Improve Your Website’s Link Popularity With Directory Submissions - By: Robert Smith

Online directory submissions remain one of the oldest and most effective ways to generate inbound one way links. Creating links from search engine friendly directories is an essential part of the optimisation process and a proven, cost effective method, for developing your link popularity. Successful directory submissions will also help to increase the visitor traffic to a website and improve a sites search engine ranking.

Submit your site to hundreds of online directories for free

Although many online directories will charge a fee for listing a website, there are literally hundreds of search engine friendly online directories that will accept free listings. It is well worth the effort to develop a list of those directories offering free listings as this will provide a very valuable resource for any directory submissions project.

General online directories will usually rank higher than specialist directories as they have a much wider range of categories and therefore appeal to a wider audience. These directories are likely to receive a lot more traffic due to their broader base.

It is essential that a website is submitted to the most relevant category

Internet based directories offer a wide range of topics and in order for a site to be accepted, it is essential that it is submitted to the most relevant category for the business. Unlike automated computer programs used by search engines, online directories use human editors to review a website and if a site is submitted to the wrong category it is unlikely to be listed.

Directory submissions involve a simple straight forward process

Directory submissions are a relatively straight forward task that can be performed by any website owner. However, to be successful, you will need to follow specific guidelines and invest considerable time and effort in the submission process. If done correctly however, directory submissions can be very rewarding, as they offer the ability to target specific and relevant keywords. This is achieved by ensuring that the anchor text that is submitted to the directories contains at least one of the targeted keyword phrases for your site. For this to be effective the targeted keyword must also be present on the web page that you are linking back to.

If you do not have the time to invest in handling your own directory submissions you could consider purchasing a software package that will help to automate a major part of the process. Alternatively, you could subscribe to one of the many online services that offer to handle the directory submissions on your behalf.

Either way, directory submissions should be an integral part of the overall link building strategy for any webmaster. Securing effective directory listings is an established and proven search engine optimisation technique used by thousands of website owners. The greater the number of inbound links pointing to a website, the better, as this will result in achieving higher search engine rankings and also increases the opportunity of more people finding a site.

Securing your directory listings slowly is the most effective method

From a search engine perspective, the inbound links need to appear to have been acquired as naturally as possible. It is important therefore to build up the directory listings to a website slowly, as a sudden large increase in incoming links can set off alarm bells in search engine spiders.

Directory submissions should not be viewed as the only effective method of building a website’s link popularity. Indeed adopting a single link building process is likely to reduce the value of the links in the eyes of the search engines. It is more effective to use a number of different techniques to improve a website’s link popularity which in addition to directory submissions should include Article Submissions, Social Bookmarking, Online PR and Reciprocal Linking initiatives.

About the Author

Robert Smith has over 5 years experience in online marketing and search engine optimisation. He is the owner of Get On Fast, a specialist online marketing agency, based in Cambridgeshire, UK Visit our website for further information on our Directory Submission Service or, to discover how search engines rate your website, request our FREE Web Site Analysis report today.

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