A directory is simply a web site that contains a categorized listing of links from around web. They aid surfers to locate 'best' and most informative links for a particular category. For example a category may be called 'Home and Garden' and in this category there is list of links about home improvement and gardening. Directories consist of a collection of categories into which links are seperated. Categories can have sub-categories to make division of links more specific.

Directories are important tools in building link popularity and as a result help improve search engine ranking. They are an excellent source of inbound, one-way links, which are most powerful types of links to help build link popularity.

There are a multitude of varied directories on web at present. They range from general directories that include categories for almost everything, to specific directories that contain categories to match specific area/s of interest e.g. web sites about fishing. It is helpful to get your web site listed in as many directories as possible as this will help you beat competition in rankings.

Getting your link listed varies between directories as each has their own different process. Some directories require a fee but most do not. A lot of directories offer a mixture between free and paid listing. When you pay to get your link listed in a directory it is normally added within a week and it is guaranteed to be added. On flipside a directory offer a free listing can take anywhere from a week to several months to add your link, and also there is no guarantee that link will be added.

Some directories use other approaches to get your link listed. For example Joeant directory http://www.joeant.com requires you to register as an editor in order to submit a link. The Zeal directory http://www.zeal.com also requires you to register as a member but first you must complete and pass a 20 question quiz to prove your worthiness.

Directories to submit to:

Getting listed in quality directories such as DMOZ or Yahoo can be more beneficial for your link popularity than a lot of links from smaller, newer directories. It is therefore useful to know which to submit to. The following is a listing of some of higher quality directories:

DMOZ http://www.dmoz.org The most important directory that exists on web today. Getting listing in this directory is critical if you aim to achieve top rankings.. * Listing - Free * Time to get listed - 1 to 6 months, maybe even longer

Yahoo Directory http://dir.yahoo.com After DMOZ, probably next most powerful directory to get listed in. * Listing - Free or paid * Time to get listed - Free inclusion can take several months, paid inclusion a few days

Zeal & Looksmart http://www.zeal.com http://www.looksmart.com These two directories are very closely related as Looksmart owns Zeal. * Listing - Zeal: Free for non-commercial sites (sites can only be submitted after passing a 20 question quiz) but paid for commercial sites. Looksmart: Paid

Link Popularity history

To gain a better understanding of link popularity it is useful to know why it became so crucial for search engine rankings. In past a web page's ranking was determined, amongst other factors, by number of keyword occurences within 'on-page' elements i.e. in page text, META tags, title tag. When web developers learned that they could trick a search engine to return their web pages by cramming keywords into their pages search engines had to get a bit smarter. They were using 'on-page' elements to determine relevance so it was only natural that they would look to elements out of direct control of web page creator i.e. 'off-page' elements. Search engines made assumption that greater number of links from other sites pointing to a web site, more popular web site is and therefore a more quality resource. This worked nicely in theory but in practice it was also to be abused.

Web site owners figured out many ways to get links pointing to their web sites one example of which was through use of link farms, pages contained nothing more than a collection of links, Quantity of links was being abused so search engines made use of old saying "quality not quantity" and began to assign a quality factor to each of links pointing to a web site. Now web sites that had a higher number of high quality links were looked upon favourably by search engines. Building link popularity became a science in itself and today is still most time-consuming and frustrating activity for a search engine optimizer.

Main classes of links

Note: In following examples SiteA is our web site and SiteB is an outside site (i.e. a web site under a different domain name than SiteA).

Inbound links:

Inbound links to a web site are links that originate from an outside web site. An example would be a link on SiteB pointing into a page on SiteA.

SiteA (----- SiteB

Outbound links:

Outbound links from a web site are links pointing to a page on an outside web site. An example would be a link on SiteA pointing out to a page on SiteB.

SiteA -----) SiteB

There are two further classifications of links:

Reciprocal links:

An example of a reciprocal link is when SiteA links to SiteB AND SiteB links to SiteA, link is reciprocated by both parties.

SiteA -----) SiteB

AND

SiteA (----- SiteB

To achieve a high link popularity type of links to build are inbound one-way links. This simulates how natural links are created i.e. links that people create to point to your site because they found it worth linking to.