Free One Way Links do exist and actually not as hard to get as some might think and in this part of the One Way Link Building Series I want to discuss one method most often overlooked by bloggers.

Directories and Blog Directories submission is a great way to have your blog listed and get a free one way links, often from a quality site. There a few gotchas you need to be aware of…

General and Niche Directories Submissions

There is nothing magic in Directory Submission and it is a tedious and time consuming work but if you follow some basic guidelines - it can be rewarding and will bring you much desired link juice.

Instead of repeating what is well described by others I will provide you with a link to an article “The ultimate guide to directory submissions” that does job well and explains what you need to know as well as provides list of a few quality directories. Here is quote from the article:

The top 10 directories

Finally, here’s a list of the top free and paid general directories to get you started.

5 of the best free directories include:

• Open Directory Project
• World Site Index
• Domaining.in
• Web World
• Search Sight

5 of the best paid directories include:

• Yahoo! Directory
• Best of the Web
• Business.com
• Aviva
• Ezilon

Do yourself a favor and submit to at least the free directories as it will give you a boost!

Blog Directories

As a blogger you have a unique opportunity to do your blog promotion by adding your blog to one of the many available blog directories. In fact it is perhaps even more beneficial to you then doing general directories with exception of the top 5 listed

1. Get Your Homework Done

Make no mistakes this process will consume quite a bit of your time and you might want to spread it as a task across multiple days, depending on how many hours or minutes you can dedicate to the process. You also might want to get some information ready in advance so the submission process will be simple copy / paste:

• Blog Name - self explanatory, I like to have keywords in it
• Blog URL - you main domain url
• Blog Feed - your blog RSS feed url as many directories will allow you to list it
• Your Keywords - think what you want to rank on
• Blog Description - get this one right. Do use keywords but think of it as Short Ad for your blog. I recommend you have 2 versions ready:  short (around 150 words) and long (300-350 words)
• Your Username and Password - often you will be required to create an account, keep it consistent for the personal sanity check!
• Your email - requires valid email address as some will make you verify by clicking link in welcome email before your listing will be active.

I recommend you get that info in Notepad or something similar that doesn’t add extra formatting to the text and be sure to spell check and ensure that you would personally click the url on listing - make your listing an AD for your blog!

2. Locate Directories and Submit Your Blog

This one is perhaps the easiest part of all. There is more blog directories than I care to post on this blog but what I will do instead is link to some of the more essential lists created by others. Be aware, some links in those lists will be dead as sites no longer exist but with so many to choose from - just move on to next one:

• Google Blog Directories - taken from DMOZ
• 20 Essential Blog Directories to Submit Your Blog To
• RSS - Blog Directories from top rank
• Giant List of Blog Directories

I could continue this exercise but it is pointless and if you decide you need more - just do a Google Search for “blog directories list” and you will be presented with plenty more.

Outsource the Process - Pay For It

Did I mention that manual submissions are very time consuming process? And if you have been reading my blog for a while you know that I hate repetitive and mindless tasks and will always opt to pay for it instead of wasting my own time.

There are many ways to go about it:

For Directory submission you can either purchase a software that automates the process for you as much as possible, such as SEO Elite or you can hire some to do it for you. There are plenty option available, just Google “blog directories submissions” and you will see what I mean.

I have personally used this service and was quite satisfied with results - Direct

ory Maximizer. Best part about their service is that it is manually submitted and allows me to specify spread the link submission over time to make it appear more natural for the big G. They also constantly expand the number of directories they make submissions to (currently just under 2k) so I continue to use them and can recommend it to anyone looking to save time.

I do know there are a few free and lower priced services that offer same options but i haven’t used them and you are on your own if you decide to go with them.

Technorati Теги: links,strategy,niche

Throughout a number of posts on this blog I’ve written about niche social media sites and their potential to be an excellent source of traffic for blogs. The idea behind niche sites as opposed to major social media sites like Digg, Reddit and StumbleUpon is that the visitors you receive from niche sites will be far more targeted, and generally higher quality traffic. Because the niche sites focus on content that relates to a particular topic, the visitors that arrive at your site should have more of an interest in your blog and will be more likely to come back in the future.

The major problem with this is that there are so many niche sites out there, and many of them are a waste of time if you’re trying to market to their audience. A topic that has not been discussed on this blog in the past is the differences between a good niche site and a bad one. For the purposes of this article I’m referring to a site that is worth your time as a user and a marketer as a good site, and one that is not worth your time as a bad one. The good and bad are relative to this discussion in terms of marketing and exposure, it’s not meant to say that is necessarily good or bad in any other way.

Why Does This Matter?

Most bloggers are looking to gain more exposure from social media, which includes more visitors, new visitors, improved branding, inbound links, subscribers, and repeat visitors. Major social media sites can bring huge amounts of exposure, but achieving success with these sites is difficult and typically only certain types of content are likely to do well. Niche social media sites make it easier to get some results and the types of content that you can use are not as limited.

7 Distinguishing Factors:

1. Focus

A strong niche social media site should be focused on one specific subject. While general social news sites like Digg include a wide variety of content, they also have visitors with a wide variety of interests. Niche social media sites have a tighter focus and thus an audience that is more targeted. Some niche sites are focused tighter than others. The more focus a site has in it’s target audience, the more accurately you can gauge what that audience will like and how they will respond. The whole purpose of niche sites is to get rid of the content that isn’t relevant to most visitors, so a niche site with a wider focus is generally not as good as one with a tighter focus.

2. Relevance

If the audience of a niche social media site is highly targeted, that is a positive for you as a marketer, assuming your content is relevant to the areas of focus. This isn’t a gauge of the niche social media site itself, rather, it is a gauge to see if that specific site is a good fit for your content. It may be a very strong social media site for one blog’s content, but very poor for another’s. Take some time to observe the audience and the content that is featured to see if it fits with your blog.

3. Size of Audience

While niche social media sites will always have a much smaller audience than the big boys, that certainly doesn’t mean that they are not useful. However, the majority of niche sites have very small audiences, and at a certain point it becomes a waste of your time to market there when you could be using your time for something else. Unfortunately there is no exact number that means a site is worth your time, but you should have a better idea after using the site for a while. If your content is becoming “popular” and only getting 5 visitors from the front page, it’s likely that you could make better use of your time somewhere else.

4. Connection to Other/Larger Social Media Sites

One of the best experiences early on that convinced me of the value of niche social media sites was what I have referred to as the Domino Effect. The idea behind the domino effect is that many social media users are active with multiple social media sites, so if they comes across your content on site X, they may vote for it or submit it to site Y. This may sound minor, but it can make a huge difference in terms of getting votes and giving your content a springboard to popularity at various social media sites.

In some cases, certain social media sites will share a high percentage of users with other social media sites. You may not be able to find this out with a good deal of experimenting and analysis, but if you find a niche site that has a connection to a larger or more significant site, you should do what you can to achieve success with the niche site, as this can be an easier backdoor to success with major social media sites.

5. Amount of Content that is Featured

The number of posts or items that are featured at a social media site will impact how much potential exposure you can get. If a huge number of sites are featured it means that yours will get less time in the spotlight. On the other hand, if not enough items are featured, the site is unlikely to have an established audience. Ideally, you’ll want to find some middle ground where your item gets enough exposure but there are still a decent number of items featured each day.

6. Tools

Many social media sites, especially the major ones, have tools that users can take advantage of. It may be a toolbar or bookmarklet that makes it fast and easy to submit sites, or it can be a button or script to allow your readers to vote for your blog posts. Many niche sites have these items available to their users, but not all. I wouldn’t consider this a make-or-break item on this list, but if a site does have tools available and you want to maximize your impact, take advantage of them.

Voting buttons for niche social media sites are great for putting on your blog posts. Digg buttons are more popular, but niche voting buttons can have more of an impact. It doesn’t take many votes to get to the front page with most niche sites, so the votes that are accumulated are more significant. Also, you can leverage the community of a strong niche social media site by using the buttons, as users of the site will feel more at home on your blog when they recognize that you’re considering them to be a part of your target audience.

7. Growth Potential

The best niche social media sites are still up-and-coming. Even those that have been around for a while still have a much larger potential audience to tap into. When you’re evaluating a niche site, try to examine it’s potential for growth. Does the site seem to be professionally run in a way that the owners are serious about the site, or does it seem like more of a hobby for the owners? Is the focus of the site so specific that the potential audience is very small? These things aren’t always easy to determine on your own, but you can usually get a reasonably accurate idea if the site has any potential for the future.

What Do You Look For?

What do you like to see in niche social media sites? What convinces you to be active at a site?

Technorati Теги: bookmarks,factors