It’s not the number of link directories you submitted your link to that matters, but the rate of approval. In most cases, it’s not the quality of submitted website, but link submitters, that cause the disapproval of links. Some webmasters are so carried away with stuffing keywords in their submissions, rather than maximizing the chances of acceptance. As follows are some general guidelines on how to properly submit to web directories, in order to enhance the approval rate:

Manual submission: Many webmasters use automated bots/software to submit links to directories. That is wrong! Categories in most web directories are structured differently, and so, there’s no way you can program automated software to choose the best-fitting category for a link. For example, if your site’s theme is about games, and set a bot to submit to a category named “Games”, it will submit to any category that bears the word “Games”, regardless of if it’s in the shopping section, or entertainment, or computer category. If it submits to a shopping category and the editor can’t find any automation of online business transaction on your website, your link will be effectively rejected. So, it makes sense to always submit links to directories manually.

Follow the rules: Every quality web directory has laid-down link submission guidelines and rules. Make sure you read and understand the guidelines before submitting your link. Going against the rules decreases the chances of your submitted link being approved.

Title: Almost every quality, human-edited directory doesn’t accept keywords in the link title. Generally, they insist that a submitter uses the official name of his/her company, or organization, or institution, if the person has one. But if there’s no company behind your website, you can simply use the domain name as the title of the link. It’s always very tempting to use targeted keywords as a title, since that would be the anchor text for your link. But before you do that, find out via the submission guidelines and enlisted websites if that is acceptable. Regardless of if you use keywords or not in the title, a link from a quality directory carries a lot of weight in the “eyes” of search engines.

Description: A link description should be a well-written sentence or two meant for human beings to read and not for search engines. So, it should not be an enumeration of keywords, but well-written and contains no grammatical error. But that doesn’t mean you can’t include your keywords in the link description. The best way to do that is to effortlessly blend the keywords with the entire texts in a way not to disrupt the flow of the sentence.

Keywords: Some web directories have text fields that allow submitters to include their keywords. This is the area where you can enter some of the keywords your website targets.

If you follow the rules when submitting your link to web directories, it will surely increase the chances of your link being accepted in most of them.

The backlink count tool is one of the most useful features of Yahoo Site Explorer for webmasters. But for some reasons not known outside Yahoo and Bing, the link count drastically diminished for about a week now. And this got several webmasters worrying and complaining in forums.

This tool enables site owners to know how many external links that point to their sites’ web pages, check them out and see what people are writing about them. Many people, including myself, rely on Yahoo Site Explorer for backlink count. It has proven to be more reliable than Google and Bing backlink counts, because it provides near accurate numbers of linking URLs. Google and Bing just show a fraction of the total number of links, though they apparently have the backlinks counts stored in their databases.

A few days ago I personally searched on the web for information on why Yahoo abruptly diminished its backlink count, but only got a hint where its employee said that they were “working with Bing to make the tool usable again”. Then I surmised that the change might have something to do with the implementation of the search and advertising alliance signed by the two search giants. Maybe, during the interlude, Bing was feeding Yahoo backlink count tool. But then, Bing is not capable yet to be relied on. Its indexing capacity is still very small, when compared to Google and Yahoo. And BingBot is too slow in crawling sites, plus the fact that it doesn’t index deeper web pages properly. If BingBot cannot crawl sites deeper, then, it will be hard for it to find links located on the inner web pages.

I was very glad this morning when I switched on my PC, connected to the Internet and saw the Yahoo backlink count of my sites has come back to normal. I was able to see the new links that point to my sites’ web pages. Thanks to Yahoo for bringing this useful tool back!

Designing a very beautiful website is good, but its web pages will be sitting on the server unless they start attracting targeted visitors. Having a website is the first major step to online presence, but I know you really don’t want it to sit idly and not help you to take your business or other endeavor to the highest heights? Now how do you go about getting visitors to the site? The easiest way to achieve this goal is through strategic link building. This will help your site to rank well on SERPs for your targeted keywords.

Major search engines view incoming links as votes given to a site by other sites as a sign of their approval of its content. Quality backlinks give linked sites greater importance and authority over others in the “eyes” of search engines. Inbound links encourage search bots, such as GoogleBot, MSNBot/BingBot and Yahoo Slurp to crawl websites and successfully index their web pages. But link building is not as easy as many think. It is an art, a continuous process and needs to be done professionally in accordance with search engine guidelines for webmasters.

Quality and relevant link building enhances a site’s chances of ranking higher than others on search engine results pages (SERPs) for the keywords it is targeting. Every top ranking SEO doctor knows that using targeted keywords as anchor texts of their incoming links yield better results than using unrelated anchor texts. This is the main reason why you should always place your keywords where they matter most – anchor texts.

One-way Link Building Strategy: - Since major search engine algorithms rank websites that have quality and relevant links better than others on SERPs, it is wise to make sure that your site’s incoming links are far more than its outbound links. This is because outbound links cause the link juice a site gets from backlinks to leak. That’s why notable SEO experts strongly advice site owners and webmasters to only employ one-way link building strategy.

Reciprocal Link Building: - This is the process of exchanging links with other sites. Reciprocal link building is acceptable, if it is done with just a few other related sites whose content might interest your site’s visitors. But it is strictly against the laid down search engine guidelines to engage in unnatural link exchange schemes, with the sole intent to manipulate search engine algorithms.

Black Hat Link Building:- Not every strategy of building links is acceptable. There are automated bots or software that spam other people’s websites’ writable areas to plant backlinks for their owners. This technique is clearly against search engine rules. If a site’s backlink count suddenly grows much more than what it can naturally acquire over a period of time, it will be viewed by search engines as an attempt to manipulate their ranking algorithms. This can attract some penalties, if noticed. So, always keep it natural. If majority of a site’s incoming links are from unrelated forum signatures, irrelevant blog comments, as well as totally unrelated websites, the technique employed can be termed unorthodox. It is wrong to pay another site to link to yours or get links from link farms. Not only unnatural incoming links can hurt a website, but also when it links out to a bad neighborhood.

Your success at link building depends on adhering to these basic principles:

1. Relevance of the external web page’s content that links to your site – If your site is related to cosmetics, getting links from cosmetics websites will help your site’s ranking. But getting links from unrelated sources will not do much good to your site, unless the site where the link originates makes a strong case for your site’s content.
2. Authority of the web page where the link originates – Some websites that have very long histories on the web, powerful content, and have acquired millions of relevant backlinks over time are regarded as authorities in their endeavors. Search engines give more value for links that originate from these authoritative sources, because they’re trusted sites. If your site luckily gets a link from any of these authorities, that will help it to rank high on SERPs.

So, while building backlinks, be smart, put your keywords where they matter most, only employ white hat search engine optimization techniques and abide by search engine guidelines for webmasters. Following these principles will help the site you’re optimizing to rank very high on search results pages (SERPs).

It is a known fact that well-trusted article and web directories play a big role in link building. Have you ever wondered how to submit your site’s URLs to a top web directory or a niche business directory in a way to make sure your links are approved?

Even some individuals who work in the search engine optimization field don’t know how to submit links properly, and this can be a major reason why rejection of a submitted link occurs.  I will enlighten you why rejections often occur and guide you to the proper steps to take when next you submit a URL.

Submission Guidelines:
Every directory, whether it’s a general web directory, an article directory or a business directory, which maintains a high quality standard has its own set of strict editorial rules that must be adhered to by submitters, before approval is made. But unfortunately many individuals who submit articles and links are in a haste and do not read the laid down guidelines of the directories before they click on the submit button. This causes high rate of rejection, even when the linked site is an authority in its field.

Link Title:
Top web directories do not accept keywords as link titles. I found this out when I was editing links for a quality business directory. They expect link submitters to use their business or personal names where applicable, and not targeted keywords. This rule is enforced in accordance with major search engine guidelines to directories. These search engines believe that using keywords for titles is an attempt to manipulate their ranking algorithms. So, that’s why top directories enforce this rule, to avoid search engine penalties. If the site you’re submitting has a business name, use it for the link title. But if it doesn’t have any company associated with it, simply use the domain name with or without adding the domain extension.

URL:
Since I became a DMOZ editor, I found out that entering a site’s URL is not as simple as it might seem to an average submitter. You are expected to submit the most stable version of the Uniform Resource Locator (URL) and not any version that can be changed anytime. Example: http://www.mysite.com/ is more stable than http://www.mysite.com/home.asp, because “home.asp” can be changed to “home.aspx”, “index.html”, “index.htm”, “index.php”, etc, depending on the scripting language used and choice. I believe you now understand what a “stable version” means here.

Description:
Description is where most mistakes are made during submissions. Whether you’re submitting a URL to a business directory, or an article to an article directory, bear in mind that these link resources are human-edited and that submissions that do not meet editorial standard get rejected. A notable web directory maintains very strict editorial discretion at all times, regardless of who submitted the links. I always notice that many submitters unwittingly or intentionally pack keywords and promotional hype into article and link descriptions, forgetting they’re writing for human beings to read and not for search engines. The rule here is to write a description in well-composed sentences, blending your targeted keywords with the entire content effortlessly. A description must be written in a good grammatical presentation. Make sure it’s unique – don’t submit one description to more than one (1) directory. This helps to avoid duplicate content issue.

Meta Tags:
If a directory provides a space for meta keywords, enter the keywords the linked web page is targeting. This can be short and long key phrases.  If a space for meta description exists, enter one or two (2) sentences that sum up the link or article you’re submitting. As a rule, avoid using keywords and key phrases that can’t be found in the main description of your link or article.

Your Name:
The name field enables a directory administrator to ascertain and track the article or link owner. Mostly this requirement is not very strict, but the field can’t be left open. You can fill in your first name, surname, full name, business name or a nickname.

Your Email:
Most directories acknowledge their receipt of submitted articles and/or links by sending e-mails to submitters. This is also done when they accept or reject the links and/or articles, to inform the submitter of the status. Bearing this in mind, it is wise not to enter a fictitious e-mail address. Nothing annoys a directory administrator more than receiving a return e-mail notifying him/her that the message he/she sent to a submitter cannot be delivered. This proves that the submitter is not sincere and trustworthy, and hence, it leads to link or article rejection in most cases.

Category:
Most people make the mistake of submitting their articles and/or links only in categories that have high PageRank, not minding if their submissions fit in well or not in those categories. To ensure a greater chance of approval, only submit in a category that is most suitable for the content of your article or website.

Automated Submissions:
Automated bot submissions to an article directory or a web directory make the job easier and save a lot of time. However, it doesn’t yield desired results. Most of these automated software don’t have the capability to break Captcha validations if a directory employs such security. Majority of directories have unique categories that make make things hard for automated software to submit in the proper category. That’s why using any of these bots is against directory guidelines. The rule is to make your submissions manually, in order to make sure that the chances of link or article approval is high.

You now know exactly how to submit articles to article directories and URLs to general web and business directories, to increase chances of approval.

These days many webmasters ask how many backlinks are considered too much by major search engines. Many also want to know how fast link building can be to be considered too fast. Both questions would never have been asked in the seventies, when there wasn’t anything like too much or too fast. But time has changed. And since incoming link development plays a major role in the success and failure of websites, both questions need to be answered.

Question: How many inbound links can be considered too much?

Answer: It all depends on certain factors. But, let’s pry a little deeper. Firstly, you have to explain what you mean by the phrase “too much.” Do you mean too much for link popularity, search rank, click traffic or for your site’s health? The reason why many people ask this “too much” question is because they fear incurring search engine penalties. And it is true that the only reason people worry about amassing too much backlinks is because they fear any of the major search engines might penalize them for engaging in black hat SEO.

There are some plausible reasons why a site attracts thousands, or even millions of incoming links from external sites.

1. The website provides very useful content which entice so many people to naturally link to it.
2. A website is devoted to a topic that so suddenly generates massive amounts of natural news coverage, like Haiti earthquake did.
3. Someone is obsessed with SEO and actively seeking links for a website far beyond what is natural to obtain. A notorious way to do this black hat SEO is by using spam bots that post links on writable areas of other people’s sites.

Let’s consider the word “natural” and try to explain what it means in terms of link building. Every site has a some potential for attracting links, but some phenomena of linking are way beyond the site owner’s control, A website can suddenly find itself in the linking spotlight, due to unforeseen circumstances in its niche. When this happens, the website will experience a massive growth in natural backlinks and traffic, due to the incident and the perfectly normal surge in interest in that particular niche. So, any search engine seeking to penalize a website simply because it has accumulated a huge number of links within a short period of time, or a sudden surge in new backlinks, would be able to use an algorithm which has the capability to recognize if the surge is manipulated or natural. It is a good search engine optimization practice to attract links from quality sites with content that are related to one’s niche, in order for search engines to greatly value the links.

Second Question: How fast is considered bad when building new incoming links?

Answer: In some ways, this is the same question. Both pertain to the effect that new links will have on either a new or existing web site. It’s somehow suspicious when a brand new website attracts thousands or millions of inbound links. But in the world we live in, such things can happen, and often there is tangible evidence to support if it’s natural or manipulated. On the same boat, it’s strange when a site that has been on the web for a long time with a long established stable inbound link profile suddenly attracts several hundred or thousand new incoming links over the course of just a few days. But there are sites that have been around for a long time, but suddenly start getting new and natural backlinks fast.

Spotting unnatural linking patterns has been easier for search engines these days. Search engine web spam teams have been active lately spotting and penalizing defaulting sites that aggressively seek links for link spamming. As unscrupulous search engine optimizers get smarter everyday, so do search engine algorithms that detect their patterns.

So, it’s not about how many backlinks is too much or how fast is wrong, but about how natural is one’s link-building exercise.

If your link-building exercise can be trusted as being natural by search engine algorithms, then, you shouldn’t worry about too many backlinks or too fast speed.

A great way to build relevant links is to create a blog site related to your niche and link to your site in the main content of your posts. And submit the blog to blog directories, such as Total Blog Directory.