Website promotíon is essential if your site is to be successful, and directory links can be used to improve your search engine listing. Link directories such as a website directory or article directory provide you two advantages in this respect, namely:
a) If you have just launched your site, it will receive immediate visits from search engine spiders along with the indexing and listing that results from these visits. You can wait an awful long time for a search engine listing unless you use some way of providing a short-cut for search engines such as Google to discover your site. However, because an article or link directory is visited frequently by search engines, directory links will lead them straight to your web pages.
b) Unless the link directory or article directory uses the 'nofollow' attribute you will get a share of the Google PageRank of the web page on which your website or article is published. Some directories use the 'nofollow' attribute that prevents you getting that PR share, so avoid these if you can, although many provide the straight link for a fee. The benefits of the link are usually worth the money.
Another reason for website promotíon using directory links from a website or an article directory is that visitors to such directories will click on your link. With link directories, the link is the URL anchor link in the listing itself, while in article marketing, the link to your site comes from a URL you place within a section known as the author's resource box that usually appears after the main text of the article.
Writing articles is a particularly useful method of website promotion because you use anchor text for your links, regarded by Google as offering a better way of optimizing the article than just a straight URL. The anchor text should relate either to the theme of the article or of the web page you are promoting.
While website directories generally publish the URL of your domain, an article can be published in an article directory with the URL of any page in your website you want to promote. Links deep into your website such as these provide significant advantages in promoting your entire site in the search engines rather than just the Home Page.
How do you use directory links to promote your website? What are the mechanics? The procedure is really quite simple, and we'll discuss it here, first with link directories and then with article directories.
Website Promotion using Link Directories
When you register with a link directory, you will be asked to generate a user name and password which will then generally be followed up with an email containing a confirmation link that you must click to confirm your registration. This is to prevent spambots from creating mass registrations within the directory.
Then you will be directed to the login page where you use the details you have provided to log in. You can then enter the details of your website. Each is different, and you may be asked for the website name or title, the URL and a description of what the site is about which will be published with the site listing. Some might ask you for keywords that will enable your website to appear when people use those keywords in their search.
You then receive a link to your website from the directory which will help improve your PageRank. Additionally, Google and the other search engines will follow that link next time they visit the directory and your site will be spidered. Also, real people might read your description and decide to check out your site, so link directories can also generate traffic. Your description should be designed to impress the reader.
Website Promotion using Article Directories
An article directory is somewhat different. Here, you must first write an article that relates to the theme of your niche or website. You will generally use the same procedure to join an article directory, though you may not have to provide details about your website.
You then enter your article into the boxes provided: normally a box for each of the title, the body of the article, the author's resource and the keyword list. The latter two may be combined in some directories. You will also have a box for a summary of the article that will appear in the article directory, and perhaps a list of keywords will be requested.
There are many benefits to article marketing as it is called - far too numerous to list here, but suffice it to say that it is a very powerful method of promoting your website. You receive traffic through people reading the article and then clicking on your link to learn more, from improved Google PageRank and also from others copying your article, complete with your resource box, to use as content on their own websites.
All in all, when carrying out your website promotion using directory links, you are using one of the most powerful and least expensive techniques available to you, and few ever regret the results. It takes little work, and although some directories provide free listings, others have a small charge which is well worth the expenditure for the return you get in website promotion.
