Improve your Ranking with Directory Submission

To get to the number one spot in Google, Yahoo or MSN for a popular keyword phrase you must increase the number of links pointing to your site (known as backlinks).

Even if you have the most beautiful website graphics and the most interesting content on your site you are not going to reach the top spot in the search engines without working on your link popularity.

To check your current link popularity visit MarketLeap Link Popularity Check

If you are aiming to get to the number one spot in Google for say, "home internet business ideas" go to Google and type this phrase in. Next go to the Market Leap link above and enter your URL along with the URLs of the websites that have the number 1 and 2 positions on Google. You can now compare the number of links that you have with the number of links that your competitor has to get an idea of how much work it will take to get to the top.

If you have more links than your competitor for that search engine but are below them in the search results it could either be because your site is not well optimized for your target keywords or because the quality and relevancy of the links back to your site is not as good as your competitors.

If you are interested in optimizing your site and improving your search engine ranking I would recommend downloading the free SEO Made Easy Guide

There are a few ways to increase your link popularity. These include:

• Reciprocal Linking with other websites
• Submitting your site to directories
• Posting (useful posts) in forums with a link to your website in the signature
• Submitting Articles to article directories with a resource box containing a link to your site

I've done all of these in the past but in the last week I've been concentrating on directory submission.

You can read more about Directory Submission on my website.

I've found directory submission quite tedious in the past, but I just came across a tool called Link Directory Submitter which has made the job much easier.

You can download a free trial version of Link Directory Submitter which allows you to submit your site to 24 directories. After using the tool and seeing how easy it was I purchased the full version, which has over 300 directories!

I don't plan to submit to them all this month as it's better to increase your backlinks gradually, but over the next 3 months or so I plan on submitting my site to all of these directories. Even if I only get my site approved for a quarter of these sites, that's 75 new backlinks... Not something to be sniffed at!