The following is a Link Building Bible guest post from Bill Woosley, owner of vmoptions.com (backlinks below).

There seems to be some myths regarding free web directories and the benefits they offer for backlinks. In this post I will try to clear up some of these myths and offer a few tips to get the most out of your free web directory submissions.

First, it is important to note that high pagerank free web directories get quite a few submissions on a daily basis. These high ranking directories often have backlogs that will take months to clear. I have found many of the people that claim free directory listings are ineffective usually are the same people that submit to only high ranking directories. It would take months for these people to realize any benefit from their free submissions. Being listed in free directories does help offpage SEO, but one must use a different approach to get immediate results.

Besides operating a deep link directory, I also operate a free directory list that contains more then 1,600 SEO friendly general web directories that are free to submit to. This is the same list I submit client sites to, and I constantly update the list. Even though this directory list can be sorted by PR, I always start submitting client sites to the newest free web directories I have. Newly launched free web directories have few listings, a small review backlog, and usually have more favorable listing standards. The bottom line is newly launched free web directories will get your submissions reviewed and posted in a fraction of the time it takes high ranking directories to review free submissions. And because there are fewer competing listings in new directories, the search engines will index your links rather quickly. If you want immediate results from the time you spend submitting to free directories, then you should focus on submitting to the newest directories you can find.

Those that want to improve their PR can take some additional steps to get the most out of their directory listings. Look at the homepage of any free web directory. In many cases there are dozens of sub-categories listed. If your submission is acceptable in any of the sub-categories you see listed on the homepage, submit to that category. PR flows down from pages linked to from the homepage. If your listing is in a sub-category that is directly linked to from the homepage, you stand a much better chance of getting some PR distributed to your site.

It is also important to vary the submission titles, descriptions, submitter’s name, and meta information as much as possible. As with any link building method, it is important that these links look natural to the search engines as well as appealing to anyone viewing the listings. As a standard rule of thumb, I completely change out submission sets every fifty submissions for bulk submissions. For even better results, change submission sets more often. In the long run, this will reduce the likelihood of the links being devalued.

While most agree that free directory listings are not a silver bullet to top rankings for competitive keywords, I can tell you that they are effective. I have a number of sites, under one year of age, that are PR 4’s and rank well for their keywords. These sites have only backlinks from free web directories, and in some of the sites the PR is distributed rather well to internal pages. For competitive niches, web directory submissions are just a small part of a diversified link building strategy.

As someone who writes about link building, I have to sit and read stuff, and search for stuff about link building. Then, I have to sit down and write about link building in order to share it with you. Then, I usually try to check my backlinks. With all of that stuff about link building going on for me, I don’t get around to actually building links with the information I am reading and writing about.

Well, I am going on vacation for a week, so I won’t be link building… but here’s your chance. I only have 1 post scheduled for Tuesday. Take a break from reading about link building tips and strategies (or go diving into my archive for some great information you may have missed if you just joined us.)

Use the 5-10 minutes a day you spend at my site and go build some links with that time. Depending on what you do, you can get a good couple hundred more links than you would have gotten. I have 2 homework assignments for you:

1) Use our DoFollow Blog Search Engine to find some new dofollow blogs to comment on.

2) Check out my Internal Link Building series, and implement those strategies on your site…. especially going back into older posts and creating links to your newer posts…

Doing these things will help your site for the short term and for the long term….

Also, feel free to subscribe to my feed to find out when I will be back. I have some great posts coming!

I think it’s no secret that we offer a DoFollow Blog Search Engine called DoFollow Diver. It provides a very easy to search group of hand-added dofollow blogs. It also features over 400 dofollow blogs (as of writing this). But, in the grand scheme of things, sometimes those 400 just aren’t enough. We link builders always need more and more and more ways to build links. Well, I found a great little “footprint” search string of a dofollow wordpress plugin, that allows you to easily find dofollow blogs.

Just open Google, or your favorite search engine, and type in:

“Comments links could be nofollow free”

And it’s that easy… you will be able to find hundred of dofollow blogs!  That is the footprint of the NoFollow Free wordpress plugin.  This plugin allows people to make their blog dofollow.

NOTE: This plugin does allow webmasters to enable dofollow comments on their blog, after X number of comments.  You can hate on me for supporting such blogs, but I am firmly against spam.  If you are going around only posting one link on a blog, and never returning, I don’t support that, which is why I support blogs that are dofollow, just after a certain number of comments.  Plus, the more comments you have on a blog, the better chances for your comment being on the higher page rank pages when the Google PageRank update happens.

So, enjoy this search string… I will definitely be using it to add blogs to our dofollow blog search engine.

Going all George Lucas style on you guys, I am writing what should have been the prequel to this whole entire internal link building series, now that I already have 5 posts about it written…

This only applies to internal link building with a blog, though you can build internal links on any type of site.

One issue with building internal links is that you get a pingback on your site from your own comment. You don’t want these cluttering up your comments, especially if you do internal link building as much as me. But, if you mark them as spam, then you’ll be marked as spam on Akismet, and have to go through the process of being removed (not hard, just a pain having to waste time doing it.)

Here’s the solution… if you plan to do internal link building on your blog, then you need to download No Self Pings Wordpress Plugin and install it on your blog… it’s that simple… you won’t get any more self ping backs!

Now get back to your internal link building!

If you missed the links above, pointing to the other parts in this series, please check out the other posts in this Internal Link Building series….

Using Internal Linking to Build Backlinks – Prequel
Using Internal Linking to Build Backlinks – Part 1
Using Internal Linking to Build Backlinks – Part 2
Using Internal Linking to Build Backlinks – Part 3
Using Internal Linking to Build Backlinks – Part 4
Using Internal Linking to Build Backlinks – Part 5
Using Internal Linking to Build Backlinks – Part 6

So far I have shown many different techniques for building backlinks from within your own site, in order to increase the page rank and authority of your internal pages, as well as make it easier for Google to crawl your site… and if it’s easier for them, then they figure it’s easier for humans to navigate your site and find information also.

Today’s internal link building tip is to go back into your archives and try to find places where you can add links to new posts you have written. The main time that people use internal linking is when they are writing a new post, referencing older posts on a similar topic that applies. (example: Look at the beginning of this post. I made links to my older posts about internal link building.)

The reason you would want to go back into your old posts and add some links to your newer posts, is that your older posts are probably already ranked well, and some of them should be bringing you consistent traffic from the search engines. Wouldn’t you want people who are getting to your older posts from the search engines to be directed to your new posts? This not only keeps your visitors on your site longer, which gives you more page views, more chances for them to click out to an advertiser, more chances for them to subscribe to your blog, etc etc etc, but it also helps you with regards to the search engines, as mentioned above, because it passes authority to your internal pages.

WARNING: When adding stuff to your older posts, make sure that you don’t rearrange or delete what you’ve already written, because that’s what is bringing visitors to your site. Only add stuff to the beginning and the end of the post. You can also use phrases that you’ve already written and turn those into links to your newer posts. Just don’t delete stuff…

So, when doing internal link building, don’t just focus on your your new posts, but also focus on your old posts too…

Please check out the other posts in this Internal Link Building series….

Using Internal Linking to Build Backlinks – Prequel
Using Internal Linking to Build Backlinks – Part 1
Using Internal Linking to Build Backlinks – Part 2
Using Internal Linking to Build Backlinks – Part 3
Using Internal Linking to Build Backlinks – Part 4
Using Internal Linking to Build Backlinks – Part 5
Using Internal Linking to Build Backlinks – Part 6