SEO: How to generate lots of ideal links to your site for a high ranking
January 25, 2007 • Glenn Murray
There are many possible ways to generate links. Some are dubious (like auto-generation software, and sites set up by webmasters simply to host links to their other sites) and I won’t be discussing them here. Others, like those discussed below, are legitimate.
NOTE: Link generation is an ongoing (often tedious) task. You need to be dedicated and systematic. In other words, you need a strategy. Take a look through the link generation alternatives discussed below to see what suits you best. Then put your thinking cap on and get creative. It’s a new and very exciting field; there are undoubtedly many undiscovered ways to generate links. This chapter is just a starting point.
The six main ways to generate inbound links these days are:
- Add your site to DMOZ & Yahoo Directories
- Get your business partners to link to you
- Swap links
- Find out who links to your competitors
- Article PR
- Simply have great content on your site
Over the coming days, I’ll cover each of these methods in a little more detail. Today, I’ll address just the first.
Add your site to DMOZ & Yahoo Directories
The search engines regularly crawl these directories in search of new links, and they value these links quite highly (largely because the directories are human-edited).
Here’s how you add your site:
- DMOZ Open Directory Project – “…the largest, most comprehensive human-edited directory of the Web. It is constructed and maintained by a vast, global community of volunteer editors.” DMOZ does not charge for submissions. NOTE: This is the same as the Google Directory.
- Yahoo Directory – Yahoo charges for submissions (last time I checked, the submission fee was USD$299).
Stay tuned for further details on the other link generation methods.