A web directory is basically an organised index of Web sites.

If you own a website and do any kind of online promotion, you should already know the importance of backlinks for search engine rankings and website traffic. Getting links to your site is important for getting visitors and getting listed higher in search engines, with 80% of Google’s ranking believed to be taking this into account.

Web directories can be a great way to build links with just about any budget & bid directories are the latest type of web directory to come about. A bid directory is an organised directory of links sorted by bid amount; the higher the total bid for a link, the higher up it is listed in the directory.

Just like a business might list their company in the Yellow Pages, a website owner can add their link to a bid directory & by spending more on their link, they control how much exposure the link gets.

Usually, the highest bidder on the site takes the “link leader” position, and gets a sitewide link, or other special benefits from the directory owner. This will often result in competition between link owners that keep bidding to maintain the highest spot on a directory. Since link owners can add to their bid at any time, they benefit from having full control over when and how much they spend.

I was pleased to see that my link bid directory (FreshBidz) has already achieved a Page Rank of 2, despite only being up since July.

I used the PageRank tool at SEOlogs.com to check the Page Rank of the site, which then allows me to add a button to the site showing that this PR is valid. Hopefully, this will encourage advertisers to add links to the directory & compete for the front page with their bids.

Having been using bidding links directories for a while now, to obtain permanent one way links, I decided to start my own web directory!

Using the phpLinkBid script was pretty straightforward & only cost $29.95 for a single site license. I decided to go for the SEO Bundle Site License which also gives two add ons, Advanced Link Stats + PageRank Checker.

phpLinkBid makes it easy to launch a full-featured bid directory with automatic payments using PayPal and powerful administration tools.
phpLinkBid Features

• Fully automated link bidding system
• Unlimited categories & classic letters mode
• Instant payments with PayPal IPN
• Powerful administration control panel
• SEO friendly URLs
• Deep Links
• Email Manager
• Link Approvals
• Link Expirations
• Latest Links
• Linkrolls for your favourite sites
• Custom Language Files
• Multiple Currencies & Currency Manager
• Outbid Notifications
• User friendly pages and fancy error handling
• Built-in Content Management System
• Template support for easy customization

As I say, setting up was pretty straightforward, even if I did make a couple of schoolboy errors & had to re-install the add-ons. The site is configured to use my existing Paypal account & to test, I set up my own websites as the first couple of entries. All works well, the payment is made, credited to my Paypal account & the link goes live automatically.

E-mails were sent to me as the bidder & site owner, so the FreshBidz Bidding Links Directory is live & now I just have to promote & find customers! The same old story lol.

Link building is one of the most important search engine optimisation steps. Without good inbound links, your website cannot get high rankings. Although it is very important that your website has optimised content, without the links to your website, search engines won’t consider that content to be relevant.

It’s important to get the right links to your website. Link spamming doesn’t work. You must make sure that you get high quality links that Google and other search engines like.

Make your website linkworthy

You must make your website linkworthy. You cannot expect that other websites will link to your website if your site is basically a collection of affiliate links, or an online shop that looks like a thousand other online shops.

Your website must be different & unique in some way. Try the following:

* Add articles about your products or services to your website.
* Add tutorials and how-to articles about the topic of your website.
* If you have a lot to say, add a blog to your website & update it regularly.
* Add a directory with links to valuable resources on your website.

Check your competitors

The best way to start link building is to duplicate the links that your competitors have. Find all websites that link to your competitors and then try to convince them to link to your website. I use a couple of tools to find links to competitor sites, IBP & SEO Elite. The good thing about SEO Elite is that you can select to include the Page Rank of sites as a parameter, so that you can choose to apply for links only on sites with a higher Page Rank than your own. IBP shows the Page Rank of sites, but there is no setting not to include low Page Rank sites in the results. However, it is worth using as many tools as possible & IBP is very easy to use!

Get links from blogs

There are millions of blogs on the Internet and they all need something to write about.
Bloggers give out millions of free links each month & getting links from blogs is a good way to get links from related websites. For example, you could enter “real estate blog” or “music blog”, depending on what you sell on your website.

Using IBP to find these blogs also allows you to contact the blog owners quickly and easily and it automatically keeps track of the websites that you’ve already contacted so that you don’t contact the same person twice.

Get links from Internet directories

Submitting your website to Internet directories can be a good way to show Google that you have a reputable website. Low quality & fly by night websites usually don’t invest the time and money that is needed to be listed in Internet directories.

Inbound links are very important if you want to get high rankings on search engines. You should optimise your web page content first to make sure that search engines find your website relevant to your targeted keywords & then submit to directories & blogs.

If more than one website has been optimised for the same keywords (and that’s usually the case) then the website with the best links will get the best rankings.

If you want permanent backlinks for your website, then consider using the FreshBidz Bidding Directory! Newly launched, you can buy links in your chosen category and then bid your way to the top of the list from just £1. Increase your bid to take a top position, & get listed higher on the directory homepage.