4 Comments Written by Robert on August 23, 2008 – 4:46 am

Link and Article Directory Submissions

Submitting links to free and paid online directories represents an easy and proven method of building links, but submitting articles to Web sites and content distribution services works especially well. Among other things, article submission strategies allow you to tailor content so that it maintains the specific theme you are looking to be associated with. Getting an article published on a popular, authoritative Web site with links back to your Web site is a surefire way to rank well in the search engines.

There are hundreds if not thousands of Web page directories on the Internet. A link directory is simply a large Web page link database broken down into categories. Most of these directories allow you to choose a specific category and offer either free or paid link placement within that category. Although directory links are not quite as useful now as they were in the past for search-engine-optimization purposes, there are still a few directories that can provide your Web page with a high-quality, authoritative link that makes a difference.

Quality web directories

Your first directory submission should be to Yahoo directory. Yahoo is one of the largest and most visited Web sites on the Internet. Yahoo offers free submissions to noncommercial categories and also a paid submission option for $299 that can be used to submit your site to any category. Inclusion is not guaranteed whether you pay or not, but by paying you are guaranteed a response within seven business days. If you are accepted into a commercial category, your site is reviewed on a recurring yearly basis.

In order to stay listed, you must continue to pay $299 per year. The Best of the Web directory, found at BOTW.org, has existed since 1994, making it one of the first directories on the Web. It offers a free category sponsorship for 60 days and provides options to get listed in the directory for a fee. To get your Web site reviewed and listed on BOTW, expect to pay $79.95 annually or a one-time fee of $239.95. Bulk discounts are available if you want to submit 20 or more Web sites.

The Open Directory Project, also known as DMOZ, is also a directory submission candidate. Located at www.dmoz.org, DMOZ is one of the oldest and most respected directories on the Web. You can submit your site for free into any of its hundreds of categories.

Link building campaign using articles and web directory submission

Besides those listed above, there are other directories that are worth the time it takes to submit your link. Microsoft’s small business directory at sbd.bcentral.com is a very high quality and well-respected online business directory. Joeant.com is another human-edited directory with a history of listing high-quality sites. You should always submit your URL to the category that is most relevant to your site’s content. If you attempt to submit your site to a non relevant category, it is much more likely to get declined. Also, for search engine optimization purposes, a link from a relevant directory category is more beneficial than a link from a non relevant category.

Do not rely too strongly on directory submissions to raise your search-engine rankings. Due to the ease with which these links can be obtained and the sheer number of directories that exist, they are not given as much credibility by the search engines today as in the past. Focus only on directories that have been in existence for at least a few years, possess a large number of incoming backlinks, and maintain a PageRank of 6 or greater.

Article Directory Submissions

You can generate a large number of relevant links back to your site by writing unique articles and submitting them to article directories, where they can be picked up by other Webmasters and placed on other Web sites. One of the most sought-after commodities by Webmasters is unique content relevant to the theme of their Web site. Article directories are public content depositories where Webmasters can search for and select content to place on their own sites. Usually, this content is in the form of an article written by the Webmaster of another Web site. That Webmaster has the option to include a link to his or her own site that must be left intact when the article is copied by others.

Try to write articles between 300 and 1,000 words in length. Make them unique, and also make sure they have proper spelling, grammar, punctuation, capitalization, and sentence structure in order to have the best chance at being accepted. There are hundreds if not thousands of article directories scattered throughout the Internet, but you should focus your submission efforts on only those that have a large visitor base to give yourself the best chance at exposure.

Article directories are public content depositories

For example, Ezinearticles.com is one of the largest article directories on the Internet. Founded in 1999, it has grown to contain hundreds of thousands of unique articles written by tens of thousands of authors. Your article will be human reviewed before it is selected and placed into the Ezinearticles directory. The directory is visited by hundreds of thousands of visitors every day, so you should make submitting your articles to this directory a priority. Other examples of high-quality article directories include Goarticles.com, ArticleDashboard.com, and Isnare.com.

Consider writing a few variations of your articles and submitting a different variation to each directory. It is common for high-quality articles to get ranked by themselves in the search engines. If you submit duplicate content to each directory, there is little chance of more than one of the articles getting ranked. If the content is slightly different, the search engines may not penalize the articles due to duplicate content, and more than one variation could be ranked. You can also search the Web for sites that compete in your niche and offer them a variation of your article to be used on their site in exchange for including a link back to your site.

If you need help writing your articles or simply do not have enough time to do it yourself, consider outsourcing the writing. Depending on the quality you expect, typical prices for a 300- to 1,000-word article range from $5 to $50. Create an account on www.elance.com and submit a proposal for free. You will get many responses to your request, and you can choose the price that best suits your budget.

Community Participation

Participating in communities paid blogs and forums that allow you to post a link back to your Web site is a fun and effective strategy for generating Web site traffic and building links. However, keep in mind that your participation on blogs and forums should be substantive and relevant. Although commenting on relevant blogs and forums seems tedious, it is one of the quickest approaches to building links and also presents the opportunity to learn more about what people in your industry are talking about. Participating in these conversations not only allows you the opportunity to increase your own Web site traffic and search-engine rankings, but it can also help you learn how to grow your business in other ways.

Participating in online communities such as blogs is an effective strategy for building links and generating traffic. Blogs allow you to provide comments and feedback on each blog entry posted by the author of the blog. Commenting on a blog requires you to submit your name and e-mail for verification purposes, as well as for a link back to your Web site. Because blog comments tend to be moderated, you should provide useful and constructive responses to avoid being labeled as spam. Adding value to the community increases the likelihood that your link and comment are posted.

Comment on blogs that are as closely related to the theme of your Web site as possible. Also, try to find blogs that have a PageRank higher than 4 and possess a large number of relevant incoming links. You can find these blogs by searching for a keyword related to your site in a blog directory such as http://blogsearch.google.com or www.blogcatalog.com. Then, perform an evaluation as you would for any other potential linking partner.

Do not waste time submitting comments to blogs that are unrelated to the content of your site. Such comments are viewed as spam and are deleted by the moderators. Acquiring links through blog participation works especially well to achieve rankings in the Yahoo and MSN search engines, but is not as effective a strategy to use in Google. This is due to most blog owners attaching a nofollow attribute to links in blog comments. This tag is supposed to prevent the search engines from following and taking into account that link in their ranking algorithm. Google appears to follow this rule more strictly than the Yahoo and MSN search engines.

Participate in online communities

The nofollow attribute was developed to prevent excessive spamming on blogs. It deters spammers from wasting their time with automated blog-commenting programs. Despite Google’s claims that it does not take blog comments or any other links with a nofollow attribute into consideration in its ranking algorithm, the search engine likely still sees that those links exist. The search engines want to see natural growth in your site’s linking patterns as well as that your link is found on related sites.

It is natural for your site to have a mixture of incoming links that do and do not have a nofollow attribute attached. It is usually impossible to place a link directly into your blog comment; however, if your site is relevant enough to the topic being discussed, and you are truly providing a valuable resource to the blog readers, the link may be accepted. If your site is impressive enough, the blog owner may end up using your link in a future blog post. Such links are very valuable, and the traffic you can receive from a highly trafficked blog is substantial.

Participating in online communities like forums is also an effective strategy for building links and generating traffic. Forums are Internet message boards that allow you to start new discussions or participate in ongoing discussions about a variety of topics. Most forums allow you to participate by simply signing up for a free account with your e-mail address and very little personal information. Forums tend to be moderated, but unlike blogs, your forum posts are often posted for public viewing without having to go through a review process.

You should still provide useful and constructive responses to avoid having your posts being labeled as spam. Adding value to the community increases the likelihood that your link and comment stay posted and that your site will be visited by the other forum participants. Join and participate in forums that are as closely related to the theme of your Web site as possible. Also, try to find forums that have a PageRank higher than 4, have high traffic, and possess a large number of relevant incoming links. You can find these forums by searching for a keyword related to your site in one of the major search engines.

As an example, if your site is related to pets, a simple query like “pet forums” provides a good list to start with. Do not waste time submitting posts to forums that are unrelated to the content of your site. Such posts are viewed as spam and are deleted by the moderators. Acquiring links through forum participation works well to increase your rankings in all the major search engines as well as your overall site traffic from the forums themselves.

Unlike blog comment links, forum post links do not contain a nofollow attribute, making them useful for increasing your rankings in all the major search engines. Some forums allow you to place a link directly into your forum signature, which is simply a personalized line of text that follows each of your posts. This method of acquiring links on a forum is less obvious than placing a link directly into your forum posts, and it is often encouraged by the forum moderators.

You can use the search engines to find forums relevant to the content of your site by creatively constructing search queries. As opposed to searching for something as simple as “pet forums,” consider trying a query like “inurl:forum pets.” This query returns only results that contain the word “forum” in the URL and the word “pets” in the content of the page. Because many forums are located on a URL such as www.mydomain.com/ forum, this type of query should provide almost 100 percent forum results.

Quick note: This is Part 2 of 3. Part 1 can be found here, and part 3 here.