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Gaining free traffic to your site using directories
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By Jake Davis
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New webmasters are always faced with this harsh reality of theweb: just because you build it, doesn't mean people will come.You may have just designed the greatest website in the world foryour chosen topic, but without visitors it is just some randomcode in a vast digital wilderness. There are many volumeswritten on techniques to gain visitors to your site, but thisarticle will focus on links and particularly directories. One ofthe most important ways to gain favor with the major searchengines (Google, Yahoo, and MSN) is to have other sites linkingto your site. These are known to the webmaster crowd as"backlinks". The more backlinks your site has coming in, themore clout your website has with the search engines. Tradinglinks with other commonly themed sites is one way to gainbacklinks, but this can be time consuming and difficult. Aneasier way to gain these invaluable links is to submit yourlinks to directories.
Directories come in all types and categories. There are generaldirectories, specific topics, free, paid, reciprocal required,and many more. By submitting your new site to a directory, yougain a valuable one-way back link to your site, with only aminimal amount of effort. These links are generally permanent aswell. I suggest starting out by submitting your website to freedirectories at first. Once you become more experienced atdetermining the value of each directory, you can consider paidinclusions. But free is always good to get started. An exampleof one such free directory is http://www.directoryvault.com.Choose directories that are human edited, as they will usuallyhave a higher quality of links in their database. Search engineslook at who is linking to you as well as how many sites arelinking to you. A link from a "bad neighborhood" will damageyour standing with the search engine. It is also important toread the submission guidelines before submitting your site foracceptance. This leads to a better chance of being included inthe directory and saves time for both you and the directory'sowner. Some directories have very strict guidelines and longapproval times, while others are a little more lenient andfaster. Be sure to pick the correct category for your link, andwrite a concise, accurate description. Directories owners lovethis, and will happily approve your link. Once you startbuilding these links, your site will start receiving the trafficit deserves, and you will be on your way to a successfulwebsite. So start submitting today!
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