We all do it or have done, have a list of directories and start submitting your website. But if you spend a few more minutes thinking about your submissions you can improve the link value hugely on some occasions.

Yes, all links pointing to your site help, some have near no value where others have a great value, but most general directories will be of little value. But if you are spending the time to submit to them then at least make the submission as strong as possible.

Most directories, well most websites work the same, the homepage has the most link value to offer followed by the catergory pages followed by inner catergories and so on. Basically the more clicks away from the home page the weaker your link will become. So……….

……….check to see if your website could fit into a different catergory with more pagerank. Look to see how many other links are in the section you are submitting too. The less links the better.

If you are in a competitive niche you may find that the catergory you are submitting to has 10 pages with 10 websites on each page. Page one is going to be much stronger than all the other pages. So if the directory happens to list the site alphabetically try and use a title of your site that will get you on page one.
If your site was called silk-socks.com then you would be better of submitting your site as beautiful silk socks or comfortable silk socks. Using the letters a b or c normally get you on the first page.

Featured links – If you can get your site on page one of that catergory then there is no need to pay for a featured link, if you can’t and the featured link is only £1 then seriously consider it.

You should know that you need to use your keywords in your title, use them in your description as well. Every little helps.

Dont miss extra link opportunities

For example have a look around the directories home page, most directories are created by scripts, this means they are all the same in one way or another. For example look at www.goodwebdirectory.com at in the bottom right hand corner you will see it says “Powered by Php Link Directory”, i wonder how many other directories have that. Then just search that phrase.

If you search Powered by Php Link Directory in Google you find the biggest list you will ever need of directories. Ok not all of them will be but most.

To advance on this search for the same thing but in speech marks “Powered by Php Link Directory” this will return a better list in Google.

Advance on this even more if you like. If your website is based on dogs then do a better search. Search the below in Google.

“Powered by Php Link Directory” + dogs

You now have a list of directories that have catergories for dogs, and even better than that Google has put them in order of importance, meaning your link submissions will give you greater value.

Let me know how you get on, or what methods you use.

As I have just launched this blog I thought I would go through the difference between a website and a blog when you are trying to build links to your website.

With a website you would normally have to ask a webmaster for a link exchange, a one way link if you have something good to offer thier visitors or maybe a 3 way link exchange. By doing this you discuss where your link is going to be placed. As websites are static you can be pretty sure that the pagerank of where your link is placed is going to stay the same or increase unless something major is changed.

With a blog you do not need to ask, you can leave a comment and a link back to your site, just don’t spam. The trouble is a blog works differently, all posts on the homepage after time are going to get archived deeper into the site as new posts get made.

So, the link you leave today could be a one way pagerank 3 link but in 2 months time could be a pagerank 2 or 1 link.

A good technique to find old posts that are already archived that may not lose anymore pagerank is to do a site search of www in Google. A site search with www will put all the pages in order from strongest to weakest. Just go down through the returned list in Google until you find an archived post, the URL in Google for each page gives in away as they are mostly archived by date.

site:blog.com www

Or if you are like me I would rather search for a related page within a blog that uses the keywords I am currently promoting, for example if I was promoting a bed and breakfast I would search for these words within a blog.

site:blog.com bed
site:blog.com breakfast

If you are looking for blogs that are related to your website and want to find a list of archived posts just do a url search.

url:/2008/ keyword

The above will find blogs that have posts archived in 2008 and that contains your keyword. After you find a blog you can then do a site search as previously explained.

Also a lot of blogs are nofollow, this means they do not pass any pagerank, though it has been said that a small bit does leak through, according to Matt Cutts, I read it somewhere. To check if a blog is nofollow just find a page with comments on and hit your view tab and then view source.  This brings up the code of the site and then hit the edit tab and use the “find” tool. Type in “nofollow” and see what comes up.

I think that’s enough to keep you going and thinking for now.

Tell me how you get on if you use the above methods.