So you’ve finished your website masterpiece and want nothing more than to spread the word and start receiving tons of traffic as soon as possible? Now you  think of a good way to drive traffic to your website in no time. What could it be?

Article submissions?
Press releases?
Link exchanges?
Traffic exchanges?

These are all excellent methods of driving traffic and should, without doubt, be persued.  However, each of these methods require a lot of work and most importantly… time! Imagine those countless hours of writing articles or trying to formulate an effective press release. Requesting link exchanges will even be more time consuming. Some website owners might just laugh at you because you have no pagerank or significant traffic while others take ages until they put up that single link to your website.  Traffic exchanges can be effective, but require a major time commitment.

I have been there and done it all! I don’t even want to count the hours that I’ve spent registering with the different article websites or emailing webmasters. I’ve always tried to figure out a way to get indexed in the search engines as soon as possible and to get a good pagerank as quickly as possible. Then, one day, I finally saw the light at the end of the tunnel: Directory submissions. Now please don’t immediately think about those free for all (FFA) links pages that will place your link on the frontpage for like 5 minutes or so.(although, they can be an effective marketing tool when used properly, that is a subject for another time) I mean well established link directories, websites that are really effective for getting your site indexed fast.

The good thing with link directories is that you have to do very little to submit your link, a title, short description and some keywords. Naturally you also have to select a category under which your website should be filed, most have a comprehensive list of categories available. Once you have submitted your website it will,most often, be reviewed by a human editor. This might sound like a bottleneck and a waste of time, however, when your site gets indexed remember all those that didn’t, believe me, it is well worth the inspection.

Simply do a search in google, or your favorite search engine on “link directories free” you will find enough to directories to last a life time.  Just be sure to follow the guidelines below. I use XtreamConcepts most often, they offer options for linking back.

Getting your site listed at link directories can be extremely easy if you follow some simple rules.

When you build your website make certain that it doesn’t look like it was thrown together in 30 minutes or like it was made by a 5 year old. Quality counts and will eventually help get your site listed. If you think: “Oh no, I have no chance to even get a single listing!”, not to worry. An easy way to learn what requirements you must meet to get listed, is to browse through some of the directory listings and check over the websites that are already included. You might laugh out loud when you see some of them – not because they look crappy (OK, some even might), but because they are kept pretty simple and clean. I guarantee you that if you are serious about website building and use a good software and/or design you will not have to worry. Naturally, always read the directory guidelines to see whether your site qualifies for a listing or not (e. g. there may be no suitable category available).

Some link directories require a link back to them on your site, a so called reciprocal link. It can be a simple link, or for some, a more advanced HTML (don’t worry, you can copy & paste the code most of the time) or graphics. So what does the link directory get from all this?  Well, when your website finally gets some good traffic and has high search engine listings, some of your visitors might find their way to the link directory itself. Additionally,  it will give the link directories some pagerank when your site has lots of backlinks (and you WILL get them by submitting to link directories). Make certain to post those reciprocal links before you submit to the directories as some of them might instantly check for it and possibly reject your site if it is not present.

If you follow these guidelines and be sure that you have good content that is SE optimized (not just dozens of pages of keywords and spam), then you will have no problem at all in getting listed with the link directories, getting picked up by the search engines and profiting from the floods of traffic. I personally do directory submissions almost daily and most of the time manage to get picked up by the link directories quickly.

Check This Out: “Penny Pincher’s Quick Start Guide to Marketing Online” A no Cost report for…well, the name says it all. LOL