Human edited web directories are import because they are much more exact directory and weed out sites that are junk and have no substance. Placing your link on web directories gives website owners an advantage of getting higher search engine. The higher the search engine ranking is equal to getting more traffic to your website, it is much more than that, the higher your page rank more and more people want to trade links, take your content which gives you more links and more traffic. A good PR gives better position in Google’s search engine results. By submitting websites to directories will increase traffic, profitability and search engine page rank.

Webmasters who use directories for increasing link popularity should check out the directory first to see if the directory is SE friendly or not as, only a SE friendly directory will give value for their links. When individuals go to a web directory they are looking for some specific information. Perhaps one of the most highly sought after web directories are the web directory by Yahoo and Dmoz.

Many webmasters use something called reciprocal linking, which is a technique where a webmaster places the other webmaster link on their site and the other webmaster places a link form the other webmaster, so in fact they are placing the other link on their site. Here are some easy and quick methods you can use to start building your link network campaign that will drive visitor traffic to your website.

Many web directories are free, but when the directories reach higher and higher page rank they start charging money. If the website charges money to submit a link you sometimes have a choice of placing the link as features which is then placed on the top of all other links. To get traffic to your site you need to build free incoming links on many web directories, trading links with another site is another form of web directory so doing both is a great marketing plan.

Receiving free traffic from web directories is a definite benefit when figuring out the marketing budget. The first benefit to acquiring free traffic from web directories is that it is an economical way to obtain website visitors. Basically web-hosting directories are of two types: paid web hosting directories and free Web hosting directories.

Your income is driven by how many visitors you receive to your website. The more visitors you receive the better your chances of having people purchase your product. Try to submit to as many web directories as possible; it is time consuming because most do not accept automatic submission. Webmasters are always looking to get traffic to their website either by free methods or by paying for it. There are directories that offer both but if adding your link as a free link it will take longer to be added to the directory, paying for the link guarantees your link will be added quickly. Another place to receive traffic is to place your link on article directories and the newest form is video directories.

It’s essential for new websites to increase search engine visibility. One of the easiest ways for new websites to increase search engine visibility is through optimizing their content with long tail keywords. Long tail keywords are easier to rank for because they have low to medium competition and decent search traffic. However, no matter how keyword-rich your content is, nobody will find it unless your site’s ranking improves through the accumulation of backlinks. The most important factor in increasing visibility on the search engines over time is link building. Building links is free albeit time-consuming.

Getting Free Backlinks

There are a number of ways you can obtain free backlinks. One way to do this is through submitting your site to directories. Manually submitting your site to all the directories out there can be a long and arduous process but it will allow you to build up to hundreds of backlinks. You can also submit a press release announcing your new site to free press release distribution services online. The creation of Squidoo lenses also allows you to insert hyperlinks to different pages of your website with anchor text containing your target keywords. Hubpages also allows you to do something similar.

Also consider creating profiles on social media websites and putting your link in the profiles. If you ever decide to do a social media campaign to promote your site, it could be useful to already have a branded presence on social media portals. Links on social bookmarking sites can also help your site get crawled by search engines.

Writing for free can in turn bring you lots of backlinks and traffic. If you are a blogger, write guest posts for popular blogs that link back to your blog. You can also write short articles on your niche topic and submit them to article directories like ezinearticles. Ezinearticles gives authors a small resource box where you can include two hyperlinks to your website with anchor text that contains target keywords.

Another effective way to build links and network to build traffic is to participate in forum discussions and put your link in your forum signatures. You can also get involved in blog commenting to build networking relationships with bloggers, add to the discussions going on, and link to your site. Holding contests and giveaways is another way to build links for your site and build traffic. You can also increase traffic to your site and build links by offering a free tool or widget for use on a popular social media site such as Twitter and then credit the tool back to your site with a link. You can pay a designer to come up with the tool for you if you can’t do it yourself.

Additionally, find people to trade reciprocal links with. Do this by browsing webmaster forums to find link partners. It’s important not to overdo reciprocal linking because an excessive amount of reciprocal links can make your site lose value. However, gradual and moderate reciprocal linking can be beneficial. Make sure to trade links with sites that are highly relevant to yours so you can also increase traffic to your site while you’re at it.

Any new website owner that follows these simple and free link-building strategies will indeed manage to drive traffic to his/her website and accumulate links quickly. Building links can be a time-consuming process but the results are worth the effort because it is the #1 way to effectively improve search engine visibility.

Pssst… I’m going to let you in on the worst kept secret of search engine optimization:

It’s all about getting links to your website .

I’m serious. While on-page factors such as keyword density and title tags are rudimentary techniques that almost every new website has picked up on (quite a difference from three years ago), link building is something that still eludes many webmasters, and for good reason: It involves work.

In fact, search engine optimization is about 90 percent effort and 10 percent experience. You need experience to recognize which keywords are more profitable, which techniques you need to learn in order to get more visitors to your website, etc. etc. After learning all that, it’s just a matter of getting down to doing the work itself. And that is why search engine optimization software such as SEO Elite are so effective: They cut down on the sheer load of work involved and provide intuitive ways for you to use your experience and get the most out of your investments (in this case, your website AND your time!)

In this lesson I’m going to talk a bit about the techniques you can use to get more links to your website. There’s nothing special about them; they all involve some work, but they all pay off in terms of targeted traffic. In fact, that should be the prime goal of your link building campaign:

Use inbound links to build traffic

All the strategies mentioned below can be used to get more links to your website. It goes without saying that the more of these strategies you use, the faster you’ll be able to get more links.

A common pitfall for most people new to SEO is that they often get sucked in by catchphrases such as ‘the best way to get links to your website’ or ‘the top 3 strategies you can use to get tons of links to your website’. The truth is that none of these techniques is the ‘best’. In reality, your website and your business model (in other words, the nature of your website-customer interaction) will determine the most fitting strategies for your linkbuilding campaign.

In fact, when you launch your linking campaign, you’ll probably have varying degrees of success with the strategies below. For example, article submissions are a great way to earn more subscribers to your newsletter, while affiliate programs work wonderfully well if you have a decent list of proven products (or a great product). The methods below are not separated in any specific way; I’ve listed the ‘free’ methods first and the paid methods later. Use this list as a reference through your link building campaign, and for best results, mix and match these techniques in the way they suit your website the best.

Just ask…

The traditional way of getting links is to directly ask potential link partners to link to your website. This can be a one-way link or a reciprocal link (more on reciprocal links later). The key factors here are to identify potential link partners and then to contact them and offer either a reciprocal link, an offer to their visitors, or both (we’ll cover paid links later).

Finding potential partners is a difficult business. It used to be that you would search on a major search engine like Google or Yahoo for your target keywords, and then check each website in the top 50 or top 100 listings manually, evaluating their similarity to your niche and noting their contact information. This is a tedious process, and is fraught with the primary obstacle of most link managers: ‘What if they say no?’

You could make them an offer they can’t refuse (which you will, and I’ll tell you how) but to improve your chances, use technology to your advantage. As before, use your target keywords to search for the top websites in your niche, but instead of contacting them, use a search engine optimization software to evaluate the back-links of a top website.

The idea here is to find out which websites link to the top competition in your niche – the websites in the top 10 or top 20 results for your target keywords.

The second step is to make the approach, sell the idea, or like I said before, make them an offer they can’t refuse. Part of this approach is to ability to write convincingly (you’ll find samples online of successful link request emails) and it is something you learn with time – test your link requests by sending different letters and measuring the response and repeating what works.

The other half involves the offer itself – what your website (or you) can offer to the link partner that will compel him/her to link to you. If you’re looking for free links, this offer can include a reciprocal link, site-wide links or maybe just the quality of your website content. The idea here is to sell your link even before they visit your website to check if it’s worth linking to, and this can only happen if you can the right pitch.

Write an article

The idea is quite simple. To establish yourself as a knowledgeable expert in your field, you need to be able to project your knowledge beyond your own website. In this case it involves writing articles on a particular topic in your niche, and distributing them to article directories online.

While this is a crude approach, the method can be refined by offering an article to potential link partners – thus providing them with valuable content for their visitors. Article syndication is a powerful tool and if used properly can generate hundreds, even thousands of visitors for you.

A quick search within your niche can help you find article directories where you can position your article, but a better option is to look at content aggregation websites in your niche – sites which regularly post articles from off-site authors. This not only gives you a chance to build your links but also gives your reputation in this field a boost, something that you can leverage in later techniques.

Run an affiliate program

If you sell a product, or a range of products, or even a membership service, launching an affiliate program is the quickest way to get inbound links. Of course, you’ll need to promote the affiliate program beyond your own website, and you can combine the above two techniques to promote not only your website but also your affiliate program.

In addition, if you have an e-product (an e-book or software) and you sell it through a portal like ClickBank, you can be assured that your affiliates are managed directly through their website. In case you want to run your own affiliate script, you can find several for a low price and even some good ones for free.

http://www.easyclickmate.com is a good Clickbank affiliate script…

An affiliate program offers your visitors and potential link partners the chance to make money by doing a little promotion of your product. For other webmasters that could simply involve posting your link or even posting your article promoting your product on their website; a sure bet for getting a link.

Directory submissions and site submissions

Second-tier directories and niche directories are seriously under-estimated in terms of their impact on your website traffic. If you’re just starting out and looking for free traffic, steer clear of the paid listings of Yahoo and ilk and concentrate on smaller hubs. They may not receive hundreds of thousands of visitors every day, but if you can garner 10 visitors a day from one directory, and get 10 or 20 such directories to which you can submit your link, you have a free stream of 100-200 daily visitors for only an hour’s worth of work.

The same goes for submitting your website’s link on sites that have a ‘links’ page and require a reciprocal link in exchange. While this is not the best strategy to get links by, it will help you in the beginning to get some traffic and hopefully, natural links as a result of that traffic.

Paid links

If you’re looking for a high value link (for example a link from a PR 7 page) and your website is fairly new, you’re not going to get in through normal means. In this case, the offer involves money, and this can usually be judged through the site’s own advertising policies. Search the website for its media kit, or something similar. Alternatively, you can email them asking them about advertising opportunities on their websites. In this case being direct is the best approach, and will save both your time and theirs.

Of course, the catch here is the amount of money you’re willing to pay. Some websites charge a monthly fee, others charge a ‘per impressions’ fee (for example, your ad would be shown for 10,000 page views only). In these cases you won’t have much room to negotiate if you are just starting out, so it’s advisable to shun the big guns and go for the smaller fish – people who won’t ask you for too much money and will accept a combination of reciprocal linking, money and some other ‘free method’ such as an article submission. Once your website carries its own weight in traffic and Page Rank, you can target the PR 7 and PR 8 websites.

The advantage of such websites is the sheer amount of traffic they get. A news site in Pakistan gets about 60,000 page views a day. Even on a CTR (click-thru-rate) of 1%, that amounts to 600 visitors a day, or 18,000 visitors a month.

The question is, what will you do with this traffic? The possibilities are endless.

Paid listings

Similar to paid links, paid directory listings are essentially directory inclusions for your website. For some directories, like Yahoo, this is a yearly arrangement, and even then there is no guarantee of inclusion; your website must pass certain editorial criteria. On other, less known directories, the payment is simply a one-time fee plus a request for a reciprocal link.

In many ways paid listings and links are the ‘extra’ tweaks that you give to your online business. Even if you have the cash at the start, it’s a prudent strategy to pursue free linkbuilding strategies alongside paid methods to ensure that you don’t invest too much in your business before it starts to show a profit.

The key to a successful link-building campaign is the consistency of effort you put in. Cut out the hard work in finding link partners (and for that matter, niche directories) by using a linking software such as SEO Elite, with which you can simply plug in the website URL, select your search engine and get a list of all the websites that link to it, the anchor text of those websites as well as their Page Rank. Lists like these, of your top 20 competitors, should be your target link partners during your link campaign.

Link-building is a simple business. All it requires is consistency, and some hard work (which you can eliminate using a simple search engine optimization software such as SEO Elite). And with things being so easy, don’t be surprised if you follow these steps and find yourself in the top 10 results for your keyword in just a few months Click Here To Get Your Free Copy of 7 Days To Massive Website Traffic by Optimization Expert, Brad Callen

Link popularity is referred to as the process of enhancing the popularity of a webpage by linking it to other domains to increase search engine ranking of a webpage. Link building, apart from increasing the ranking of a webpage on search engine key word search, also helps increase the PR of a page. Mere search engine optimization, no mater how nicely done, is not sufficient enough to guarantee high search engine ranking.

Major search engines such as Google, Yahoo, MSN, and Alta Vista rely on link popularity to determine the importance of a website and rank it accordingly. If more number of related incoming links your have to your website the better for you to rank high in search engines.

Tips for Improving Link Popularity

* Get listed in directories: One of the best ways I know for improving link popularity in search engines is to get listed in the top directories. Start with Open Directory Project, which is free, but also include Yahoo! Express and LookSmart Express Submit. If your site is relevant to a section in About.com, submit to that network. Search for industry-specific directories and topical search engines in Search Engine Guide’s Search Engine Directory, and submit to relevant databases.

* Build links: Search for the top key phrases you want to be found for, then review the sites that come up. Visit these sites and select those that are noncompetitive. Ask them to exchange links with your site, giving them reasons why your site is valuable and suggesting where a link to you might be appropriate. These are the best sites to be linked to for your search phrases because their high rankings will improve your link popularity, not to mention increase your traffic if their visitors click your link.

* Redesign your site to promote linkability: Provide quality informational resources and outgoing links on your site, such as links to search engines, news portals, and industry professional organizations. Your outgoing links can be important, too.

* Generate content: Write articles in your area of expertise, post them on your site, and submit them to appropriate publications across the Web.

Why is link popularity important?

Outside links help dramatically to increase traffic to your site. Increased traffic can lead to higher page rank and better conversionrates. Many search engines take link popularity into consideration for your website’s page rank by “looking” at how many relevant links are directed to your website.

Here are some strategies that are generally considered to be important to increase link popularity:

* There should be links from the home page to all subpages so that a search engine can transfer some link popularity to the subpages.

* Appropriate anchor text with relevant keywords should be used in the text links that are pointing to pages within a site.

* Getting links from other web sites, particularly sites with high PageRank, can be one of the most powerful site promotion tools.

* One way links often count for more than reciprocal links.

* The webmaster should list his/her site in one or more of the major directories such as Yahoo! or the Open Directory Project.

* The webmaster should only link to sites that he/she can trust, i.e. sites that do not use “spammy techniques”.

* The webmaster should not participate in link exchange programs or link farms , as search engines will ban sites that participate in such programs.

To increase link popularity, many webmasters interlink multiple domains that they own, but often search engines will filter out these links, as such links are not independent votes for a page and are only created to trick the search engines.

The online market is full of intense competition and in order to for any website to become profitable it needs to consistently secure a high position on search engine results pages. Climbing up the search engine pages helps you to reach out to your target market. One of the most effective SEO strategies that you can employ is contextual link building.

Why link building has changed

Link building has become an extremely popular search engine optimization technique ever since it was discovered that Google’s PageRank algorithm counted the number of in bound links to determine a site’s popularity.This discovery also bred some negative results as link building services mushroomed.

Some webmasters made use of link farms that consisted of entire pages with only one way links to their website. Soon enough Google amended its PageRank system to detect such underhand link building practices in the world of internet marketing. It wasn’t all about numbers with the new and improved Google PageRank. Rather the source from where these in bound links were coming was also taken into consideration in order to determine a website’s popularity.

Method to the madness of contextual link building

Under this technique you place one way links in the body of the text which is posted on a site that is topically or contextually related to your website. Blogs and ezine pages along with shopping sites are the most popular places for conducting contextual link building. In order to have your post up on another website you need to seek the owner’s permission and maybe even ask them to create a relevant page if one does not exist already.

Why Contextual Link Building Works Better

There are a number of reasons that contribute to making contextual link building the number one link building strategy. First of all it is by far the most ethical tactic you will be able to employ. Employing ethical techniques is important as it removes the risk of being penalized or banned by the search engines.

Contextual link building also increases the chances of making conversions as you will be driving completely targeted traffic to your website. The blog review that you post up on various sites acts as a preliminary sales talk for your products and services. If the reader clicks on the link it means he is already convinced to a certain extent and you have a small job left to do.

This comprehensive link building strategy helps you to increase your search engine rankings due to the increased volume of one way links. This obviously increases the chances of your site being visited by people that make use of those search engines.

Your blog review performs a triple function of giving your readers valuable information while promoting your business and containing a back link to your website. Hence we find that contextual link building can really boost your link popularity thereby helping you to become a profitable business on the internet in these economically testing times.