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The amount of traffic that your website receives is directly related to the amount and quality of your inbound links. In most cases you should focus on quality first, and Michael Martinez does a great job of explaining this in one of his recent articles on SEOmoz.

Michael puts directory links into three categories “Yahoo Class Links”, “CNN Class Links”, and “Business Class Links” and explains the criteria for each. This article is a good read for people who cannot figure out why their website is ranking below a site with half as many links.

That being said, I still suggest grabbing the low hanging fruit first, and in this case we are talking about directories. Directory submission should be the first step taken when building links. Be aware, though, that not all directories are worth your time and money. Many of them require reciprocal linking that will drain your link value, and some don’t even rank in SERP’s. However if a particular directory will help drive traffic to your site then by all means you should submit to it.

There has been a bit of debate concerning the value of directories (for SEO), and there are some good reports on this subject. SEO Book is probably one of the best I’ve seen so far. In his article, Aaron addresses “quality signals”, like ad ratio, quality ratio, SERP ranking, and relevancy, that contribute to the value of directories.

The Comit Technologies’ link building team has conducted research that has helped them identify the 26 best directories to submit your site to. These are all trusted/human reviewed directories that pass on page rank and link value. They begin every link building campaign by manually submitting to each of these directories. Through these submissions alone I have noticed increases in website traffic and better search engine rankings.

Submitting your sites to directories can give you a quick boost in the search engines, but do not rely on them. It is imperative that you have an assortment of links from different types of relevant websites. Having only directory links will not work.

Good Luck
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Link building is considered the most important element to the success of your website. All links are NOT created equal, therefore you’ve got to choose the best links to focus your efforts on. Creativity is the key. The following tips are just some of the many ways that I like to use to build backlinks.

1. Interesting or humorous content is the most obvious way to get backlinks. Humor spreads like wild fire and is a great way to build backlinks to your site.
2. Create content (articles, etc.) for other sites in your neighborhood. Links from relevant websites are the most desirable.
3. Tools are a great way to get others to link to your site. If you know of or can create a useful tool for others to use, you should make them available on your website.
4. Adding blogs, forums, and reviews (on your site) can create communities that will link to your site. Many people are addicted to forums and blogs, and they can be used for more than just generating links.
5. Create online contests that will benefit others, and put them on your website. These will improve your reputation and increase your traffic!
6. Post industry related news. This can also make your site appear more authoritative and trust worthy.
7. Identify other sites that would benefit from your success and ask (it never hurts to ask) them for a link. For instance, an e-commerce site should always try to get their suppliers to link to them because an increase in sales will benefit both parties.
8. Look for industry specific directories that will link to you without requiring a reciprocal link.
9. Local directories are often overlooked when building links. These links are usually easier to get listed on.

Be aware that some backlinks are either undesirable or just not worth the effort. Avoid links from pages that link to you from frames or contain the “nofollow” tag because they will not provide any benefit, and also avoid the easy to get links from spammy websites. And absolutely do not use link farms because they will get you banned from the search engines.

Link building, while time consuming, will deliver the most reward for your optimizing efforts. Use these tips along with a little common sense and creativity, and you may eventually develop your own system for getting those good links.