The most important part of getting traffic and improving your ranking in search engines is to GET LINKS and get them everywhere you can. There are a ton of ways to do this and we’ve already discussed a few but now we’re going to talk a bit about FREE link submission. You want to submit your site to search engine directories, business directories, RSS feed directories and blog directories (if the site you’re submitting to is a blog). This will get you a lot of link love! (Some places require reciprocal linking or a paid fee but there are PLENTY that don’t that you can utilize and get great results. I have only utilized paid submissions for a few clients who wanted the paid submissions and I rarely, if ever, utilize the reciprocal linking ones.) It takes a bit of time, yes, but it’s totally worth it. How long will it take? HOURS..and maybe more HOURS, depending on how many places you want to submit to. My philosophy, the more the merrier! I hit as many as possible. So where do you start? Ha, good question! There are SO many directories and feed sites that it can make your head spin. Where you start is simply a choice of what you find you prefer. First, you need to determine if you have the time to do it yourself or if you prefer to pay someone else to do it for you. If you don’t have the time, you can 1) pay a submission site to do the work 2) purchase submission software for each need (search engine submission, RSS feed submission, blog submission, directory submission) 2) hire a Virtual Assistant to do it for you. If you want to do it yourself, get a notebook (or a spreadsheet) and prepare to dig in. There are a lot of sites out there that list the different directories but the problem is, each site varies in the directories they list, etc. So you may have to visit several sites if you want to dig in and hit every place possible…which is what I prefer. As you’re doing it the first time, you can jot down the sites you used, or create a spreadsheet, so that next time you can just go back to those sites. Doing a search for each of those directories will turn up a bunch of results but here are a few resources I use: Directory Submissions Submitter Bot. This is a neat little site that I’m just trying for the first time and, so far, I’m loving it! It will likely become part of my routine when marketing a site of my own or for my clients (yep, you can hire me through Contemporary VA…shameless plug). Anywho, it semi-automates submitting your site to directories. You have to actually sit there and choose the category for each directory, and hit submit; but, it brings each of the directories up for you, one by one, and after you choose your category it will submit it for you. It took me quite some time just to get through one bunch but I really like this. It currently has 487 directories but all of them won’t fit your topic so you should skip the ones that don’t fit. *Hint, use a "junk" email address for this because your box will be full of emails from each directory confirming your submission and you may get junk mail from some of them too…but you MUST use a real email address so that you don’t miss anything that has to be confirmed. It also does article submission and social bookmarking. I haven’t used those portions of it yet but I will be using the bookmarking portion tonight and will report back. I currently use Social Marker for social bookmarking (as well as a list of other BM sites I like to manually post to) so we’ll see how it compares! RSS Feed Sites A site like to utilize when submitting RSS feeds and blog feeds is RSS Specifications. It has a huge list of sites, just right click on them and use the "open link in new tab" so that you can maintain that page and submit, submit, submit! Blog Submission Blog Connection provides a nice little list of places to submit your blogs. (Some of them may be repetitive to other lists but such is the nature of the beast!) Never forget Zimbio. I love that place. You can set up as many blogs as you want and use their nifty little "import" button to import your posts and place them in the appropriate category. Misc. Another place that I found while scouring the web for new resources is Tapart. The site is a MESS but it actually has some valuable resources if you take the time to pick through the disaster of a site. Search Engine Submissions Submitware will submit your site to a bunch of search engines. A lot of them will ‘fail’ but it’s a free resource that will push through a fair amount of submissions. URL Submitter Pro also gives you free URL submission to search engines. It will also have a number of ‘failed’ submissions but you’ll still get some good submissions. Submit Express submits your site to a few handfuls of places too. Addme Search Engine Submission is similar to Submit Express. There are a ton more but these should get you started. If you use each of these sites, you will have submitted your site to A LOT of places. *Note – It will take some time for some of the sites to list you so just submit, submit, submit and be patient. The links WILL come! *Hint – don’t forget to use your keywords. Most of the sites will allow you to "title" your URL. Of course, you can always use your business name if you’re building a brand but you can also use your keywords as the title if your actual title doesn’t contain your keywords. (Read our Keywords and Anchor Text post if you haven’t already.) *Another hint – make sure you utilize profiles. Some sites, particularly the blog submission sites, give you a profile. Use it. Enter some information about yourself, your business/product, etc. and include links (and anchor text) where possible. What are your favorite submission sites/resources? How many places do you generally submit to? Please share =) Karen J. for OnlineMarketingWizards.com