Building Backlinks Best Methods: Article Marketing and Directory Submission

Search engines rely heavily on quality backlinks to determine how important a website is. Therefore, it is extremely important for new website owners to realize that building backlinks holds the key to building his web presence.  

There are many methods to boost your backlinks, such as article marketing, web directory submissions, forum posting, news release, podcasting, webinars, to name a few.  The most efficient two methods that any new marketer should consider are the first two mentioned: article marketing and web directory submissions.  

Method 1.  Article marketing  

Article marketing is by far the most economical and effective way to build backlinks.  It is economical because it is free.  It is effective because (1) it bears a quality backlink every time you submit one to an article directory and (2) this article may be distributed to many more directories or sites of webmasters who look for free content. In this sense, one article can result in 10, 20, 50, 100, or more backlinks to your site; there is really no cap to the number of links this one article may end up building.   

Any article you write in your niche will likely build you a number of backlinks down the line.  However, to make the most out of this effort, there are a couple of things to bear in mind.  

1.  Do your keyword research and make sure you include your website url anchored with this keyword phrase in the resource box.  If you do a proper keyword research, you’ll end up with a phrase that is actually searched in the search engines. If you further link your website to this keyword phrase, your chance of getting seen is greatly increased.  Intuitively, this is the path for your website to be found. 
2. Try to change your articles by at least 30% when submitting to different directories. The idea is to make your content as unique as possible to the likings of the search engines. This will maximize the benefit of the time you spend writing.  Intuitively, the most prominent places to change in an article include the title, the first paragraph, the first sentence of the paragraphs, the conclusion paragraph, and the resource box text.  

 Article writing should be repeated over and over again consistently.  A reasonable goal to shoot for is to submit two articles a week.  It is the best if you can write the articles by yourself.  If not, for the sake of marketing your website efficiently, you probably should consider getting them ghost-written and submit them (or have them submitted) to as many article directories as possible  

Method 2. Web directory submissions  

Although less superior than article writing in terms of backlink building, submitting your website to web directories is still a more powerful method than many and may generate highly targeted traffic for your website. After all, both search engines and people go to directories to find related information. This can be a time consuming process but well worth doing.  

There are thousands of directories on the Internet; some are free, and some are paid.  A preferred approach for new Internet marketers is probably to submit to all the free, non-reciprocal web directories with the best possible page ranks.  Here is just such a list to guide your effort.  

• Vlib.org (PR9)
• Dmoz.org (PR8)
• Lii.org (PR8)
• Worldhot.com (PR7)
• Selfgrowth.com (PR7)
• Femina.com (PR7)
• Exactseek.com (PR6)  

(Source: http://webdirectorylist.smashingdir.com)  

Working down this list will bring a definitive difference to your backlinks and web traffic.   

To conclude, the backlink building strategy discussed here is simple to follow and proven to work.  Although it requires considerable time commitment, it behooves the new Internet marketers to take actions and practice these methods repeatedly.  Constant effort will surely bring about delightful result..