As the number of websites grow everyday, it is becoming increasingly difficult for a new site to attain good rankings on search engines. Since major search engines factor link popularity heavily into their ranking algorithms, building relevant links to your site is perhaps the single most important component of search engine optimization.

For a new site with no, or few inbound links, buying text links on more established related sites could provide a boost to your link popularity. But this strategy could prove prohibitively expensive, especially in a highly competitive market where you’d have to buy lots of links to catch up with the competition.

Web directory listings represent a viable alternative to link buying. Apart from driving traffic to your site through direct referrals, web directories provide one-way inbound links to your site, boosting your link popularity and ultimately improving your search rankings.

There are thousands of web directories on the net, with dozens sprouting up every day. Some are general directories; others cater to specific niches. Some are free; others charge inclusion fees. Some are free only if you provide a reciprocal link in return. Many feature both free and paid listings.

The main advantage of a paid listing is the luxury of having your site listed quickly above everybody else’s. Free submissions may take several weeks or months for review. If you work on a limited budget, you may want to submit to a handful of paid directories and a few hundred free ones.

Some directories charge inclusion fees that are too high for the listing to be cost effective. When considering a paid listing, look at not only the Google PageRank of the homepage of the directory, but also that of the subpage where your link will actually reside. While it may seem like a good deal to have your site listed on a PR5 directory for $15, the deal becomes far less attractive when you find out that the internal page where your link is placed is only PR2.

If you’ve ever submítted to web directories before, I don’t have to convince you that the process is extremely tedious and time-consuming, especially when you submit to a large number of them. Unlike search engines that send out robots to index web pages, web directories rely on more detailed submission forms to gather information about your site. Since each submitted site must be reviewed by a real person, most directories require that submissions are also performed by a real person, as opposed to an automatic script. Many directories use a visual code verification process to prevent automated submissions. Apart from complying with the directory’s guidelines, manual submission is the only way to ensure that your site is submitted to the proper category.

Because of the time involved in manually submitting your site and the sheer number of directories on the web, it’s important that you know which directories to submit to. Obviously, you’d want to submit to only the high-PR directories and avoid the low-PR ones, right? Not really. Just because a directory has a low PR does not mean that it’s not worth submitting to. The directory may be brand new and not around long enough to be ranked by Google. In contrast to the more established directories that continually experience a back-log of submissions, newer directories tend to review and list sites more quickly. As the directory becomes more popular, so will your link. So, don’t judge a directory solely by its PageRank; rather, base your decision on the overall quality of the directory.

Another important thing to look at is whether or not the directory you submit to is search engine friendly. Search engines like static web pages whose content stay the same regardless of who visits the page, or when they visit, not dynamic pages that are created on-the-fly. Browse to a couple of categories and look at the URL in the navigation bar. If the URL looks like, http://www.anysite.com/forums/thread.php?threadid=12345&sort=date, it’s probably not search engine friendly. An example of a static, search engine friendly URL is: http://www.anysite.com .

Another question to ask is: How easy is it to submit to the directory? How many hoops do you have to jump through to get to the submission form? When you finally get to the form, how many fields does the form have? A directory should ask for pertinent information like your name, email, URL, link title, link description, and keywords, but it should not look like a job application. With the exception of a handful of major directories like DMOZ and Yahoo, you should not have to spend more than 3 to 4 minutes to submit your site.

Another consideration is whether or not the directory has a category specific enough for your site. For optimal SEO benefits from your listing, your link should be grouped under a specific category containing sites whose content are related to yours. Such a grouping makes your listíng more relevant in the eyes of the search engines, as well as providing an easier way for visitors to the directory to find your site.

Simply having your site listed on a directory is not enough. Your choice of the link title can determine how much impact your listing will have on your search engine rankings. Ideally, your link title (or “anchor text”) should contain the keywords that you want others to search for to get to your site. Since most web directories require a unique link title, however, it may not be possible to select a common phrase like “Free Web Directory” as your link title. This title is likely already taken by another web directory. Simply prefixing the phrase with your domain name, e.g. “GoDirectory.org Free Web Directory”, would make the title unique.

Oftentimes, a directory has several related categories that are suitable for your site. How do you decide which one to submit to? Ideally, you’d want to submit to the category that has the highest PageRank. However, this may not turn out to be the wisest choice as your link may be buried among a zillion other listings. Going with a lower-PR category with fewer competing links may prove to be more beneficial. When choosing from multiple related categories, choose one with a good balance of relevancy, Pagerank, and number of competing listings.

In sum, submitting to web directories is a highly effective link building strategy that should be an integral part of any search engine optimization campaign. Manually submitting to a large number of directories is both laborious and time-consuming. Just keep the above points in mind to make the most of your time.

Just to cover the ground, lets go over what link building is quickly. Link building is the process of building backlinks to your site. The more backlinks (links from other sites to your site) a site has, the higher it ranks on the search engines. Link building therefore is a mission of all money makíng webmasters.

Link building methods have changed from time to time and a specific method that worked yesterday may not work today. This is due to changes in the industry over time and in some cases extreme abuse. If a specific link building method has been abused too much, then that method will not work anymore.

It is therefore very important to know which link building method works today so that you can spend your time in a most productive way.

There are many link building methods out there today that work with some working better than others. Below are some of the today’s popular links building methods:

Article Submission

If you are reading this article, then you know that you can publish your article in article directories. Not only do you gain backlinks to your site from your published articles (see bottom of this article), you will get some traffic as a bonus. Think of you reading this article. There might be many reading your published articles as well.

Article submission is a great way of building backlinks as it provides you with 100% relevant contextual backlinks that Google loves.

Directory submission used to work lot better before, but it is still a popular link building method that still works if done properly. How many directories are out there as of this date is anyone’s guess but one thing is certain: that most of the directories aren’t worth submitting to.

Google considers a Yahoo Directory link as a quality backlink so if you can afford and justify the cost, it is worth submítting to Yahoo Directory. Yahoo charges $300 for a yearly submission and there is no assurance that your site will be approved!

Directory Submission

DMOZ is another directory that is worth submitting to and can provide great benefit in your SEO campaign. It may take months to get the approval from DMOZ and the chance of getting approved is pretty slim. A lot of small directories use the DMOZ directory categories so getting listed with DMOZ would mean getting bonus listings on many other web directories.

Another good directory to submit to is the BOTW dírectory that costs $99 for a yearly submission and $299 for a permanent listing.

Other than the above, you should look for quality directories where you can submit your site. You can judge the quality of the directories by analyzing the number of sites listed, number of backlinks the directory has, PR, age of the directory, etc.

Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking worked like charm only a few months ago. If bookmarked on authority and quality bookmarking sites like Digg, Mixx, Propeller, etc, then you can still make good use of social bookmarking. Other than backlinks, social bookmarking also offers you some bonus traffic depending on where you submit to. If you can manage to put together or collect a good bookmarking site líst, then social bookmarking can still be a useful link building method.

Blog Commenting

This is a link building method where lots of spamming has already been done so to make the best of it, you need to work a little harder here. It is best to find quality blogs related to your category and make on-topic relevant comments. Not only do your comments add value to the blogpost, you now have a greater chance of getting your comment approved and your comments have greater chance of staying on those blogposts.

Press Releases

Submitting to press release sites can get you some backlinks as well. It is however hard to put together a líst of good press release sites that are worth submitting to. If a good líst can be managed, then this method can give some quality relevant backlinks as well.

Social Media and Web 2.0 Pages

There are a lot of quality social media and Web 2.0 sites where you can publish your articles for backlinks. You should write articles that are relevant to your site and publish them on these social media and Web 2.0 sites with your keywords hyperlinked to your site. Some of the authority sites are Squidoo, Hubpages, Blogger, WordPress.com, etc.

Social media and Web 2.0 links are very popular these days because they work great. They give quality, relevant contextual backlinks that Google and other major search engines love. There are lots of other link building methods out there, but if you can utilize the above ones to their fullest potential, there is no need for any other methods.