It is a well known and established fact that high rankings on Google and other search engines can only be achieved if a website has both optimised web page content and good quality inbound links.

Having your website professionally optimised is a worthwhile investment and will ensure that your SEO efforts produce the best return for you. However securing good quality, one way links, to your web page content as always been the more difficult part of the overall search engine optimisation process.

A tried and trusted link building method for many Webmasters and a relatively easy way to start building one way links to your site is via online directories. But do website directory submissions still have value when it comes to your search engine rankings?

I recently came across a case study which evaluates if it is still possible to increase the position of your website in Google’s search results, by using this method.

A Webmaster tested three pages of a website that did not have any inbound links pointing to them. These three pages were created to provide valuable content to search engines.

The three pages were submitted to three high quality, paid directories (Yahoo, BestOfTheWeb and Joe Ant) together with a range of free online directories.

Approximately 45 days after the links went live, the web pages had achieved increased visibility on search engines. Visits and conversions also increased and the tracking statistics indicated that at least 50 percent of the results could be attributed to the website directory submissions.

The final results concluded that there was a major improvement in increased traffic to the site and an increase in monthly sales conversions of 45%.

What does this mean for your website?

Securing One Way Links from online directories is still a worthwhile exercise and should be a fundamental part of any search engine optimisation strategy. However in order to be successful you must also build one way links from a wide range of other sources. Google will give a higher reward to those sites that have a more natural link building profile.

Links secured from Website Directory Submissions are only one part of the link building jigsaw. In order to out perform your competitors, you should also secure links from websites that are related to your content, such as blogs and social media sites like Facebook, Digg etc.

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In addition to optimising the individual pages of your website, for your targeted keywords, it is absolutely vital that you also improve the Link Popularity of your site, by securing one way links from as many external websites as possible. Ultimately it is your linking strategy that will deliver high rankings on Google and other search engines.

However this is not a simple numbers game, as the quality of your links play a significant role in deciding your ultimate position on Google. With only a small number of high quality One Way Links, it is possible to outrank a website that has many inbound links. If a website has a high volume  of one way links, it does not mean that it will automatically rank highly for every keyword, as Google decides the position of a website in its search results by analysing both on page and off page factors.

On page factors represent elements that are already present on all of your web pages. These “elements” are within your control and can be amended where necessary, in order to make your web pages as search engine friendly as possible. These changes are what is commonly referred to as “Search Engine Optimisation”.

The primary Web Page Optimisation tasks should concentrate on the following:

• Make sure that Title, Description and Keywords Meta Tags are present on each page of your website.
• Make sure that each set of Meta Tags contain unique content, that is relevant to the topic of each page.
• Do not duplicate the content in your Tags across every web page.
• Your Title Tag is the most important, make sure that it contains relevant targeted keywords.
• Make sure that the text on each page is also optimised for your targeted keywords.
• Check that all the relevant page links have been correctly coded, to ensure that search engines can navigate your site correctly and are able to find all your pages.
• Check that the HTML code of your web pages is error free to enable search engine spiders to easily parse your pages?
• Check that your web pages are free of all spam elements and there is no hidden text, no disguised redirects and no keyword stuffing.

Off page factors represent the elements that cannot be found within your web pages and primarily relate to improving the link popularity of your website.

These factors should focus on the followng:

• How many websites link to your site?
• Are these inbound links from related high quality pages?
• Do social bookmark websites link to your website?
• Do the links to each web page contain the relevant, targeted keywords.

All of these factors are important in order to achieve high rankings on Google and other search engines.

Why is link popularity important?

If you wish to achieve high rankings on Google for a specific targeted keyword, you must optimise one of your web pages for that keyword. If the web page optimisation has been performed correctly and meets all of the criteria mentioned above, then Google will list it in the search results.

Obviously, there will be many competitive websites, that will be targeting the same keyword as your website. If more than one web page has been optimised for the same keyword, then Google will list the web pages with the best quality inbound links in the highest positions. For example, if 10 websites have been optimised for the keyword “blue widgets” then the website that has the most one way links, that contain the keyword “blue widgets” as part of as the link text, will achieve the best position on Google.

If your website meets all on page requirements and has the right number of quality links (which does not mean that it must have the most links) then you will achieve high search engine rankings. There are many ranking elements that will influence your position in Google’s search results. The more elements that meet Google’s requirements, the more likely it is that your website will be listed on page one of Google’s search results.

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Social bookmarking offers an easy and convenient way to store all of your favourite websites and blogs in one place.

By utilising one of the growing number of specialist Social Bookmarking websites you can organise all of your bookmarks and easily share them with others. Millions of individual web pages have been bookmarked in this way which represents a rapidly growing trend. In order to make the bookmarking process as simple as possible, many websites now include links to the most popular sites to encourage their visitors to bookmark their web page.

Bookmarking your individual web pages offers an excellent opportunity to improve your Link Popularity, by creating quality, one way links to your site from the various social bookmarking websites. The majority of social bookmarking sites are ranked highly by the search engines, including Google, who consider them as authority sites. This means that your bookmarks will be indexed fairly quickly and the search engines are much more likely to recognise these type of one way links to your website.

How does social bookmarking work?

Firstly you will need to register with each of the social bookmarking sites you wish to use. It is sensible to register with as many social bookmarking networks as possible as this will increase the opportunity to develop a greater number of one way links. However bear in mind that although bookmarking is not necessarily an arduous task, you will need to invest a reasonable amount of time to set up all of your bookmarks. Therefore the actual number of individual bookmarking sites you aim to use should be manageable.

Once your accounts have been set up, your links will be created via a social bookmarking submissions page. These links should point to the web page you wish to promote. If your web page contains interesting content it is possible that other users will add them to their own personal list of social bookmarks. Each time a web page is bookmarked an additional one way link is created to your website.

To maximise your bookmarking efforts it is essential that your keywords are included in the anchor text.

However, for these links to be successful and recognised by the search engines, it is vitally important that the chosen title for your bookmark (anchor text) contains at least one, relevant, targeted keyword. Your targeted keyword must also be present, a number of times, within the text of the web page you are bookmarking and should also be included in the Title Meta Tag. If you fail to do this you will find that your bookmarks will not be as effective at improving your link popularity.

If you are prepared to invest the time, social bookmarking offers a cost effective method to improve the link popularity of any website and should be part of your overall link building strategy.

Lists of social bookmarking websites are widely available via a relevant internet search, however here are few popular sites to start with:

• StumbleUpon
• Squidoo
• del.icio.us
• Technorati
• BlinkList
• Spurl.net
• Wink
• Google Bookmarks
• Kaboodle
• MyLinkVault
• Simpy
• reddit
• Twitter
• Digg.com

Please share your social bookmarking experiences using the comment box below.

Developing your link popularity via submissions to online directories is an effective method of building one way links to your website. Directory Submissions remain one of the oldest and most reliable ways to generate one way links. Creating inbound links from search engine friendly, online directories is an essential part of the Website Promotion process and a proven method for developing your link popularity.

There are several thousand directories available online, that will list your website for free.

Obviously the quality of these directories will vary considerably and it is therefore worthwhile investing time in a little research, in order to create a list of your personally “approved” Directories. A good way to measure the quality of any Directory, is to identify their Google Page Rank score. The higher the Page Rank score, the quicker your listings are likely to be indexed, as the search engines will crawl higher ranked Directories more often than their lower ranked counterparts.

Compile a list of online directories that contain a relevant category for your website.

When compiling a list of your “favorite” online Directories, you will also need to establish if they offer a specific category that is relevant to your website. As there is such a wide range, it should not be that difficult to find suitable Directories that contain relevant categories that match your websites topic or product. Simply search for “directory listings” or “directory submissions” and you should find an abundance of online Directories offering a broad range of categories. For your Directory Submissions to be accepted, it is essential that your site is submitted to the most relevant category for your business. if you submit your site to the wrong category, it is unlikely that you will achieve a successful listing.

A wide choice of niche directories also exist, covering a wide range of topics.

If your website offers a niche product or service, you may wish to consider a more targeted approach for your directory submissions project. In order to find specific niche sites for your directory submissions, simply include a relevant keyword in your search term.  For example, if you wanted to promote a website specialising in Article Writing, you would need to include this keyword as part of your search, such as “Article Writing Directory” or Article Writing Directory Listings”.

Once you have compiled a detailed list of directories, that meet your criteria, you are now ready to submit your website.

The exact directory submissions process will vary. Although some Directories may require a fee for optimal exposure, the majority will list your website for free.  Either way, the process will require the completion of a simple online form. You will be requested to enter your websites URL together with a title and short description about your site and the service or products offered. You should include at least one targeted keyword or search term within your title and description and more, if space allows. This is extremely important and will increase the chances of your directory listing being indexed by the search engines and creating a recognised one way link to your website.

Directory submissions will help to improve the Link Popularity of your website. Although you will need to spend a little bit of time researching the directories, the benefits are worth well worth it as you could secure a lot of one way links without having to invest a huge amount of money.

It is important to ensure that your website has a well thought out internal link structure.

In addition to your standard page menu structure, providing extra links on a page to other relevant pages of your site will help users find the information they are looking for, more quickly. These additional links will also help search engines navigate your site more easily. If the anchor text used for the link contains your targeted keywords then these types of links will also help to improve the overall Link Popularity of your site.

Google has confirmed that you should use less than 100 internal links per page.

According to a recent Blog post by Google’s, Matt Cutts, you should use fewer than 100 internal links, per page.

“The original reason we provided that recommendation is that Google used to index only about 100 kilobytes of a page. When we thought about how many links a page might reasonably have and still be under 100K, it seemed about right to recommend 100 links or so. If a page started to have more than that many links, there was a chance that the page would be so long that Google would truncate the page and wouldn’t index the entire page.

These days, Google will index more than 100K of a page, but there’s still a good reason to recommend keeping to under a hundred links or so: the user experience. If you’re showing well over 100 links per page, you could be overwhelming your users and giving them a bad experience. A page might look good to you until you put on your “user hat” and see what it looks like to a new visitor” states Matt.

The “100 links” recommendation is also mentioned in the Google Webmaster Guidelines, Design and Content Section, which states:

• Make a site with a clear hierarchy and text links. Every page should be reachable from at least one static text link.

• Offer a site map to your users with links that point to the important parts of your site. If the site map is larger than 100 or so links, you may want to break the site map into separate pages.

• Keep the links on a given page to a reasonable number (fewer than 100).

Of course, there may be some instances where you might have a completely valid reason for having over 100 internal links on a specific page, such as providing a large resource library or information directory. Because of this, Google will not automatically consider these pages spam, but they might choose to nofollow or not index some of these links.

For more information read Matts Cutts Blog Post in full.