Directory Growth

Directory Submission and Article Submission - Link Building Strategy
By Mansi Aggarwal

If you have a website then you are certainly concerned with its rankings in search engines because you want to increase traffic to your website to increase revenues. Fortunately, with article submission services and directory submission you can increase the visibility of your website as well as its ranking in the search engines because you will be gaining one way links and visibility. Consider the following benefits of article submission and directory submission so you, too, can enjoy a high ranking from the popular search engines.

Article Submission

The benefit form article submission is not as much from the information in the article, but from the links embedded in the article that increase your rankings with the search engine. Search engines work on a variety of levels, one of them including the amount of links on the Internet pointing back to your website. As a result, the more links you have the higher you are ranked. So, part of your search engine optimization strategy should be to use article submission services. You simply write or buy an article and have links to your site and different pages in your site embedded in the article. Then, the article is submitted to various article directories and spread across the Internet as well. The more links you have the higher your search rankings and a great way to get a lot of links is to use article submission services. Remember, once your article is submitted with the embedded links to your site it is more than likely to stay on the Internet forever and you will have one way permanent links to your site that are always helping you in the search engine rankings.

Directory Submission

If you are interested in your website truly performing the best in search engine rankings then you will concern yourself with directory submission. There are thousands of different directories out there, some that apply to your website, and others that do not. By focusing on directory submission in the directories that are related to your site you will certainly increase your rankings. Of course, each directory has categories as well so it does take some research and effort to get your website submitted to all the directories in the right categories that really benefit your site. But, once you do you have a permanent listing of your website in the directory that will direct your target audience to your site day in and day out. Remember, however, that just any directory submission is not going to get you the traffic you want. You need to focus on submitting to directories that relate to your website in order to have your website directory submission in the location where your target audience is.

Directory Submission and Article Submission - Permanent Links

When you rely solely on other websites to host your link in order for you to host their, you are risking that other webmasters simply chose to remove your link and with it your Search Engine rankings go down. However, when you use article submission and directory submission in order to build links to your site and make your website more visible to your target audience you are basically receiving permanent links and advertisement for your site. The benefit of this is that with a little effort you can get your articles submitted and your website listed with the directories and then just sit back and enjoy the permanent links and higher search engine rankings you receive.

Mansi aggarwal enjoys writing about directory submission

10 Mistakes to Avoid When Setting Up a Link Directory
By Tony Simpson

When adding a link directory to a web site there are important mistakes to avoid, or else you’ll be storing up big problems for later on. I know, because I made some of these mistakes and didn’t have anyone to offer any advice or tell me what I’m about to tell you.

1. Don’t create a directory page with all your links on one page. You should have no more than 30 - 40 links to a page. The reason is that some sites will not link to you if a page you put their link on has too many links, because it dilutes the value of the link to them. To understand why, you need to know about Google Page Rank and how it’s passed to another site from your link page. That’s a subject too lengthy for this topic.
2. Plan your link directory on paper first and decide what names you are going to give each category in your link directory. Make the names fit with the theme of your site and try to avoid adding categories which are nothing to do with what your site is about.For example if your site is about Making Candles and Candle Accessories, don’t have link categories for Computers & Games, or Search Engine Optimization etc. The reason is that if you want your site to achieve a good ranking with the search engines your site should be built tightly around your theme, in this example Candles.
3. Only link to web sites that relate to your site theme and have something to offer your visitors. This refers to item 2. If you don’t have categories for unrelated topics, you’ll be less tempted to link to them because you don’t have a category to put them in.
4. Choose names for link categories that you want to use now and in the future, because you can’t easily change them later on. Once the pages are created by your link manager software, it will use the category names you give it. So if you have a category called “Candle Power” it will create an html page called Candle-Power.html or something similar, using your category name. Once this page is found and indexed by the search engines, in time it will gain Page Rank.If later, you change the category name to “Candle Lights” the link manager software will create a new page called Candle-Lights.html and you will lose the page rank you had gained for the earlier page. If your link partners linked to you because the page you put them on had a good page rank, renaming the page will cause this page rank to fall to zero. As a result your link partners may drop the link they have back to you, which is not what you ever want to happen.
5. Avoid having sub-categories or sub sub-categories in your directory from your main category pages. The reason for this is again to do with how search engines will rank your directory pages. If your directory pages are more than two levels or two clicks away from your main index or home page they will either not be indexed by some search engines, or if they are indexed they will achieve a lower ranking. Some web sites will not link to you if the page you are to put the link on is more than 2 clicks away from your home page because these webmasters know what I’ve just told you.
6. Ensure each page of your link directory has a link back to your home page.
   Once again the reason for this is to do with how search engines will rank your directory pages, so make sure these links are in place.
7. Don’t be obsessed at linking only to web sites that have a good ranking with the search engines. Look first at whether the site has anything to offer your visitors. If it has poor or unrelated content don’t link to it. If it has good related content that compliments your own content but has zero or low page rank, consider linking to it. Later on you may be glad you provided a link, when it’s page rank improves.
8. Don’t use link directory software that doesn’t automatically check links to your web site are still present on the other sites. Doing link checking manually can be tedious and you have to remember to do it. Software that you can set a schedule to check links and automatically send out emails to webmasters when links are not found will save you a lot of time. Link management software that will automatically suspend links and delete them if they are repeatedly not found is an added bonus.
9. Don’t use standard templates that come with any link manager, link directory management software. You need to modify these templates to match the look and design of your own web site. This requires you know something about editing a web page using an HTML editor. Also don’t use the standard email templates, personalize them in some way, even if it’s only to add your name.
10. Don’t assume you’re finished once you’ve set up your link directory and done all the things I’ve said. You must test and retest every aspect to ensure everything is working properly, before visitors arrive.This means making an add a link request, as if you were a visitor to your own web site. Setting up test links and making sure these links are being checked by the software so it detects when links are removed or defective. Making sure it sends out email notices correctly and check the formatting is correct when they are received. You should also check you can make backups of your link directory database and be able to restore it in the event of a problem.

Tony Simpson, Has been doing Web Site Design, Promotion and Optimization for 5 years. He provides advice, product reviews and products at Web Page Add Ons to Make Automation of Your Web Site Work for You.

Links Directory - What Users Want
By Mahmoud Ibrahim

First things first, I have to admit I’m more of a songwriter than a webmaster. Actually, I’m just a songwriter who happens to own a website. Therefore, I decided to save whatever little experience I have as a webmaster for another article and write about link directories from the prespective of an average internet user instead. Just think about it, if you are someone surfing the net for that specific piece of information you badly need, would a huge links directory full of different categories and sub-categories help?

No!! I’d rather use a search engine like Yahoo! or Google. Big links directories like dirspace, axeq or ODP have a number of very serious drawbacks from a user point of view. First, their search scripts are not very powerful. Sometimes, you search for something in the directory and you don’t find it, not because it is not there but because the directory search script just doesn’t cut it. Second, most of these links directories are designed to be useful for search engine ranking, meaning that they are more search engine friendly than user friendly. This may be the reason why websites’ description in these directories are not that informative; the URL submitter will only bother writing a key word rich description, and the directory administrator is just too busy to check. And the result? Misleaded user!!

Finally, even if the links directory is very deep and full of many sub-categories, it will always be impossible to construct enough categories to cover all subjects in a comprehensive and useful manner. For example, a user will not just look for a music website or even a songwriting website, he/she probably wants a “songwriting tips” website because he is having writer’s block. How many links directories offer a “songwriting tips” sub-category? One out of the thirty I checked!! As a result, the user will end up either searching through piles of unorganized links or wasting his/her time all together without coming up with the information he/she wants.

So..!?!!

I think that the third problem is the most important one. This is the greatest obstacle I faced as a user; I just can’t find the category that fits the topic I want to read about. There is only one way to solve this problem; which is building “Special-Interest Directories”. These are simply directories that list websites covering a certain subject. “Special-Interest Directories” have the chance of covering a certain topic deeply and comprehensively. A user would go directly for an “Internet Marketing” directory and will be successful finding a webpage about writing text ads for example. That user saved a lot of time and effort and actually got what he/she wanted. Also, “Special-Interest Directories” are not going to be cluttered with lots of categories and sub-categories like big links directories. Moreover, they will be more user oriented than search engine oriented since the administrator had built them while having the concept of serving internet surfers in mind.

A special-interest links directory is bound to send real, targeted traffic to the webpages it lists. But that’s only if the URL submitters would write meaningful description and only if the directory administrator care enough to check if the descriptions they are offered truly reflect the webpage content. Personally, I thought it would be a great way to serve both my fellow songwriters and my fellow webmasters by building a “Music & Songwriting Links Directory”. This offers webmasters who run music and songwriting websites a way to increase their traffic and at the same time offer musicians and songwriters a nice source if information.

Visit the “Songwriting & Music Links Directory” and add your link. Also, don’t forget to build your own special-interest directory to cover your own field of expertise…Let’s make the internet a better and more helpful place!!

Mahmoud Ibrahim is a young songwriter from Egypt. He is the owner of http://www.songwritingfever.com, a website dedicated to songwriting collaboration.