Link Building and Link Popularity
Link building is one of the most important processes in a site’s Search Engine Optimization strategy. There are two ways of building links to your website. One of them is to submit to free directories or pay a certain fee to get your site listed in a Directory. Another way is to pay a webmaster to link to your site.
The benefits of submitting your site to quality web directories provides two main benefits
1. Increased link-popularity resulting from one-way links from quality directories.
2. Increased traffic from being listed in a niche directory that is searched by many people every day.
To gain maximum benefit from the directory submissions, ensure that the directories have a certain level of popularity. In case of paid directories you should look for evidence of value.
The two most popular Directories on the web today are Yahoo! and DMOZ open directory project. Yahoo Directory – The cost for a site’s listing in Yahoo directory is $299/year but Yahoo’s directory listing has direct benefits, Google and other popular search engines give your website added importance if your website is listed in the Yahoo directory. Also Yahoo is the portal of choice for millions of users online, which makes your potential target market at least in the hundreds of thousands, for almost all niches.
DMOZ (ODP) – DMOZ, also known as the Open Directory Project, is a highly popular directory like Yahoo but, what differentiates it from Yahoo is it’s listing is free. But unlike a lot of free web offers, it’s listing is still very valuable. Directories like the Google Directory and many others are powered by the results from dmoz, which can help generate quality traffic to your site.
However with submission to DMOZ, there is very little you can do about the time factor involved. Many websites that are submitted are never indexed, mainly because demand is more than the capacity of the editors. Some feel the Open Directory concept is dead and has not much value it had a few years ago, and may not be able to catch up with its backlog of pending sites. Don’t go overboard with the submissions and try to get listed in each and every directory.
In most cases, a directory listing is useful only for the link popularity. If you can find better deals purchasing links on authority sites in your niche, go for them. Or you can also ask go for reciprocal links with other sites relevant to yours. Remember that directory listings form a small part of your overall online marketing strategy. If you don’t have the budget for a Yahoo listing, don’t worry. Focus on other forms of marketing, and come back to it when you can afford it.
