When you carry out a link building campaign, it is a tedious job to get approved in well know SEO link directories to get quality links back to your website and improve website rank. I carried out a survey to understand what stands between an SEO campaign and Website quality improvement along with my team and the most common question raised was how to carry directory submission to best directories. Over the Internet we find vast abundance of directories and it becomes a tedious job for Link Building team to pick the best among the list to carryout link submission.

One of the best ways you can start your link building campaign is by submitting to SEO directories, general web directories that are in to this business over years or decades. Those directories will definitely fetch you quality as well as maximum crowd to your website. Maximum SEO organisations are illiterate about the subject of link building. For them carrying out link building is just to submit the website to any Directory. Do not think directories as a place to submit your website. Maximum crowd has this mentality. This is the main reason why they fail to gain value in the market and their SEO campaign wraps up soon.

Here are directories to name a few which accept links and are in this business over the years: -

• Yahoo Directory, Business.com, BOTW – Best of the Web, DMOZ aka Open Directory Project aka OPD, PYWOD aka Publish Your Website Online Directory etc to name a few.
• Link quality is main factor but there is also another aspect related to it i.e. Link Anchor Text or in another terms Text Link Building.
• You as Link builder or SEO team member should know which word to be targeted and used as text linking which grabs individual attentions and get them directed to your desired page.
• You cannot control how to navigate user through your website pages but you can definitely refer him to navigate to different page using text links.
• There are tons and millions of ideas floating over Internet about “How to Carryout Link Building” but you can carry out Link building activities by submitting links to Blogs, Forums, Comments to others posts, image syndication.

Directory over the web keeps record of all the websites present over the internet under different niche categories. In simple terms it is like Yellow Page book published every year which contains addresses and contact numbers, but over internet directory you get a snippet description about the website with website link directing towards the particular webpage address.

Numerous Websites are present over the Internet are termed as Directories (Web Directories, Internet Directories, Online Website Directory etc.) who accept link submission from all websites present over the web in paid or reciprocal submission manner. Submission to proper and quality directories help your site to build trust with Google and other Search Engine Bots, in return help to increase your Page Rank and Domain value of your site.

Now the bottom line is how to carryout Link submission activities to Directories and what should be criteria to select a web directory for submission?
Always follow the following steps to build quality links back to your website: –

• Always check the domain age of the directory to carry out the link submission.
• Check the back History of the directory by using Way-Back-Machine as to how the domain was before and is it used for the same purpose from its creation.
• Here I meant was few people buy reseller domain that has high PR and convert it to web directory for link submission and make quick money out of it. Avoid doing submission into such directories.
• Always prefer to carryout Link submissions to maximum 5 paid directories per month not more than that as it helps to build trust with search engine that you follow white hat SEO techniques.
• Avoid using bulk submission plans as the individuals who carryout bulk submission activities to other link directories usually hide out info about the Page Rank of the directories in which your submissions will be carried out.
• Stay out of SEO firms or Link Building programs who provide you with Bulk submission to 100+ directories or more in a month, there is high chance of you getting black listed and ripped off indexing to search engine.

In layman terms Link Building is nothing but getting links back to your website from different websites that help Google or any other search engine to judge how popular you are on Internet. Link Building is a broader concept which I will be breaking down into various modules to make you aware of each aspect of link building taking white hat SEO in to consideration and avoiding black hat SEO practises that will ruin your Website from getting indexed on Google as well as losing your Page Rank.

Link Building can be carried out in various steps: –

• One Way Back Link to your website from General Web Directory Submission.
• Posting articles to Article directory with text link directing to your website.
• Image Syndication to Image Websites with a Back Link to your website.
• Posting topics in forums, Blog, etc by writing unique content with a text link in it.
• Presentation Syndication is new process followed nowadays to get link back to your website.
• Video Syndication to sites like YouTube, can fetch you back link from high PR site.
• Writing Press Release for your website can get you Inbound Link.
• Reciprocal Linking or Link exchange activity through websites or web directories.
• Renting Advertising space on other website can get you link.

Many a times people who like your website link your website and share it among group and help you get popular. Here your quality work, content and brand promotion helps you to spread the word over Internet.

Caution: – Google analyses each aspect mentioned over here. Over Optimization can get your quality down, in turn resulting poor cache frequency by Google robot. Over Optimization will lead to Black Hat SEO practises, linking back from poor PR or low quality websites will eventually decrease trust of search engine towards your site.

Follow all the steps mentioned above on moderate level every month to improve quality of your website and also increase your website Page Rank in return.