The struggle to acquire several incoming links drives webmasters to experiment with many techniques such as link baiting, reciprocal link trading, a-b-c schemes, etc. Some of the most important factors every webmaster needs to remember when executing a link building campaign through directories are: anchor texts, PR and authority of incoming links, relevancy, number of outgoing links per page, amount of links etc.



Varying the anchor texts after every directory submission ensures this link building technique isn't seen by major search engines as a way to manipulate the SERPs or as spam. The main keyword can be included in anchor texts through different variations without excluding it every time the site is submitted to a new directory, for instance, if the main keyword is 'Golf Clubs', the anchor texts can be extended to cover long tail keywords without loosing the main term, some examples are:

'Information about Golf Clubs'

'Large Golf Clubs'

'Golf Clubs Reviews'

'Cheap Golf Clubs', and so on.

Page rank and authority of incoming links is also important because we all know that they are hard to acquire, pass on page rank and send good traffic. Relevancy of incoming links takes high priority as well since we do not want links from sources which are unrelated to our site's topic which wouldn't offer any benefit to the visitor.

A good way to detect potential growth (traffic and PR-wise) is to take a look at the structure of the directory and verify the following point:

- Is it well organized?, a good directory will have a clear navigation system and not a deceptive "advertising based" navigation links. We see that some directories which are 'Adsense' intensive tend to place link units where navigation links should be placed.

- Does it have too many advertising units??, placing several ad units on a directory will have a negative effect on as far as CTR (Click through rate) since it takes away many potential visitors to the sites listed in a particular category.

Another important factor we want to keep in mind is the amount of outgoing links per page. Some directories look like link farms (and some are) according to the amount of outgoing links per page. These are definitively sites you want to get away from because they will not provide any benefit to visitors or your site.

Web directories are not a new technology or a new way to market web sites, they've been around for years and some have built an amazing reputation. Directories such as DMOZ are well known because of their integration in with AOL search, page rank of inner pages and Google relevancy. It is often advised to submit a fully developed site to this directory because if it is under construction or not fully developed the site will not index it. Another important factor to remember is that DMOZ is a human managed directory so review times are usually long.

Another great online directory is Yahoo's Business directory. Just like DMOZ, Yahoo's directory has high page rank which includes inner pages. One difference between the two is that Yahoo's source is a paid service.

Remember to keep promoting your site by adding links to well structured - high PR directories to increase you site's popularity.