Submitting your website to both free and paid directory sites is a great way to increase the backlinks to your webpage. Directories are compilation sites that list links to all sorts of sites. To get a better feel for how these sites are structured, check out the Open Directory Project at dmoz.org – it’s one of the best known directory sites on the internet today.

Traditionally, directory sites are broken down into two different categories – free and paid – depending on whether or not they charge you to include your site in their listings. Both types can have a place in your search engine optimization campaign, depending on what type of budget you’re working with. However, whether paid or not, it’s important to realize that not all directories are equal in their potential to improve your site’s ranking. You’ll need to do your due diligence to be sure the directory you’re submitting your site to gives you the best return for your efforts.

Getting your site listed in targeted directories that relate to the theme of your website will likely be seen as a premium by the search engines. In addition, you might even receive some traffic from them.

For example, if someone who’s interested in dog training finds a great directory dedicated to gathering links in their area, they’ll likely bookmark the directory and come back time and time again. To find these highly targeted directories, search for “your niche +directory” using your favorite search engine.

In addition to finding targeted directories for submitting you site to, you also want to look at the quality of the directory. Submitting your site to directories with higher traffic and higher PageRank will lead to better SEO results for your webpages.

Another important thing to check into before you submit your site to a directory (especially if you’re going to pay) is whether or not the directory makes use of “NOFOLLOW” attributes. Basically, these tags tell the search engine robots that any outgoing links on the directory page shouldn’t be considered in the search engine rankings. These tags were intended to prevent spam links from gaining popularity in the search engines, but if you submit your site to a directory that uses them, you’ll lose the backlink benefits of directory postings. If the directory doesn’t explicitly state whether or not it uses these tags, you can find out by looking in the code for rel=”nofollow” or by using a special plug-in for your browser that marks these links as red.

When it comes to submitting your site to directories, you again have two different options. You can manually submit your site to each directory you’d like to be included in, or you can purchase software or services that will do the submissions for you. In fact, if you search for “directory submission” on any of the major search engines, you’ll see a number of different advertisements for bulk directory submission services. In most cases, these services won’t dramatically impact your site’s search engine optimization, since the directories they submit your site to may not be well optimized for your niche.

Submitting your site to directories by hand is more time-consuming, but it may be worth the money saved if you’re only going to be including your page in a select few directories. And you can save your time altogether by outsourcing this task.

Individual directories have their own rules for how a site should be submitted, but most include selecting the appropriate category for your link and including details like your link, anchor text and a brief description of your site. The amount of time it takes before your link is visible will also vary by directory. However, if you’re diligent in finding well-ranked, high-traffic directories, you should see increased traffic to your site in a short period of time.

Additional Articles in the Search Engine Optimization Tutorial Series:
SEO Module 1 – SEO Introduction & Keyword Research (Watch Online Video)
-Part 1: What is SEO?
-Part 2: Keyword Research
-Part 3: What is LSI?
-Part 4: What are Long-Tail Keywords?

SEO Module 2 – On-Site Optimization (Watch Online Video)
-Part 5: On-Site vs Off-Site
-Part 6: On-Site Optimization Details
-Part 7: What are Meta Tags?
-Part 8: What is Anchor Text?

SEO Module 3 – Off-Site Optimization (Watch Online Video)
-Part 9: Off-Site Optimization
-Part 10: Directory Submissions
-Part 11: Article Submissions
-Part 12: Press Release Submissions
-Part 13: Forum & Blog Commenting
-Part 14: Social Bookmarking
-SEO Tutorial Conclusion

We’ve discussed on-site search engine optimization in great depth – including some of the different adjustments you can make to your webpages to make them more appealing to search engines – but these techniques are only half the battle. Off-site techniques are just as important in getting your site ranked well in the search engines results. For the most part, off-site SEO techniques revolve around the links that point to your site from other webpages. These links back to your site are commonly called backlinks.

The following types of backlinks offer the most benefit in terms of off-site search engine optimization:

Links from sites with a high Google PageRank – Google’s PageRank system is a website quality indicator that takes into account how popular a site is by reviewing the amount and quality of the sites that link to it. Sites with a high PageRank are considered to be more reputable than those with low ranks, so backlinks to your site that come from high PageRank sites naturally offer more of an advantage in terms of search engine optimizatiton.

Links from sites with similar content – Search engines consider the source of an inbound link when determining how much weight to give it. For example, if an authority site on working from home links back to your site on making money online, the search engines perceive this as an endorsement of the quality of your content. Consequently, the search engines will give this link more weight than they would to one from a free link exchange directory.

Link extensions matter – Search engines tend to give more weight to backlinks that come from well established sites with .com, .edu and .gov extensions. Specifically, search engines tend to assume that the information on .gov and .edu sites is more reputable than that on less well-known .info or .us extensions. These links can be extremely difficult to get, but if you are able to get linked from one of these sites, you should see your rankings increase dramatically.

The number of links to your site – Of course, all things considered, a site with 600 high quality backlinks will be ranked better by the search engines than one with only six high quality inbound links. In the eyes of the search engines, this demonstrates that many different people think highly of your site – making it a better choice to send traffic to in response to user searches.

Link building is hardly a precise art, as there are a number of additional factors that the search engines take into account when measuring the strength of the backlinks to your site. In addition, search engine algorithms change frequently, so the factors they give weight to now could change without warning. However, it is safe to say that building up good backlinks from other quality sites is a sound strategy when it comes to search engine optimization, and will remain so for the foreseeable future.

So how can you start getting links? Well there are several different methods you can choose to jumpstart your link building campaign. These include directory submissions, article submissions, press releases, forum and blog commenting, and social bookmarking.

Additional Articles in the SEO Tutorial Series:
SEO Module 1 – SEO Introduction & Keyword Research (Watch Online Video)
-Part 1: What is SEO?
-Part 2: Keyword Research
-Part 3: What is LSI?
-Part 4: What are Long-Tail Keywords?

SEO Module 2 – On-Site Optimization (Watch Online Video)
-Part 5: On-Site vs Off-Site
-Part 6: On-Site Optimization Details
-Part 7: What are Meta Tags?
-Part 8: What is Anchor Text?

SEO Module 3 – Off-Site Optimization (Watch Online Video)
-Part 9: Off-Site Optimization
-Part 10: Directory Submissions
-Part 11: Article Submissions
-Part 12: Press Release Submissions
-Part 13: Forum & Blog Commenting
-Part 14: Social Bookmarking
-SEO Tutorial Conclusion

Anchor text is one of the most important factors you must understand in order to earn good rankings from the search engines. Specifically, anchor text refers to the linked text that’s displayed in place of a web address – the text you click on to be taken to a new web page. Anchor text is structured as follows in a website:

Learn how to make money online

Examining this link structure, we can see two major elements – the actual web address of the site and the anchor text that the viewer will see displayed on the page. In this example, a visitor to this web page would see only the words: Learn how to make money online. Any visitors who clicked on this link would automatically be taken to the site www.makemoneyonline.com, even if they weren’t aware that this was the link’s destination.

Anchor text can be used in both internal and external links – and it’s important to focus on both of these elements as part of your linking strategy.

Internal links are those that connect separate pages on your website. In this instance, you can use anchor text on the links that connect your home page to an article that’s posted on your site. The navigation links on your web pages are internal links.

External links are those that come from sites outside of your own – if, for example, another money making site linked back to your own as a good source of information.

So why is it so important to use anchor text? Why not just include the link to your website or something generic, like “Click Here”? For one, using anchor text gives visitors more information on the benefit of clicking on your link and through to your site. Of course, for this reason, your anchor text should make sense – stuffing it full of three or four keywords will turn off potential human visitors, even if it boosts your rankings in the search engines.

Secondly, using quality anchor text that includes your target keywords or keyphrases also improves your rankings on the major search engines (especially for the exact keywords and keyphrases you use in the anchor text).

This is due to the fact that anchor text helps let the search engines know what your site is about. Search engines also place a premium on the anchor text that links back to your site from other reputable sites. Focusing on increasing the number of quality links coming back to your site and including keyword-rich anchor text in these links is a great way to improve the amount of natural traffic you receive from the search engines.

Additional Articles in the SEO Tutorial Series:
SEO Module 1 – SEO Introduction & Keyword Research (Watch Online Video)
-Part 1: What is SEO?
-Part 2: Keyword Research
-Part 3: What is LSI?
-Part 4: What are Long-Tail Keywords?

SEO Module 2 – On-Site Optimization (Watch Online Video)
-Part 5: On-Site vs Off-Site
-Part 6: On-Site Optimization Details
-Part 7: What are Meta Tags?
-Part 8: What is Anchor Text?

SEO Module 3 – Off-Site Optimization (Watch Online Video)
-Part 9: Off-Site Optimization
-Part 10: Directory Submissions
-Part 11: Article Submissions
-Part 12: Press Release Submissions
-Part 13: Forum & Blog Commenting
-Part 14: Social Bookmarking
-SEO Tutorial Conclusion

When you start building your actual site, one important on-site technique you can implement is the inclusion of meta tags in your web pages. Meta tags are special snippets of code that are included before the body content of your site that contain information about your site’s name and purpose. Other than the title tags, these tags aren’t visible to visitors on your site, but they provide valuable information to the search engine robots that determine which search terms to display your site for.

The most popular tags for SEO purposes are title, keyword and description tags, all of which provide more information to the search engines about your site’s content and what search terms its most relevant to.

Title Tag
The first tag you should include is a title tag, structured like this:

While this isn’t exactly a meta tag, it’s usually categorized as one because it occurs in the “HEAD” area of your webpage (before the body region). However you’d like to categorize it, this tag helps the search engines scouring your site to figure out what the page is called and what should be displayed in the search results. For search engine optimization purposes, it’s important to include your page’s main target keyword or keyphrase in the title so that search engines will know to display your site when a user searches for that specific term.

Keyword Meta Tags
Keyword meta tags are also important, as they let the search engines know which searches the site is relevant to. A keyword tag is set up like the following example:

A good keyword tag includes between 3-10 keywords that are relevant to your page. Stuffing this tag full of 50 keywords won’t help you rank for more keywords – if the search engines can’t determine that the keyword is relevant to your content, they may penalize you with lower amounts of traffic. Be sure that any keywords you choose to include in this tag are actually used on the page.

Description Meta Tags
Many sites also make use of description meta tags – although many SEO experts disagree about whether they actually contribute to your site’s SEO. At the very least, description tags let you control the paragraph of text that will be displayed below your site’s name in some of the search results. Description meta tags are structured like this:

This meta tag controls what will be displayed in the search engine results when your site comes up in the rankings. Natural search results usually display the page’s title and description.

So even if meta description tags don’t contribute to improving your site’s rankings, writing a good description may help convince search engine visitors to click through to your site. You can even use this description as an opportunity to pre-sell potential visitors on any products you’re selling with persuasive, targeted language.

Heading Tags
While not exactly classified as meta tags, in addition to these techniques, including your major keywords and keyphrases in headline titles is a great way to boost your search engine rankings. Using heading tags on your pages is simple – instead of just including your text and adjusting the size to make it larger, wrap it in a heading tag structured like this:

Your Title Here

. There are six different heading sizes – h1, h2, h3, h4, h5 and h6. The top heading of your page should be wrapped in h1 tags and should include your page’s main keyword or keyphrase.

Another good on-site SEO technique is to frequently update your site with fresh, new content. The search engines love sites that are regularly updated. When you add new content be sure to let the search engines know that you’ve updated with your site with XML-compliant sitemaps.

Additional Articles in the SEO Tutorial Series:
SEO Module 1 – SEO Introduction & Keyword Research (Watch Online Video)
-Part 1: What is SEO?
-Part 2: Keyword Research
-Part 3: What is LSI?
-Part 4: What are Long-Tail Keywords?

SEO Module 2 – On-Site Optimization (Watch Online Video)
-Part 5: On-Site vs Off-Site
-Part 6: On-Site Optimization Details
-Part 7: What are Meta Tags?
-Part 8: What is Anchor Text?

SEO Module 3 – Off-Site Optimization (Watch Online Video)
-Part 9: Off-Site Optimization
-Part 10: Directory Submissions
-Part 11: Article Submissions
-Part 12: Press Release Submissions
-Part 13: Forum & Blog Commenting
-Part 14: Social Bookmarking
-SEO Tutorial Conclusion

As mentioned previously, on-site Search Engine Optimization (SEO) refers to the actions you take on your website to make your site appeal to the search engines. These include actions like the words you choose to use in the navigation links, meta tags, and the words within your content.

Meta tags are snippets of code you can include on your website to give the search engines more information on what your site is about. Visitors to your webpage won’t be able to see this information, but the search engine programs that scour your site will appreciate the tip off.

Alternatively, you don’t want to frustrate the search engine robots by bogging down your site with loads of pictures and flash animations. Search engines rely on the words and phrases on your site to get a feel for what it’s about, so that they know when to pull your site up in response to user search terms. If the search engine robots encounter lots of images or movie files, they won’t be able to figure out what your site is about and as a result, it will surely rank lower in the search results.

It’s important to get your on-site optimization right because you control it (as opposed to the off-site strategies I’ll cover later). The following are a couple of quick, but important on-site SEO principles to implement.

First, if you’re aiming for high search engine rankings, you’ll want to focus each page on a particular keyord or keyphrase. As I mentioned earlier, an ideal keyphrase is not too competitive, but still searched for frequently in the search engines. Once you’ve identified your target keyphrase, you’ll want to write content that includes this keyphrase about 2-5% of the time. Don’t go overboard – your content should still sound natural. In the short run, you can trick the search engines by stuffing a page full of your target keyphrase, repeated over and over again, but this is a poor long-term strategy.

Second, the domain name you choose is important as well. The domain name should reflect the main keyphrase for your site and, whenever possible, be a .com domain. Although most experts disagree whether a continuous domain is better than a dashed domain – “www.makemoneyonline.com” versus “www.make-money-online.com” – it is becoming increasingly clear that .com domain names are given more weight than some of the other extensions, like .info or .us.

There are many other on-site optimization tips, these are only a couple. I’ll cover meta tags in the next part of this tutorial.

Additional Articles in the SEO Tutorial Series:
SEO Module 1 – SEO Introduction & Keyword Research (Watch Online Video)
-Part 1: What is SEO?
-Part 2: Keyword Research
-Part 3: What is LSI?
-Part 4: What are Long-Tail Keywords?

SEO Module 2 – On-Site Optimization (Watch Online Video)
-Part 5: On-Site vs Off-Site
-Part 6: On-Site Optimization Details
-Part 7: What are Meta Tags?
-Part 8: What is Anchor Text?

SEO Module 3 – Off-Site Optimization (Watch Online Video)
-Part 9: Off-Site Optimization
-Part 10: Directory Submissions
-Part 11: Article Submissions
-Part 12: Press Release Submissions
-Part 13: Forum & Blog Commenting
-Part 14: Social Bookmarking
-SEO Tutorial Conclusion