Last year around this time, I took the plunge for the Yahoo Directory - paying my $299 review fee. I was reviewed and added here: http://dir.yahoo.com/Regional/U_S__States/Illinois/Cities/Aurora/Real_Estate/

Since then, I can honestly say, the amount of traffic I have received from being listed has been minor - likely in the single digits. For many webmasters, the dilema of the Yahoo directory is obvious. $300 is somewhat expensive - one of the highest review fees out there and it’s annual too. Many webmasters measure the benefit of a directory by direct traffic - it’s farily well-known that the SEO aspect of many of them have been reduced over the years. However, there are a few that still generate some benefit - including the Yahoo Directory. However, when it comes down to it, is the benefit worth the cost?

For now, I am fairly content to continue paying the fee. I justify it by thinking of how much I pay every time I send out a mailing - $299 per year is a drop in the bucket compared to some of the costs of print advertising. In the future, I might review this decision and if there are better options out there, I may choose to discontinue my membership - only time will tell.

Another popular way of building links for your website is through writing and submitting articles. This has become popular for several reasons. First, articles tend to be long so pages that include your article have a higher chance of being picked up and indexed by the search engines. Also, it’s a great way to include a link to your site by placing it into the “context” of the article. This is often seen as a higher value way of building a link than other forms such as directory submissions or text links.

There are a couple drawbacks to link building through articles. First, due to the fact that you generally are going to be submitting the same article to hundreds of sites, it will be duplicated hundreds of times all over the internet. This is sure to present some duplicate content issues with the search engines and you might find diminishing returns as the numbers grow. Second, writing an article takes time. Some have gone the route of hiring professional writers to generate topical articles for link building.

One of the final obstacles with articles is the submission process. Most article sites that accept free submissions require some type of registration. It begs the need of a program to help you coordinate all of the submissions you’ll be doing. I find Article Submitter Pro to be a great option for this - easy to use although not as fully-featured as I’d like at times. Plus there are over 1,000 article sites pre-loaded with the software.

Despite a few drawbacks, article writing still continues to be a popular way of adding relevant website links. Of course, serious website owners will seek a variety of linking options, but articles should make up a decent segment of your efforts.

I’ve gone back and forth several times about the value of submitting to directories. Right now, I feel that directories are a good option for site submission for several reasons. First, you might get some traffic because of your listing. Second, it gives your site good search engine exposure and means that your page should get crawled more often. Third, the one way link always helps. And finally, because there are lots of options out there for both free and paid submits.

I do understand that directories are not considered as authoratative as websites in your niche with the same them. It’s hard to relate a general web directory with a subject such as Real Estate when there is probably only a single category and perhaps a handful of subcategories related to the subject. Also, many of the free-submit directories tend to go defunct or never rise above the crowd, meaning that your listing will probably never count for much.

However, there are several large directories that are useful - the Yahoo directory for one. This authoratative directory is bound to help drive traffic to your site and also lends weight to your page as being an authority site. Some other directories have gained good traffic and are very worth it to submit to.

Now that reciprocal linking is greatly de-valued, one way links are very important for building the value of your website. Directories often represent one of the best ways you can capitalize on one way links. Plus, many of these directories being free to submit to, you might get on one in the early free stages and wind up with a solid backlink in a year or so. Can’t beat the price of that!

Perhaps the goal of any website owner is to drive traffic (and in the real of real estate - convertable prospects) to your page. Perhaps the top way to do that from a broad based audience is through gaining positions in the search engines - namely Google, Yahoo and MSN. It’s no secret that Google is the king of the hill right now - driving much more traffic than Yahoor or MSN. It’s also no secret that links play a big part in Google rankings.

Essentially when a website links to yours, it casts a “vote” for your website. The more votes, the more popular your website is seen. Now, this is a greatly simplified view as Google supposedly uses over 50 different calculations to rank your site, but linking is a big part of it.

The goal in linking is to obtain a solid 1-way link from a website that has some authority in your subject to your site. Reciprocal linking (I.E. - putting a link to a site on your page in return for a link to your page from theirs) is now considered a redundant form of linking because search engines have been devaluing those links. So, since obtaining one-way links is considered much more valuable in terms of search engine rankings, it’s worth a look at some of the ways you can obtain one way links to your site.

There are several well-known ways of getting one way links to your site:

• submit your site to paid or free directories
• write articles about your subject and release them to various article sites
• write press releases about your business and release them to various PR sites
• attract natural links through “link bait” or other tactics
• sponsor wordpress or link directory themes
• pay for links

Some of these are more valuable than others and over the next few posts, I’m going to be talking about each of these methods - how they’re done and how you can start doing them.