1. Submit to web directories

Submitting to web directories is a vital part of every successful link building campaign. Apart from driving traffic to your website through direct referrals, web directories provide static, one-way links to your site, boosting your link popularity and improving your rankings on the major search engines like Google and Yahoo.

It’s important to note that not all directory listings are equal. Listings from trusted, established directories like Yahoo! and DMOZ are more valuable than those from the thousands of others on the net. All else being equal, a link from a directory focused on your site’s niche is worth more than one from a general directories.

Submit to both free and paid directories. Free directories provide one-way links to your site with no strings attached, but they can take forever to review your link. Paid listings can be a good investment if the fees are reasonable and the pages on which your link will reside have decent PRs. Your sites will be listed with fewer competing links on paid directories.

2. Write articles and press releases

Submitting your article to directories is a highly effective way to build one-way links to your site. First, you write a thoughtful and informative article on an topic in your area of expertise. Then you submit it to article directories to be read by the general public and reprinted on other web sites. Appended to the end of your article is a “resource box” which contain links to your site and email address.

While there are hundreds or even thousands of article directories on the web, you should focus on writing a high quality article and submitting to a handful of the more popular ones. If you write something that people find useful, they may pick it up and reprint it on their blogs, newsletters, etc. This is how a quality article propagates virally in cyberspace– it virtually distributes itself.

3. Exchange links with related sites

Online forums like DigitalPoint and V7 are excellent places to find reciprocal linking partners. Avoid sending out spammy e-mail solicitations like those generated by many SEO software programs. I get dozens of those everyday.

4. Social networking

Social networking and social bookmarking sites help bring together internet users from every corner of the world into a virtual global village. Joining sites like Twitter, Facebook, Digg, StumbleUpon and Del.icio.us can bring lots of visitors in a hurry.

5. Buy text links on other sites

Although link buying is somewhat an unnatural way to build links, it may be the only way to increase your link popularity if your site is commercial or not interesting enough to get people to link to it on their own. When buying links, buy them in a way that mimics natural linking as much as possible. Buy text links from sites that are related to yours. Vary anchor texts and descriptions. Buy links from internal as well as home pages. Buy links from both high- and low-PR sites.

6. Participate in online forums

Sharing knowledge can be a very powerful way to establish your online presence and credibility. If you check your backlinks on search engines like Google and Yahoo, you may notice that a number of them come from the signatures of forum posts– that is, if you post in forums. Most forums allow signature links. I don’t participate in forums that don’t as allowing them is the least the forums can do to compensate me for contributing to their contents.

7. Ask webmasters of related sites to links to yours

This often overlooked strategy can be a great source of “natural” one-way inbound links. I have gotten many of my links this way. The days are long gone when all you had to do to get people to link to you was to have a decent website out there. Nowadays you have to be more proactive by approaching other webmasters and asking them to link to you.

Do a search on Google on the keywords that you want to target. Visit the sites on the first few pages of the search results to see if they link to other sites (look for “links” or “resources” pages). Then write to the ones that you think might be interested in linking to your site. If your site is seen as a complement rather than a direct competitor to the site you want to be linked from, you stand a higher chance of getting a positive response.

8. Ask vendors and clients to link to your site

I once bought a $350 script package and asked my vendor if they could feature my site as site made with their script. They obliged and gave me a PR7 text link from their site. Since the link is worth at least $40 a month, my initial investement for the script has paid for itself many times over. Besides the SEO benefits, it is responsible for thousands of visitors to my site a month through direct clicks. The moral of the story: don’t be afraid to ask. The worse that could happen is that they say “no”.

9. Blogging

Setting up a blog is a no-brainer. Even if you’ve no web designing experience whatsoever, you have a blog up and running in no time. Blogs allows for a more informal setting to get your words across. So, it’s much easier to write a blog entry than an article to submit to article directories. Use your blog to share knowledge, voice opinions, connect with others with similar interests, and of course, to link to your other sites.

10. Content is king

Yes, content is still king. In fact, content is by far the most important of the ten strategies I’ve mentioned. Having fresh, unique, engaging content is an excellent way to attract natural linking from other sites. This is the type of links that search engines like.

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From time to time I’d  expand on a blog entry and post it as an article to article directories.

Article marketing is still an effective way to build links and generate traffic to your blog or website. 

To be sure, the quality of articles has declined over the years as the article directories have been exploited for SEO purposes.  As a reader I often have to skim through several junk articles to find one worthy of reading.

I submit articles to 10 or 15 popular directories like EzineArticles, Article Factory, and Go Articles.

Don’t waste your time submitting to hundreds of directories that don’t even bother to review submissions.

Here are the steps I suggest:

1. Write your article.  Be sure to include your keywords in the text. Write for people, not search engines.  If you sound like you know what you’re talking about, readers are more likely to trust you and  follow the link to your site.

2. Google for popular directories on the web.  Pick 10 or 15 good ones.

3. Most article directories require registration. Don’t forget to upload your photo when requested.

4. Submit your article, taking care to follow all guidelines.  Be sure to include a “resource box” linking back to your site. You can use a semi-automated article submission software to hasten submission, but this is not really necessary.

5. Wait a week or two and then search for a string of text from your article to see which sites have published your article.

6. Keep note of directories that review and publish your article within a reasonable time frame.  Don’t waste your time submitting to directories that never review your article.

7. Rinse and repeat.

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