SEO is the process of building high quality back links in the hope of getting higher search engine rankings. On the Internet, there are a hundred and one ways to build links. Be sure you don't resort to any tactics that may get your website penalized by the search engines. If that happens, your rankings may drop. In the worst cases scenario, your entire domain name may even be removed from the search index. So you have to be very careful about how you build links.



One proven link building method is web directory submissions. Web directories have been around for many years. These are websites that are dedicated to listing and organizing URLs so that online visitors can find the websites they are looking for as quickly as possible.

Popular web directories include DMOZ, Yahoo Web Directory, and several others. On the Internet, there are thousands of web directories that you can submit your URLs to. Don't confuse web directory submission with search engine submission. It is not the same thing.

When you submit your URL to search engines, you are hoping that the search engines will index your site. It does nothing to improve your rankings though.

When you submit to web directories, search engines will find your sites automatically. Let the search bots come to you. There is no need to submit your URLs to search engines. Just submit to the directories. When you do that, you are actually link building.

As you probably already know, search engines think very highly of websites with a great number of relevant inbound links. The more back links you have, the better the chance of ranking well in the search engines.

But you have to remember - you want only relevant inbound links that are coming from quality web directories. Don't participate in link farms. These are websites will all kinds of irrelevant links. To the search engines, these sites are spamming. They will probably be dropped from the search index soon. So don't bother submitting your links to those sites. Stick with the well established web directories (i.e. those with high page rank).

So how are links in web directories relevant to your site?

Web directories organize URLs according to categories. For example, if you are promoting a hosting website, you have to submit your URL to the web hosting category. Otherwise, your link will not be approved. If you submit to the right category, that means your link will be listed alongside sites with similar content as yours. You can't get any more relevant than that.

In addition, you are allowed to write a brief description to accompany your submission. Make sure you include your target keywords in your description. And be as specific as you can. The better your written description, the higher the chance of getting accepted (especially DMOZ).