Link Building - Increase The Number of Backlinks to Your Site with Directory Submission

By Cheow Yu Yuan, January 22 2009

Directory submission is one of the best ways to get one way back links to your website. Therefore directory submission should always be included in every search engine optimization campaign to improve the link popularity of a website. If you want to achieve a successful SEO campaign, it is crucial that you get as many back links as possible from search engine friendly directories.

Of all directories, Yahoo, DMOZ and BOTW are the directories that you must submit to. Directory submission is not always expensive - although Yahoo! charges $299 and BOTW charges $239.95 for their directory inclusion, many directories online offer free submission such as DMOZ. Therefore, it is well worth your effort to develop a list of directories that accept free listings. In this way, you can either submit the website yourself, or outsource directory submission to a freelancer by providing him or her with the list.

On the Internet, there are general directories and specialist directories. General directories usually rank higher and have higher traffic than specialist directories as they have more categories and appeal to a wider audience. So you can submit your website to a list of general directories, and if you have specialist directories that appeal to your target audience, it is no harm listing your sites on them too!

One thing to note is that when you are submitting your website to a directory, make sure that you choose the most relevant category for submission. Most general web directories have many categories and in order for your site to be accepted, you need to submit your site to the most relevant category.

Directory submission is a very simple process and you can definitely do it on your own. In order for your website to be accepted, you just need to follow their specific guidelines and spend some time in the submission process. When directory submission is done correctly, the result can be very rewarding as you will get tons of back links for your site, which will increase your search engine traffic. Also, do make sure that the anchor text that is submitted to the directories contains the targeted keywords that you wish to rank well for.

Some directories allow you to submit deep pages. In this case, you should take advantage of this and use the right keyword in your anchor text and point it to the relevant content of a page.

Although directory submission is simple, it will take up a bit of your time during the submission process. So if you do not have the time to invest in manual directory submission, you can always outsource this task to agencies or freelancers.

Directory submission should always be part of your overall link building effort. Other than directory submission, do not forget about other important link building techniques such as article marketing, social book marking and online PR. Happy linking!