(or a successful link building strategy)

Every webmaster needs links. Who doesn’t need them at all, doesn’t know how to bring traffic to any site. Let me explain usually used directory strategies besides links to directories of a good quality. I’ll focus on the background of link building, because you need to understand how and why directories exist.

Let’s start from the beginning. There was the first directory out there. I don’t know which website it was as it isn’t very important right for me. As time went by, other companies or webmasters decided to run a directory on their site. A portal with huge traffic gets better quality is a directory script is installed within. Everyone knows that fact. When there were only about 1 000 000 websites, directory inclusion was usually at free of cost.

Some time later, the number of websites extremly raised and web marketers found out it could be a good business to ask money for a directory inclusion. Especially Google’s PageRank has great weight in this process. Everyone wants his site to be listed on a page with enormous popularity and huge PageRank. Google simply caused paid inclusion! But we’re here not to convict Google, because we all love Google; Google is the one who brings huge traffic to our sites and Google can make us millionaires too!

Some years ago, enterprising webmasters found a PageRank of 4 or 5 on their directory pages and the business was born. Not every directory submission is free since that moment. Unfortunately. On the other side, there are quality directories like dmoz.org, which still like free inclusion. Of course, getting listed in dmoz is sometimes pretty hard. I have only 1 site of mine listed in dmoz even it’s listed there twice. You can get listed there twice by using different languages on your site. It doesn’t break any TOS (Terms of service) and it’s fully legal.

When you know why there are paid directories, let’s analyse their future mission. Consider all following examples as paid directories, please. I’ll analyse free directories too.

• 1) A directory is paid, but it doesn’t offer any other service. I cound on that 90% of such directories will simply die in 1-2 years. It’s because Google’s PageRank will lose it’s importance in some years. Google says that there are about 100 variables which determine the final ranking of a site. And they’re right; I’ve seen many PageRank 0 (or 1) sites in the top10 for good phrases. This fact roots in the content and theme based factor. Said by simple words, I wouldn’t buy any link.
• 2) A directory is paid, but it offers some extra services such as tools or forums. This is more friendly situation, when you know that your site will be listed somewhere where people go to and where it’s „alive“. Different forums mean good starting point for running a directory. If a forum gets 10 000 hits daily, webmasters should get enough money and there exists an assume that they will be alive for a long time. Yes, forums with directories are good investment. Some risk still exists if you imagine they can be sold or directories can be un-installed. Anyway, good business at all.
• 3) A directory is paid, but it is only a part of a huge site. This kind of business is called portal. Yes, large portals with many points of interest, with huge traffic are the best place where to submit your sites. If they’re owned by large companies, they won’t be forgotten and they will be alive for decades. I recommend to submit your sites to such websites, however they may ask hunreds of dollars for an inclusion.

Besides paid directories, there are still friendly free directories. If you don’t want to run a paid directory and you still want to get money from a free directory, let’s read the following lines.

• 1) A directory is free and it accepts every submission. This strategy isn’t the best one and I strongly recommend you to avoid it. It’s always better to approve only about 5% of all submitted sites than accepting all of them simply because you should want to link to quality sites only. The reason is very simple; You won’t get penalized. Leave some place for the guidelines and sites which don’t meet the criteria, will be simply rejected. Go through the following case, so you’ll see other benefits of this strategy.
• 2) A directory is free, but it accepts only sites of a good quality. Yes, this is the way how I run my directory too (see the bottom of the navigation menu). I require lowercase except some special cases. You wouldn’t imagine how many sites are submitted with the first letter of every word uppercased. This leads me to a simple answer; Many sites are submitted by robots of by people who don’t even speak an english language at all! The second part of the following sentence proved to be right. Using my Google Analytics account, I found out that many submissions come from India! Yes, that superb India, where we „should outsource“ our projects to! Yeah, webmasters all over the world, put your hands together and outsource our projects to India, where people mostly don’t speak english! We don’t care about it, because they’re cheap! Stupid idea!!! Let me tell you why running a free directory can be a great source of income. Firstly, consider paid inclusions besides free inclusions. Yes, some sites like to be listed as the first ones, so offer them a paid inclusion. Someone will pay. Probably, you will not earn enough money for living. So where are the other ways of income? Google AdSense seems to be a good solution even though you might break AdSense TOS by showing the links to sites in your directory beside the ads. OK, this is the reason why you should edit some submissions into the form it won’t break any AdSense TOS. If AdSense and paid inclusion aren’t enough, try to sell some premium space on your site. For example, create an empty space at the top of your site, or navigation menu and sell that place. Create contests. Or simply let your registered users post their articles (check for plagiarism at first) and offer them a link t otheir site. Let them introduce their sites or offer them some kind of SEO advice.

Generally, people like to link to free sites. If you offer something what they can’t find anywhere else, or simply if you offer something unique, they will gladly link to you. For example, I’m planning to create a new tool called ‘Content suggestion’ soon. Yes, it will really tell you which keywords to focus on. It won’t be a simple keyword suggestion, because it will be able to suggest you optimal keywords which to build your articles on. These keywords will mean ‘theme based’ content. I’m awaiting some new links to my site outside ordinary directories when I’ll release this tool.

Finally, here are some good and free direcotries. I hope they’re still free… Anyway, I’ll publish another list of free directories soon. Come back to this site later.

Please, contact me if any of the directories below require a reciprocal or paid link. I will remove them immediatelly.

zopso.com
search4i.com
a1weblinks.net
o2listings.com
mygreencorner.com
kingdomofurl.com
newdesignworld.com