First a web directory is web site that specializes in finding, categorizing and listing links to other resources on the World Wide Web. Owners of web sites can submit their sites for review and possible inclusion. Those sites are then reviewed for relevancy and site content to determine if the site would have value to the other internet surfers.

By using a Web Directory your site can gain backlinks which are like doorways to your website for traffic to flow. They are also considered votes of quality for search engine rankings which brings additional targeted traffic through search related actions. Web Directory links create unique and topically relevant backlinks to your site.

The thing to note is that all links are not created equal. The fundamental difference in directories is free vs paid. The differences between the two are like night and day or BMW and skateboard.

Free Directory

What you get with free directories are an extremely crowded directory where your link will get lost in a crowd of low quality links, less traffic from the directory due to less visibility, much longer time between submission and acceptance, very time consuming as you typically need to submit to hundreds of these to get the value of one link from a quality paid directory and your listing will typically get placed with listings for low quality spam filled sites.

Let’s just face facts, most people start a business to generate revenue and a directory is a business. With directories that allow for free submissions the owners look to generate revenue from the site in other ways and those other ways will decrease the quality of the directory.

One way they generate revenue on free directories is by installing adsense on it. Those adsense advertisements compete with the listings on the directory for the visitor traffic and decrease the value of a link in the directory.

The other common way to generate revenue for a free directory is to sell advertising space on it. The idea being to use the lure of a low quality free link on the directory to draw traffic in to see the paid advertisements like site wide sponsored links, site featured links, site wide footer links, site wide partner links and they can call them other things also. Such as our network, friends and the list goes on.

The fact is that search engines devalue web sites that sell placement of site wide links on them and that severely limits the value of a listing on those directories.

Pay for Review Directory

Some of the things which a pay for review directory will bring you and that you should look for are a directory that is maintained by professionals, rich in content with articles and quality resources/listings, unique design with additional features such as deep linking options, quick review times usually 24 to 48 hours and a directory that is focused on providing a destination resource for visitors which generates traffic.

The focus to be a destination resource is easily spotted by features and content. Does the directory provide something in addition to a place to submit links? Is there a blog with content in it? Are there articles posted within the directory category structure? Are there other features that are just there for visitor’s enjoyment such as an art gallery?

In addition there should not be any site wide links for sponsors, there should not be distracting/traffic bleeding adsense. A link from a quality paid directory has more value than free links. They are seen as a higher quality endorsement of the sites listed there. It is our hope that this will help you identify a directory that is worth submitting to from one that is not.

The Authority Web Directory is a vital resource in every online-marketing campaign. Begin your link building effort there, and check for additional resources amongst our listings in the Authority Directory of Directories section.

A major achievement in gaining page rank on search engines involves link popularity. All the main search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN consider this the single most important factor. The general belief and strategy they use is that when a website is important, then other websites will link to it as a major resource for their visitors.

A relatively important website that has a high number of important incoming links should be ranked higher than its competing websites. Webmasters work to achieve high rank with link popularity. Many websites are devoid of quality content and they get very few links because of it.

The rank of a particular website cannot be based solely on the number of incoming links. It would be easy to gain numerous back links to any website through link exchange. The quality of the sites that link back must be a consideration as well.

In the best situation links can be gotten from ranked websites with good traffic, especially from pages with fewer external links. If a website’s incoming links are all pointing to the home page and use the same keywords and same descriptions, and its links come from reciprocal links pages, then search engines see the links were made only to achieve page rank.

Here are the best ways to establish incoming links from higher ranked websites:

1) Speak out in forums and write in your link with your signature.

2) Exchange links with websites who write on the same content that you write. Be careful about which page they add your website link. Your link should not be included with more than 20 to 30 other links. And make sure it is not just added to a link page. The page’s title and other links that appear there
should relate to your website’s content. Having a reciprocal link from a “Links” page counts for very little.

3) Write quality content about your field as well as your products and services.

4) Market articles that bear good content. Ask other webmasters to post your articles too.

5) Add your website to the most popular web directories that will accept it, especially if they are directories that specialize in your content areas.

6) Do not concentrate on a single method, you need to use all of them for maximal effect. Any website that has only reciprocal links doesn’t appear normal to Google. A combination of reciprocal and one way links is the best way to be seen as normal.

Arthur Browning began his career teaching technical writing in a small midwestern university for 15 years. He later editted and published a national professional journal for some ten years. He is now an investor. His interests include art collecting, web marketing, writing.

In regards to one way backlinks pointing to your website, its about quality not quantity.

Relevancy plays a big part in the search engines determining the strength of a link pointing to your website. E.G a link from a marketing forum pointing to a website based on Cat food, will provide you with very little in terms of helping your website rank highly for the cat food niche. Though if this is a new website, this link from the forum can help attract search engine spiders to get your cat food site and help it get indexed in the search engines, which is not a bad thing. I just will not help it rank well for your terms.

The Anchor text of your hyper link and the pages to which the one way inbound links are pointing to your website are very important factors. Generally speaking, websites do have more than one page. Each of your websites pages will be focused on a different topic or theme. Its important to have your inbound links pointing to the individual pages using anchor text that suits this topic or theme. As compared to a lot of one way links pointing to the root of your domain. Having your topic or theme as anchor text for individual pages can greatly improve your websites rankings for these terms in the search engines. Analysis of your market prior to creating your website and creating webpages suited to the keyword or theme research is vital.

One mistake a lot of people make is using the same anchor text in every link pointing to their websites. This can alert the search engines to false links being created for the purposes of gaming the search engines. It is very important to use variations of your topics when creating one way backlinks to your website and its individual pages.

What sites are good to get one way backlinks from? In general terms we will call them Authority websites. You can tell if a website has authority in a search engine if it is at the top of the search engine rankings for many vareid terms. Such as this website ezineartiles. Another determining factor is age. Websites under 1 year old will have authority status in the search engines, specifically Google.

Social bookmarking websites, are a great way to get relevant one way backlinks from authority websites. Using tags and selecting the appropriate categories can provide you with links from within these websites that have the same topic as your website and thus providing you with relevant links.

The is a new term that has just arrived on the internet called PR 38, this is a network of social bookmarking sites, which are not related to each other and have the above authority status in the search engines. This network allows you to post links from your websites internal pages across a network of authority websites, with the ability to select a category that suits your website.

Networks like these will soon be more available over the internet for people who wish to get their websites indexed in the search engines and create many authority backlinks to their websites.

For more information on this topic see below.

Peter Drew is the Author of PR 38 you can contact him via
http://www.peterdrew.net

Links are the powerhouse of the internet which is why everyone is trying to increase their link popularity. It is well known that the search engines treat a link as almost a vote, a vote that the site you are linking to is good enough to deserve the link! This means that the more links you have then the more popular the search engines think your site is and the better it will be ranked for certain terms.

So you may think the best way to get more traffic is to increase your link popularity and you will magically jump up the search engines…. well not quite. You see there are a few more factors, like what does the link say? If someone links to your site with the word ‘Dog training’ as the link, then they are saying that your site is a good dog training site. Now if you have a lot of dog related links to your site then that will increase the link popularity of your site for those terms, but won’t help you with any searches for cats!

Another factor is the quality of the sites that link to yours, after all, if a one day old, one page site links to you then that does not mean you are a good site. If a PR 8 10,000 page site that has been around forever links to you that is definitely going to count and increase your link popularity. Another thing to watch for is sites that have been banned or de-indexed by Google or other search engines, if you have a link from one of those sites then you are guilty by association and it may adversely affect your rankings.

So now you know what you need to watch for when you increase link popularity for your site, lets now move onto the methods to get those links!

Method one - articles
Everyone knows that article marketing works to get traffic to your site, but think about it for a second, each article you submit has a link to your site on it… what a fantastic way to increase link popularity! The best part is that the big article directories are usually high PR, high traffic sites that the search engines love, so the link is a really effective link. This is by far my favourite way to increase link popularity.

Method two - ask
If you don’t ask, you don’t get… how many times have you heard that one? Well it is true with links! If you want to increase link popularity then you have to actively go out and seek sites that are on the same topic as yours and try and get them to link to you. Linking is a two way process, so don’t expect to get a link to your site without returning the favour.

The best way I have found to get someone to link to you, and to link in the way you want, is to email them. Tell them the url of the page where you have already put their link (gesture of good faith) tell them why you like their site and then give them the code they would need to link to your site and ask them to put it on their site. The sneaky thing about this is that you can make the code link to your site with the keyword of your choice! Whereas if they did a straight link they would probably just use the site name. This means you can increase link popularity for certain keywords.

Method three - forums
Forums are a fantastic medium for advertising (in your signature, not directly!) but that also means they can increase your link popularity by displaying a link to your site. Just include a link to your site in your signature with the appropriate anchor text and when that thread is indexed by the search engine then it will index the link as well. Another great point about forums is that the content is constantly updated, so the search engines love them and they are constantly being indexed.

There you have three devastatingly effective methods to increase link popularity - the next step is up to you and is the hardest of all, taking action with your new found knowledge…

Find out what everyone else is trying to hide from you! Find out the true steps it takes to make your fortune online with your FREE copy of the ‘Easy Success Blueprint’ ~Click here now to get your free report~

Other articles by this author:
Clickbank - How To Access The Vault
What is the Best Work From Home Job?

Build it and they will come. OK, great sounds terrific in a Hollywood Blockbuster but in the real world life is actually a little different.

In other words, results have to be a bit more immediate, for example:

Client “How is our online link building promotion coming on?”

SEO: “It is going really well, we have started to put into place some really solid foundations which will act as part of a Link-baiting and SMO Strategy which will yield massive results. Link building if carried out carefully is the cornerstone on which the Internet thrives”

Client: “How long is this all going to take and what sort of time line have you put into place?”

SEO: “Well link building is always a tenuous business that sometimes takes time to for the true value of the results to show themselves. None of the major search engines like to be rushed in anything they do with regards to the monitoring of inbound links. MSN may start to recognise links within 4-6 weeks, Yahoo in 2-3 Months and if we are lucky then we could get some Kudos and goodwill from Google within 6-9 months.

Client: “So what you are saying is….?”

SEO: What we are saying is that you cannot rush an exercise like this if you want to see the quality results. You should have to allow for 6 months minimum for us to monitor and see exactly where we are with regards to our links and then another 6 months to react to that first assessment.”

Client: “Stop treating me as if I am an idiot and get buying some links and have a report on my desk before next Months meeting if you wish to keep this account!”

Well folks, how do you deal with that one? Sounds familiar doesn’t it?

You have two choices in your online campaigns. Live or die, it is that simple.

Get results and you live to fight another day, lose out and you are toast, as they say.

So what do you have to do to succeed? Well as the fictional discussion highlighted above, to succeed and get profile in the online world you need inbound links both in quality and in quantity. The next burning issue to be resolved is how long for all of this to happen?

“In the long run, we are all dead” states the noted and eminent Economist John Maynard Keynes (founder of the whole Keynesian School of Economics and eminent member of the Bloomsbury group) and never more has this been more applicable to the world of Online activities.

Stand still and if you are very lucky then the best you can hope for is for life to pass you by with minimal fuss. If you are extremely unlucky then whilst in the process of passing you by, your competition may well just flatten you in the process for good measure.

Buying your links now and getting a jump on the competition may, just may, get you out of that nightmare scenario and leave you to continue your brave fight with the world until next

Stephen Morgan writes about a number of Internet based issues such as Marketing
and Promotion and Link building. A
keen proponent of all aspects of SEO and
SMO, he advises clients to look at the whole mix of online services available.

Why is link popularity so important? First of all, what is link popularity? Link popularity is the search engines’ assignment of popularity to your web site based on your inbound links - and that impacts your search engine rankings. So you need link popularity to get the search engine rankings you want.

You can get link popularity in a number of different ways. You can get link popularity by trading links with other web masters. The reason I don’t do that though is that if they get their web site delisted in the search engines or something like that, then you have a link to a bad web site. So if you are going to do that, put all the links on one page or set of pages, and then check them once a month. Anybody who is showing a ‘0′ pagerank should be taken off your list - and do not exchange links with anyone who is a ‘0′ pagerank.

So how else to do it? A tedious way of doing it, but it works, is web site directory submission - you submit your web site to a list of maybe 100 web directories - and they post a link to you in their web site. The drawback to that is that it can take up to six months for the links to show up - but, hey, you are planning to be in business in six months anyway, right - so then the links will help you then.

The next way to get link popularity - and my favorite way - is to write articles and submit them to the various article directories online. They like to have your content, and of course you like to have the link back to your web site, so it actually works out quite well for both of you.

The key with this is to write a lot of articles - I have people complain to me that they are not getting any traffic from the articles - but they have only submitted like 10 or so. Look, I know it is hard work - but at the time I am writing this I have around 1100 - and I intend to write about 30 today.

So it gets me back to my old soapbox - you have to work hard if you want to make it online - but if you make it online, the rewards are great.

Do you want to learn more about how I do it? I have just completed my brand new guide to article marketing success, ‘Your Article Writing and Promotion Guide’

Download it free here: Secrets of Article Promotion

Do you want to learn how to build a massive list fast? Click here: Email List Building

Sean Mize is a full time internet marketer who has written over 900 articles in print and 9 published ebooks.

I started my directory three months ago. But my first question was how to market the site to attract visitors to my site, who could be turn to a possibly good customers. First it was very tough to get targeted visitors to your site and then to capitalize on them is can be tough.

How to start
My first priority was to have a good back link for my site. But then my question was to where to get the back link and that too free of cost, because I can’t spend too much on marketing plan alone. I have some other projects also.

First Step
Enroll in good webmaster forums which will be a good guide in becoming a good webmaster. There you will come to know the niches of internet marketing and your most of problems can also be solved through forums. Signature in forums plays a very important role in building backlinks for the site, but do check with the rules and regulations of the forum, because most of the forums allows signature only after certain no. of posts.

Second Step
Get a list of free directory where you can submit your site free of cost. One such list is available with v7n.com, info.vilesilencer, digitalpoint and various other sites. There are other sites also from where you can get a good list of directories. For this do a Google search.

Third Step
Submit you site to as much site as possible. Don’t look for the quality of the site, because your site is also new. Use proper titling, keywords, description for you site. And don’t expect a booming traffic from directories, because directories are only for back linking, not for targeted getting traffic.

I hope this article help you to understand the basic of web marketing. In my coming articles I will try to explain the above the points in details. See you again here.

The author is a owner of http://urlsdirectory.com - http://indiatenders.com

Just over a decade ago two young men began working on a new search engine, which at the time they called “BackRub”. The search engine had this name because of its unique ability to analyze the back links going to any given web site.

Larry Page and Sergey Brin are the names of those two men. They changed the name of “BackRub” to “Google”, and started operating commercially in September, 1998.

The figures for 2006 were released in April, 2007. (Nielsen/NetRatings) Of the many hundreds of search engines that are available, Google had 50.8% of the search engine market during 2006. This was an increase of 22.6% of the market they had in searches during 2005.

Whilst on the topic of the Nielsen/NetRatings figures, it is interesting to note, the next biggest search engine operator was Yahoo which had 23.6% of the market during 2006. The first seven place getters amounted for 98.4% of the total searches done during 2006. The remaining 1.6% was shared by the many hundreds of the other guys.

I tend to use Google more than any of the other search engines, for searches and other purposes. The number of times people chose Google for searches during 2006 was a staggering 1.4 billion.

Back links are still an important part of the algorithm that Google’s spiders use when they are crawling over sites to rank them. So anyone out there who is connected to the WWW who would like to send a link to any or all of my web sites…, thank you very much. It would be most appreciated. At last count I had around forty of them, but I would be happy to compile a list for you if you wish.

There may even be someone out there who is feeling generous and philanthrophic, and would really like to help this poor struggling Web Master. This is what you will do. Firstly you register with a domain name registrant company an appropriate domain name. Next, you build and publish a web site that is full of praise for my businesses and more importantly for me personally. Then as an extra, you could throw in a personal blog site, that you have designed for me. Of course you will also need to cover the costs involved in hosting these sites. Finally, don’t forget to give me back links to any or all of my official web sites.
Up with the Header would be a really good spot for this link, up there it could be easily found by people as well as the search engine spiders. Now, no one has done these things for me as yet, but I can live in hope.

However, all of the things mentioned above I did as recently as last week for a couple whose business I have been associated with for the last year or so. Their business is a dance studio, and I have been a regular participant in their classes and social dance sessions.

My motivation?

Well, nothing more than wanting to help out. I have generally enjoyed participating at their venue, and thought I could make a contribution. I did try to explain to the male half of this business duo on Wednesday night just what a blog site was all about, and how I thought it could be a useful tool to use in communicating with their client base. He was apprehensive about it, but seemed open minded enough to have a look. I offered to help talk through with him on the telephone, and I also mentioned that if he didn’t want to use it that was fine also, as I could easily close the site down.

What I received instead the following morning was an accusatory telephone call from the female half of this duo suggesting I should leave their business to them. Naturally, I immediately closed both sites down.

But, back to Google and rubbing backs. Hey, anyone out there, come and rub mine as often as you like. I suggest it is vitally important for any business that has a web site to be aware of Google rankings, and how to improve them. This particular dance venue, I found as a result of a Google search less than two years ago. The clear profit they have made from admission fees from me alone in the period I estimated this morning to be well in excess of $2,500.00. Then there is the profit from meals and drinks on top of that. It is indeed curious to me that this particular business woman not only has no apparent concern regarding the importance of web sites linking to hers, but even treats with contempt a “friend’s” attempt to be supportive of their business and them as teachers.

Ian McKenzie is Director of Ian McKenzie’s Domains http://www.ianmckenziesdomains.biz and Professional Performance Australia. Links to all of his company web sites can be found at http://www.ianmckenzieslinks.com

When you own a profitable home based business, one of the biggest things you need to consider is gathering up links from other sites, and posting your links on other websites. The main reasons for this are to get more traffic to your site, and to increase your link popularity, or “link pop”.

Link popularity is a measure of the number of links that point from other sites back to your site. The more back-links you have, the greater your traffic and possibly sales may be.

Link popularity is not the same thing as Google Page Rank, or PR. Page Rank is more a reflection of the quality of links pointing back to your site. This can be important too, but many webmasters would say that PR is not as important as focusing on making your site easy to use, read, and navigate for the average visitor.

If link popularity creates traffic for you, and helps you build a profitable home based business, then you really want to focus on attracting visitors to your site by making sure the URL to your website is posted on many other sites.

First of all, there are websites that will calculate your link pop for you if you type in “Link popularity checker” into Google’s search box. If you visit one of those sites, you will be asked to type in your URL and it will give you the number of links you have in Google, MSN, and Yahoo.

There are many ways to spread your links around the internet. One of the ways is by doing another Google search for blogs and guest-books related to your website’s topics. For example, if you own a profitable home based business website, you could enter the terms “profitable home based business” and follow that by “blogs” or “guest-books”.

This will bring up a list of sites for you to visit and post comments on their blogs or guest-books related to the content of their blog or site. You want the comment to be useful, helpful, and related so that you are not accused of spamming. You also want to be sure to add your URL if allowed. Adding your URL will increase your link pop.

You can also attract visitors to your website by spreading your links around discussion forums on your website’s niche. The same concept applies to forums that you must be very careful not to spam them with useless comments like “Oh, very nice. Now visit my site”. Comments like these can get you banned. Make useful posts and in the signature file at the end you may leave your URL, and again your link pop will go up.

Finally, one of the best ways to make yourself a profitable home based business using links is by writing original articles and posting them to article directories around the internet. It’s best to use an article distribution service so that your articles get to thousands of publishers who may use your article in their newsletter or on their blog.

In the signature file, you can again leave a link to your site. You can easily get hundreds of quality one-way back-links by using this method alone. The key is quality here. Write a useful article with information that will help others. In the link box, you can say something about yourself, and your business, and use keywords to link back to your site that give the readers a compelling reason to click.

If you make a consistent effort to build your profitable home based business by posting your link on other’s sites, especially quality sites, then you may literally be “in business”! Consistency is key. If you get into a routine of commenting on blogs, guest-books, forums, and writing articles on a daily or weekly basis, you will soon have a very high link pop that leads to more traffic and sales!

Liane Bate owns a Plug-in Profit Site web business. Find out How to Attract Visitors to Your Profitable Home Based Business, and visit HonestMoneyMaking.com’s Home Business Blog
Tags: profitable home based business

All too often a hot thread will pop up in a forum where another worried, confused, trying-to-do-it-right webmaster is asking the “experts” about Google’s policy regarding link exchanges. Every time the question of linking comes up, a line is drawn in the sand, and the two sides go at it.

Here are a couple of typical responses:

“I still think getting links is a good idea. There are some topics on the web that that’s all visitors do is follow links.”

“Link exchanges will end up killing a site, many people who have them find themselves under a penalty now.”

Very seldom will anyone from either side of the link exchange issue offer definite proof of their argument. Each post is colored with slight variations on the degree to which it is bad or good. Each poster tries desperately to establish some credibility for themselves while arguing that their actions and decisions are the RIGHT way and this leads quickly to another heated, circular debate with no clear winners. This leaves the person asking the original question more confused than they were when they asked it in the first place.

Frankly, no one has any idea what Google, or any other search engine, will like or not like. What worked before may not work now, and no one can give a definitive answer as to why. As the old Zen master once said, “It is what it is.”

Now logic dictates that Google does not want to penalize sites engaging in link exchanges. What Google wants is to please the people that rely on them to provide a quality resource.

How does exchanging links or the avoidance of the practice, define a quality resource? It doesn’t. People define a quality resource, and therein lies the answer to what approach one should take regarding exchanging links.

As a person you are completely competent to know when exchanging a link increases or decreases the quality of your web site. If anything you do, including linking to a web site that links to you, increases the quality, that is good. If the exchanging of links decreases the quality, that is bad.

Remember this: You have every right to do whatever you think is best for your web site.

You can’t control Google, but you can control your site. If you exchange links or do not exchange links because you think it will make Google do something, your chances of losing at some point go way up. If you exchange links or don’t exchange links because it makes your site better, then you win. And doesn’t it make sense that Google wants winners?

Jake Lowrey has more than 30 years experience in the communications field as a writer, editor and public relations professional. He has been writing content and articles and optimizing web pages online since 2003, most recently for Team Link Network.