One of the best ways of achieving popularity for your web site is by building back links: the links that you get whenever you submit to web directories, which are online catalogues that list web sites according to their contents. Examples of these include DMOZ, Yahoo and Best of the Web. Of course, there are other small free or paid directories that are also worthy of your attention.
Try to submit your web site to as many free directories that do not require a reciprocal link as possible. Be careful when deciding to link to web directories
because Search Engines will penalize you for doing such things as linking to a known spammer, which is what most of the directories that require a link back are. You should also avoid any directories that require a payment for listing your web site as many of these only exist to make money.
Some other things you should pay attention to when considering whether or not to submit to a directory include:
- Make sure that the directory’s Google PageRank or Alexa Rating is high – the higher the better.
- Look at where the directory’s back links are from. They should be from real sites, not from other web sites that the company owns or from advertisements they have bought.
- Use Whois.sc to see how long the directory has existed – the longer the better.
- View the other submissions that are in the category that you plan to submit to in order to ensure that they are not spam or otherwise unrelated links.