doing that.

Goals:

1. Deep link to high quality forum threads and blog posts on either SEO or web development forming a useful web guide on those topics.

2. Link to resources, approved by me, such as software, blogs and forums for further reference. The point is not to link to everything but to link to things I consider useful.

3. Encourage and educate beginners on web building and basic, standard optimization practices.

4. Keep the directory/guide commercial free and relatively neutral so that myself and other forum posters can link to it on forums to help beginners.

5. Spend no time or money promoting the directory by submitting. Generally I have let people find me by my forum profile, my blog and when I have linked to a guide category in a forum post. (Comment: My goal for the domain Talmir.info has been to see how people find the site naturally, how inbound links develop and how deeply visitors explore. See "Results" below.)

6. Eliminate spam found in so many web dev and SEO directories. My goal is to list quality or trusted sites not every site.

Biases:

1. Since most of the links are submitted by me, the bias tends to be for posts from the forums I read and post at and the blogs I read.

2. The guide is geared to beginners to early intermediates.

3. Links to discussions and post that do not quickly become dated are preferred.

Results:

1. Out of hundreds of submissions, I have approved about four listings. I think all the directory submission lists have found the directory and linked to it but not not the target audience. Passive promotion has not worked well. Sigh.

2. I have not attracted many natural inbound links other than those detailed above. This is my fault. 2006 pretty much has been a lost year for me due to family considerations so I have not been deep linking and building as I should.

Future:

I still think it is a good, useful idea. I would like to see more people submit quality individual blog and forum posts because I know I am missing a lot. If anyone has any suggestions please comment.