As part of the fundraising for our FromHousestoHomes Guatemala trip, we are donating 100% of our directory submission review fees to the following directories until July15th.

• General link directory Jagdirectory.com (6.95 general submission)
• Medical niche directories Medicaldirectoryonline.com (9.95 express) and Healthreferenceonline.com (6.95 express)
• Travel niche directory All-travel-sites.com (19.97 express)
• Home improvement directory Ehomeimprovementdirectory.com (4.95 express)
• Legal niche directory Onlinelegaldirectory.com(29.95 express)

In addition to the directory submissions other advertising options are available as well.  See the Guatemala Fund Raising Advertising post for more info.

Of Course if you just want to make a donation, that is always appreciated too. $10 donations will receive a link on our Guatemala donors page. Via You can now donate via my Guatemala fundraiser on Crowdwise if you don’t or can’t use Paypal.  If you prefer Paypal, you can use that as well, just visit the first link on this post, and click on Paypal button in that post.

A great way to promote your online business is via article marketing. This involves writing articles to submit to article directories. Learning how to write articles to promote your internet based business will be an invaluable skill to have.

It’s a straight forward process. You write good articles on your niche and include a bio with a link or two back to your site in the resource box.  Then you submit these articles to article directories.

The quality of your article will determine how much traffic you receive and whether Google and other search engines are impressed. It is recommended that the articles you submit to article directories are newly written. With other words avoid re-using the same articles from your site.

Although it is good to write articles on your particular topic or niche in which you are marketing, it is better to approach the articles you wish to submit using a more broader approach.

As an example, if your blog income is based on marketing a particular diet product your articles could be on the broader topic of living a healthy life. Your aim is to attract a larger readership base than just those who might be interested in the product you are selling.

Article directories have a stream of readers interested in a range of topics. Your articles end up being read a surprising number of times.

But what is even better than the number of readers it that it your articles are read over a long period of time. This is contrary to a blog where mostly the newest articles receive the immediate traffic. Thereafter articles are at the mercy of search engines to receive further air time.

Each time your article is read you have the chance that the reader might be interested enough to click on the link to your site which is shown in the resource box at the end of the article. This allows for a possible constant stream of traffic to your site.

Besides the regular readers who use article directories for information or entertainment, article directories are also used by non-writing website and blog owners to source articles for their sites.

They are allowed to use them on their own sites in exchange for including your bio with live links. As a source of links this can be invaluable. And it requires no further effort on behalf of the internet marketer.

However, probably the most valuable part of this exercise and what makes it really worthwhile for internet marketers to submit articles to directories is the backlink the directory itself provides to your own site.

Most of the well established article directories such as Ezinearticles or Go Articles have a high PageRank. Having a link back from their site to your blog or website has high value for you the internet marketer.

Learning how to write articles for submission to directories is an excellent marketing strategy for the internet marketer. As an article writers who is developing an online business with the aid of good content you will certainly miss out on a golden opportunity if you do not make this part of your marketing strategy. Read more at The Digital Archives.

Sure it seems that Directory links are having less and less Google juice. Deep more relevant categories often are not cached by the deep Google spiders. So what can you do to ensure that you are getting the most Google juice for your buck or if the directory is free, for your time?

Before paying for a link, I always check to make sure that the page I am submitting to is cached. That is I copy the url, paste it into the Google search bar. If the page has been visited by the Google spiders, it will show up in the SERP’s.(Search Engine Result page). You can either submit to a page that Google has not visited and build links to the page so that you encourage Google to visit the page, or you can find a page that has been cached already.
What you can do is click around the different related categories of the directory, and copy and paste into the desired category page urls into the Google search bar until you find a cached page, or you can check the whole site to see what pages are cached using site:url. This will show you all the pages that are cached by Google. For example, putting site:http://www.pixelheadonline.com into the Google search bar, I see that 1,430 pages are cached in Google. Then all I need to do is page through the results and find an appropriate cached category page to submit my site.

1 more link building tip

If I go to the next level down in the directory, such as Business, and copy that url, and put in site:http://www.pixelheadonline.com/Business/ I can see that 17 sub-pages are cached. Using this method allows you to find cached subcategory pages in relevant categories without having to page through unrelated results.
So that is my tip for link building this post. Got any other link building tips you would like to share?

Update:

Check for cache with the site:url and with out the site:url. I believe that using the site:url returns pages that have been visited by the Google Spider that does deep searches, which are done with less frequency. If paying for links, I want to make sure that the links are cached by regular spiders as well as deep searching spiders for more Google juice for the link.

see Google Cache Update post for more current discussion.

Have you submitted a site to lots of directories lately? Go ahead go on over to DirectoryCritic,com and submit a site be it a favorite of yours or an ecommerce site. Go ahead I will wait.
Ok, your back. While you were out getting links, did you experience deja vu quite a lot. Directories can be easily created using a directory script, and often times the owners make little to no alterations to make the directory unique. As if it is not bad enough that the few templates are everywhere, the category database is everywhere as well.

Its not only me that sees this problem. In a DirectoryCritic Blog post Link Farm Clone Directories

says that characteristics of Clone Directories include:

• Loads of directories on the same IPs
• Directories that have obviously had no effort at all put into them (some don’t even have a template or don’t even have the logo changed – how hard is it?)
• Category clones (basically cloning a populated directory)

Directory Uniqueness

• What I look for in a good unique directory includes but not limited to changes to template if it is a popular template.
• Categories should also be edited, especially if the directory starts out using a category database.
• Add other features to the directory like articles, advertising opportunities, about us pages, contests, a directory blog, a directory forum, etc…
• Add text to the sub-pages as well as the home page. I have just started doing this to Pixelheadonline. Adding text can be as simple as adding a little paragraph of text to describe the category. It can also include the adding of articles.

Future of Directory Links

With all the clones out on the net, I believe that quality directories will become something that will be sought after. This will include directories that have not only a home page that is indexed in the search engines, but also has the majority of its sub-pages cached. When site owners start to have their site rankings hurt by using these bad linking neighborhoods, good directories will be in even higher demand.

Am I right? What do you think will happen to directories in the future? Will they go the way of the FFA (Free For All) pages?

Before reading this, it is suggested that the previous articles on Link Building be read.

I hope that I have not given the impression that the process of building one way links to a site is done simply by using directories. Directories, however, are a very important tool that can be used to build one way links. I have never used a directory and expected massive amounts of traffic to be directed to my site. It would be nice, but the probability is against it.

The first three posts in the series dealt mainly with using General directories such as PixelHeadonline.com to build one way relevant links to your site. The next topic in this series, progresses toward the area of Niche Directories, which offer a way to build links to your site that have an even higher relevance.

What are Niche Directories?

Niche directories like general directories, are broken down into categories, however, unlike general directories, the categories all pertain to a certain niche market, such as real estate. What is your niche? More than likely, if you have any competition in your niche, there will be niche directories for your site to submit your site. Sadly, many of these tend to be reciprocal linking directories, which really don’t help us with building one way links.

Three-Way Linking Anyone?

However, do try three way linking with these reciprocal sites, that is see if they will give you a link if you give them a link to another site that you may have access to such as a directory or a blog with a similar topic. Some sites will allow three way linking some won’t…it does not hurt to ask. (Please drop me a comment and let me know if you like or dislike three way linking)

What sort of Niche has Potential for a Good Niche Directory?

Niche Markets that have a good amount of focused traffic have the ability to be good Niche Directories. I don’t believe there is a niche out there that a directory does not or can not be made. For example, a site I work with sells corn stoves( a stove that burns shelled dry corn for home heating purposes). Talk about a niche market, and there is a Corn Stove Niche Directory, for this market.

One of the most interesting niche directories I have come across, that Lizzie Bean introduced me to, is an Industrial Niche directory. The interesting thing about this directory is that all of the sub-categories have their own unique url, and not a sub domain page.

My point of using these two niche directory examples is that any niche can be a good niche market for a directory. If there is interest, then a niche directory should be able to exist for that market.

What makes a Good Niche Directory?

A good niche directory I feel should have many of the same characteristics as a good general directory to include:

• Not built in frames.
• Does not use “No Follow tags“.
• Edited for quality to insure submission guidelines are met.
• Set submission guidelines.
• Three to four submission methods to such as reciprocal, free, express, premium etc.
• Unique look, or at least attempt to alter the design template if a popular template is being utilized. The Corn Stove Niche directory uses the same template as Pixelheadonline.com(we have altered ours a bit).
• Insure that any page with a premium listing has back links to it.
• Never utilize redirects.
• Make contact information available somewhere on the site.
• Check to make sure that all links on the site work(do this regularly).
• Don’t make submission procedures too difficult or too easy. Validation codes need not be a mystery.

I can go on and list many more things that make up good directories, but it would probably be better if you want to find some that I give you a list. If you see one that you think belongs here drop me a comment and I will stop by and evaluate it. I may also break the list down in the future into sub-categories of different niche directory markets.

My Short Niche Directory list.

This will be another post, as I there are so many out there, but for two great resources on these visit directorycritic’s list of and http://info.vilesilencer.com/