Many of you reading this post might curse me for changing the theme of this post because the title of this post might be considered a bit misleading as this post is not entirely about Valentine day but it is about spreading link love by providing various useful links to all those reading this and those also who will be sharing this with others and thus returning back some link juice. This is very similar to what I did last new year day, by providing links to one way link directories. This time I will be adding more by providing links from other useful sources too. 

Now goto Tools menu in IE and click ‘Selected Links’. The following screen with all the links in the selected text and their respective anchor texts will appear.

Now you have all the URLs. You can copy individual link or click ‘Copy All’ to copy all the URLs to your computer by pasting them into a text file. You can also click ‘Open All’ which will open all the links that this tool has extracted. Though this is not a recommended action specially if it has lots of links to open. Your browser might slap you for doing that

Just select the text (words/lines/paragraphs/headings etc) with your mouse cursor and this tool does the following for you:

- Count words
- Count Characters (Hovering the cursor on counted words yield characters count)
- Add the counted words to other counts (Yes it will do the addition for you)

Words count is shown in the status bar of your browser just like the way shown in the image below:

Counting words and characters come in handy on lots of occasions specially when writing and checking specific length articles. This tool will also come in handy if you are an SEO because a lot of times you would be writing meta tags, page titles and other such tags in which length of words/characters is an important aspect.

For any website to appear high in search engine rankings, it is required that it has a decent tract of both ON-Page and OFF-Page website optimization in the eyes of search engines. Off page optimization is done by getting backward links or simply backlinks. The higher the quality and relevancy of those inward links, the better it is for higher ranking in search engines.

Below is a list of ten directories where you can submit your blogs, sites and get free one way links that will help you increase link popularity of your websites.

If you have a new website then the chances are that you get little to no traffic from search engines like Google, Yahoo, Msn etc. The only way a new site will receive search engine traffic is when it has links (or simply backlinks), pointing to it from other sites on the web. This way search engine crawlers will come to know about new websites by following their backlinks. So the more links a site has, chances are that it will be receiving more traffic from search engines. Links are only one of the factors that search engines consider when they rank sites in search engine result pages (SERPs). So for a new website to increase its link popularity, the website owner needs to have a proper and solid link building strategy which along with clever promotion and marketing tactics can boost the traffic to his site in just few months.

How And From Where to Get Backlinks ?

One of the easiest methods to increase link popularity and to get easy backlinks is to submit your site to web directories that offer free One way links (links that point back to your site without linking back to the page containing your link). There are thousands of web directories on the web that you can submit your site and get free one way links. Some of the directories that offer free submissions are listed below. You can go ahead and submit your sites/blogs/forums etc to the following list of directories :

1. http://www.fat64.net
2. http://directory.softensive.de
3. http://www.dndirectory.net
4. http://www.add2us.com
5. http://www.canlinks.net
6. http://www.linksguru.net
7. http://www.gainweb.org
8. http://www.directorycampus.com
9. http://www.sc3m.com
10. http://www.free-website-directory.com

The above web directories will give you free one way links and you will not have to pay a single penny for that. You do not even require to link back to them (leave the reciprocal link field blank during submission). Hopefully Your submitted links will be approved any where from 1 to 30 days. Feel free to share the above list with others.

Yes Google has started updating the Page Rank and they have started to reflect on Google toolbar . I was notified from Digital Point forum . There is a buzz still there about this recent Google Page Rank update . Many websites have increased their Page Ranks but some showed a decrease and the rest showed no change at all .

The previous Page Rank update took place at the end of April 2008 and exactly after 3 months Google has updated them again . So if I am not wrong one more update for Page Rank still to follow this year .

Many webmasters do not worry about Pare Ranks , instead they show more concern over their search engine rankings and rightly so . I will not be happy if I had a PR5 site and it only gets 100 daily visits from search engines . On the other hand I would be more than happy if I had a PR2 site which gets over 3000 daily visits from search engines .

Page Ranks has its importance if you want to sell advertisements and do paid reviews . This is where your blog Page Rank comes into play and the higher ( with PR10 being the highest ) it is the more amount you can earn from advertisers and paid postings and reviews .

My this blog gained a PR1 from no PR . According to the stats shown my SEOpro , Kashifblog.com has over 1700 backlinks and still it was only awarded a PR1 .

My other blog which is about food recipes also gained PR1 and that also had no PR before . This blog has over 450 backlinks and many of them are from PR3-5 pages on the web .

So Google is playing some mind games here I can sense them .

As usual the photo above has nothing to do with this post and neither it is related to any of my other posts . So here I am again to share with you free link love resources which include (but not limited to) FREE One-Way link directories that have high page ranks and have high traffic rankings as well . So you will get free links from high ranked directories for which you do not require to place their links on your site . So why waste time when something that will benefit you is being offered to you for free.

Copy and paste the following URLs in your browser

1. http://www.xland.info
2. http://www.directoryzeal.com
3. http://www.mercury-directory.info
4. http://www.kingoftheweb.net
5. http://www.info-listings.com
6. http://www.ilushkin.com
7. http://www.skypemedia.com
8. http://www.thebestdamnlinkspage.com
9. http://www.androsweb.com
10. http://www.diryou.com

If you submit your site to the above free directories then make sure you submit to 10 more free one way directories here !

There are millions of free directories where you can submit your blog for free and get easy one way link which can help increase the number of inbound links and also help your blog to rank well in search engines which in turn will give your blog more free hits from search engines.

The question however is which directory to submit your blog and which are the ones that you better leave as they are not worth the time that it will take to submit your blog . There are two things that I always look for before submitting to a free directory .

1. Directory Page Rank

Page rank is Google’s importance of any webpage . It ranges from rank zero i.e PR0 to PR10 with 10 being the highest which Google.com has. Page rank of any website can be found by installing Google toolbar . So whenever you visit a site , its page rank will be indicated in the Google tool bar in your web browser.

How this rank is calculated by Google is still not completely known . Usually the more inbound links from other sites that have high page rank and also relevant to the site they are linking to will get you a higher page rank but Google also incorporate various other factors when assigning page rank to a web page .

So the first thing to do is install the Google page rank toolbar and only spend time in submitting your blog to those directories that at least have page rank higher than zero.

2. Alexa Traffic Rank

The other thing to look for is the directory Alexa traffic ranking . To get more detailed knowledge about Alexa traffic I recommend that you read it at The Alexa Traffic Ranking page . I hope by now you know how Alexa calculates and assigns traffic rankings to web pages . For that you have to install Alexa tool bar which will indicate the traffic ranking of any website that you visit .

Now that you know what are traffic rankings and you have to toolbar , you can easily find out the traffic rankings of directories that you visit . This will save you a lot of time as you will immediately identify those crapy directories which do not even receive any traffic and have very low traffic rankings .

So you know both page rank as well as Alexa traffic rankings of the directory and you are all set to launch your directory submission campaign . You can start by submitting your blog to 10 free one way link directories here . Good luck.

Lets see what this blog gets when the page rank update is over.

So now back to the question on what is a reasonable number of directories that one can follow as a guideline . For me even 500 links in a day will not harm your site because not all those 500 links will be accepted by the directories the same day as they will have different approval durations with they will follow . The other factor is the most important one and it is when those 500 links will be indexed by search engines . So you do not need to worry much about the numbers unless they are growing at an alarming rate because not all the links will be indexed the same day . Many webmasters might be thinking by now that how the heck are we going to submit to so many directories in a day . Well I so far have not used any automatic directory submission tool because I do not trust them at all . Instead I use RoboForm which does remarkably great job when it comes to manual directory submission. You better get one free copy for yourself since it is a much needed tool if you are going for safe directory submission.

After every few days I usually check the status of back links for my blog and not surprisingly few of the previous ones either do not exist or have been made “nofollow” for some reasons . How to I check them ?

I use free online tools like Backlinkwatch and SEOpro . Both of these work fine and do not cost me a single dime . I prefer SEOpro tool because it not only gives me the ranking of the page at which my links are placed but it also indicates the page rank of its respective home page .

You have to look for three important factors when you analyze backlinks .

- Page Rank : The page rank of the page at which your link is placed . The higher the page rank the more weight and authority it will carry and will help to increase your ranking.

- OBL : This is the numbers of outward or outbound links that can be found on that page . Remember that you are not the only one that has placed a link there and there might me hundreds or even thousands of other links like those . The higher this numbers gets the less weight it will carry for each of the link . The authority is divided among all the links so you have to consider this factor as well before creating a link at a place which already has hundreds of OBL.

- No-Follow : Last but not the least the one that you have to look for is the no-follow attribute . If it says that your link is no-follow it means that this link will not carry any weight / authority and during indexing by search engine crawlers it will not be counted towards a back link . So make sure the the pages that you intend to get links from are NOT “nofollow” .

For a more detailed guide on where to get link from and where not to read my previous post : Link building guidelines.

Without links a site is like a person without identity . Many bloggers complain about not getting traffic and readers for their blogs. They do get some peanuts on daily basis but that also trough their own efforts by emailing their friends and family members a link to their blog.

They are missing the basic ingredients and that is “Links” . Links are nothing but your blog URL that can be found at different places on the world wide web . Those are permanent links ( or Backlinks ) unlike those that you send through email messages . Links are used by search engines to judge the popularity of any site . The more links for a site , higher the chances that a search engine is going to rank a site high. There are various methods one can build links for their blogs . Some of them are :

- Directory submission (If you do not know where to begin then read my previous post about directories importance in building backlinks)
- Other Blogs
- Social networking / bookmarking sites ( By sharing your links with others )
- Forums ( forums are the easiest means to get links for your blog )

There are various other strategies as well that one can adopt for link Building . The ones that I have listed above are very simple and easy to implement and if you are a beginner then you better start with these methods to get links for your blogs .The earlier you start the better it is for your blog.

To be very honest this is the funniest thing I have ever read on any blog that is related to link development . Now why I call this dirty ! You are spamming other blogs (that are dead) just for the sake of gaining more back links . Even if the comments are published without moderation and the blogs are do-follow blogs still I call it dirty and not worth the time you put in for getting those links .

There are many disadvantages in getting links like the method described above by my fellow blogger .

- You are wasting time for getting links from dead blog .
- Even if your comment is published without moderation , still do not expect it to be indexed by search engine spiders since spiders do not show much generosity to the blogs that are not updated frequently .So those links are not counted as backlinks if they are not indexed !

Instead I will advise to comment naturally on other blogs . Just comment if you find something interesting and have got more to add to the post . If you follow these guidelines then I am sure that most of your comments will be published and they will be worth the time you spent as they will not only give you back links but will also be visible to a larger audience and if you sound well then you will get traffic from those comments .

For instance I participate in various forums (Since forums can provide more backlinks) and I only post when I have something different to add to the discussion. Many will find my response helpful and they end up following me to my blog here. So use some common sense and think for a longer term. You can spam the system and get away for a while but in a long run you are in no mans land.

2. It is wise to spend few hours a week on building links. Manual link building may be a slow process and tedious too, but automating the process just doesn’t get the same results. The search engines are smart enough to be suspicious when your site suddenly acquires thousands of back links over night.

3. Varying your anchor text is advised .When you generate links from within a sites content , it appears more natural looking to search engines. Search engines will also notice if every single one of your back links reads the something.

4. Do not comment on forums and blogs just to throw your link there instead add something of value to the discussion, or you’ll just end up getting you account banned.

The most easy back links to get for your site is from a web forum.There are thousands of forums out there to chose from.Once you have chosen a forum that is related to your site , register with those forums and start participating in the forum by giving useful suggestions and sharing your thoughts with others.Do not spam the forum by posting single sentence posts like the ones shown below:

-Yes you are right
-I agree with you
-Well done !

Some forums consider this as spamming and if the are very strict in moderation then you might be kicked and banned from the forum.So use some common sense and only post when you have something useful to share.This will also enhance your reputation on forums. Now comes the part of building back links for your site through those forums.Most of the forums allow its members to use signature links which is attached to each post that is on the forum .Signature link might look something like the one shown in the picture below.

You can use any format that meet your needs and forum signature guidelines.As long as the link is not broken and points to your desired web page , it is fine and will count as back link.The greatest advantages of forums is that if it has many active members and there are lots of threads posted each day then those pages ( containing posts along with all the links ) gets indexed very quickly by search engines.These signature links add to your page rank and you will notice the effect of these back links.If you are lucky or I can say smart then you will quickly reply to threads that might contain very useful information for example threads about top 100 article directories.The advantage of replying to threads like this is that people naturally link to pages such as this one as they find it useful and informative for sharing with others.The more people link to the thread , the more back links that thread page gets and this will eventually increase the page rank of that thread.If your post containing your signature link is on the thread page then you definitely get credited from getting backlink from web page that has a high page rank .

Backlink:
Backlinking can be defined as putting a link of a site on other site. It serves as a vote for one’s site and increasing the number of votes results in an increase in the popularity of site. For example, if a site has a url www.abc.com and other has www.xyz.com and site “xyz” places the link of site “abc” then it is called backlink to the site “abc”. Through this way , one may increase the site traffic as one site has been marketed by another site.But this will not happen in just a few days .Search engines will take some time to recognize those links.

Outbound Link:
If a site has a link to other sites then the link is called outbound link. The thing which is more important for SEO is that the site must contain quality outbound links. It means that if a site links to other sites and destination site is relevant then this will result in an increase in the page rank of the site and site gets higher positions in search engine result pages.

Inbound Link:
It is the reverse of outbound link and these are the links pointing to your site from other sites. Like quality outbound links, quality inbound links can also play an important role in receiving high ranks in search engine result pages.

Link Exchange:
Exchanging links is another way of building quality backlinks. In this type of linking ,two sites exchange links with each other .For example I find site B relevant to my site A and I placed site B link on my site A and requested site B to place the link of my site A . This is done by contacting the webmaster of sites and requesting link exchanges.But my advice will be to only exchange links with those sites that are relevant to your site , have a higher page rank and also have decent traffic floating to that site on daily basis.