The Webmasters Network

A lonely fact of a webmasters life is the time spent locked away in solitude as we notch up backlinks to our websites. Some come organically through people visiting our sites and bookmarking us on a do-follow social networking site or by placing a link to us on one of their own websites such as a free Wordpress or Tumblr blog. Other links we create artificially by connecting with other webmasters and asking them to link to us in return for a link back to them or we add our sites into the many directories that are available to us. It takes a lot of time to build backlinks even when auto submitters are used.

A couple of days ago I learned about a directory project that is changing all that. It is called BungeeBones and offers 10,000 backlinks for the price of 1. Intrigued, I took a look, thought this sounds good – too good to be true; so I looked more deeply into it and contacted the project’s leader to find out more details. After several email exchanges, which I might write about in a later article, and a bit of research I concluded the project is genuine and will do as it heralds, namely, give thousands of backlinks for the free price of one.

BungeeBones is a directory with a difference – it is a remotely hosted human edited directory hub that allows webmasters to plug-in to it and display it on their own websites.  Any webmaster can submit URLs to the directory and can optionally place a version of the directory on a submitted  site. Each version of the directory is a stand alone product. Thousands of webmasters are already plugged in and connected through it so a link submitted to a directory on one site will potentially display in every other directory that is connected to the hub.  It is like using an automatic directory submitter: one click submits a link to thousands of directories.

If you are already inspired enough to use the BungeeBones directory to increase traffic to your website then please feel free to click here and move on to the Installation guide otherwise please read on if you need a little more conviction…

The hardest part of setting up any directory is getting people to submit to it. A directory is like a city – it is either living, breathing and bustling with activity or it is a ghost town with sand blowing in the wind, shutters banging and a few tombstones poking out of the ground. Most webmasters won’t submit to a dead directory that gives them the spooks. So the more links a directory has, the more alive it looks, the more likely a webmaster will submit to it and recommend it to their buddies.

The second hardest part of setting up a directory is convincing visitors to browse it. Again, visitors prefer directories that look busy and well used.

It is common knowledge that some webmasters make their directories look busy by pulling in links from other, better established, directories like DMOZ and Gimpsy. Such a tactic might give the impression of a thriving directory but it has one very big flaw: it gives away loads of valuable backlinks; and most of them are nonreciprocal. It creates a flood of traffic away from the directory with little to no traffic returned. Does that sound like a good deal to you?

The BungeeBones’ directory is already fully set-up, has thousands of users, is growing daily and is getting a lot of publicity. The iron does not get much hotter than this.

This is the first remotely hosted directory I have seen that apparently functions as a cloud network. It is a cross between a directory, an exclusive do-follow social bookmarking site, a search engine, an ad network and a traffic generator that provides serps benefits to webmasters. To submit a link to any one of the directories connected to the BungeeBones’ network is the same as to submit it to any other node of the directory. It is a one-to-many equation: one link submission equals many link submissions – a submission to one directory will potentially display at every other directory connected to the BungeeBones’ directory hub. It benefits all connected webmasters mutually.

Each directory set up within the network drives traffic to every other website plugged in to the network.

Each installed directory node has its own meta tags and webmasters have some control over the links displayed in their directory node. This reinforces the uniqueness of each directory to search engines.

You’re thinking, “Yeah, but, all the links and descriptions will look the same.” That is true, but ask yourself how many descriptions you use for your own sites when you submit them to multiple directories.

Most webmasters repeat the same anchor text and URL description in most of the directories they submit them. Search engines will arrive at each BungeeBones directory node, spider it, see a similar set of links, see different meta tags, see a different directory URL, will decide webmasters are too lazy to provide unique descriptions for their links then, after a cyber chuckle to itself, will index the directory as being different to every other. Consequently, each spidered link will count as a unique backlink.

There is no need to worry about spam. The directory is self-policing. Submitted URLs have to be approved by a human editor before they are added into the directory. After a URL has been approved for entry into the directory, webmasters and visitors can rate their value. The more valued the URL the more prominent its placement within the directory – in lay terms, higher votes, better placement. The system is hard to abuse due to IP monitoring and other, non-disclosed built in fail-safes.

So, what could make this directory better? It’s already set-up, it’s self-policing, provides traffic and backlinks; could it get any better?

Try this: participating webmasters earn commission from the sale of featured links and the sale of multiple category placements by the webmasters they refer to it. Plus participating webmasters get their links featured and inserted into multiple categories for %50 of the typical price. Remember the initial URL insertion into one category is free per domain so there is no cash outlay to join this expanding network.

To recap, the BungeeBones directory offers:

1. An easy to set up, fully functional directory
2. Pre-installed links which make the directory look busy and active
3. A directory that can be set up for each website a webmaster owns
4. A free to install, free to set up and free to submit to directory
5. A directory that can be uniquely styled to make it stand out
6. An easy to manage directory. It looks after itself – it is managed by BungeeBones so you can set it and forget it
7. Multiple category listings for any URL for a modest fee
8. Featured listings
9. Commission from upsells
10. Built-in anti spam system
11. Thousands of backlinks from the many websites that are already plugged into the directory
12. Targeted traffic
    

Installation

Installation is easy. It comes with one prerequisite: you must submit a URL to the directory before you can install it under that URLs domain.

There are two forms of the directory:

1. A standalone installation
2. A plugin for Wordpress and Joomla!

URL submission is simple. You can submit through any of the directories that are currently connected to the BungeeBones hub or you can add your submission through BungeeBones when you install a plugin into Wordpress or Joomla!

The directory can be installed into a folder under the top level domain (TLD) or in the root folder of the TLD of the submitted URL. You can install the directory as many times as you wish under as many names as you want under as many TLDs as you decide provided you install the correct code issued for the TLD you wish to install it at. For example:

If you go to my standalone directory at http://journalxtra/directory and submit your URL then you could install your directory on your own website at (assuming you submitted the URL http://example.com) either of

• example.com/directory.php, or
  
• example.com/subfolder/directory.php

The installation code for a directory is tied to the submitted domain to ensure accurate referral details and to maintain unique metatag information for the directory displayed at that domain.

To install the standalone directory

1. Submit your URL to any of the directory’s access nodes. This gives you access to your user control panel and enrolls you in the commission share program;
2. You will see your URL listed in the User Control Panel under the “User CP Home” tab. Next to your URL are the words “Add a Widget”. Click them.
3. The next screen provides both instructions for the installation and questions about the directory you wish to install. There are 7 questions and instructions in total, let’s go through their answers one-by-one:
   1. You have the choice to create an installation folder under your domain’s root folder. For example, your-domain.com/some-folder . If you create a folder for the installation then you should put the name of that folder as the answer to question number one. If you choose to install your directory at the root of your domain (e.g your-domain.com/directory.php) then you should answer “root” to question number one;
   2. Decide what you want to call the file that will hold your directory’s installation code. This file must be given a php file type (for example, directory.php). Whatever you name this file is the answer to question number two. Ensure there is no other file with the same name where you intend to create this one. Use your server control panel to create that file either at the root of your domain name or under the folder specified in answer to question number one (for example, create it at either http://example.com/directory.php or http://example.com/sub-folder/directory.php);
   3. Your directory will need a title so that it is easily recognized by human visitors and distinguished as unique by search engines. Think of a title and use it to answer question three. Whatever you put into here will form part of your directory’s metatag information. Do not use the name of your domain in this section or your metatags will display your domain name twice;
   4. Create another part to your directory’s title, a short slogan, and enter it in response to question four;
   5. Decide whether you want to display non-paying links or not. If you want your directory to be small and to only show paid submissions choose “no” in answer to question 5; otherwise choose “yes” and use question 6 to select whether non-paid (free) link submissions should be displayed indefinitely else for any period up to a year. It is this option that helps multiple directories to appear as unique entities to search engines due to the differences created among them by virtue of the links they display.
   6. Branding. Your directory can be branded as either BungeeBones or AdvertiPage. The differences between the two options are purely cosmetic from a human perspective and only affect the submit URL button and the landing page webmasters reach when they click it. Choose the brand that suits the impression you want to give fellow webmasters – AdvertiPage is more stylish.
4. Click “Submit Link Info” to be taken to a confirmation page. Check the setup details you entered on its previous page and click either back or next to cancel or confirm as appropriate.
5. The installation code. You have two options: use a predefined template or create your own template. The code should be pasted into the file specified during step 3 of the set up process. For example, if you created a file called directory.php then that is where the code should be pasted. The directory will not function correctly if the installation code is in the wrong place. The two code formats are:
   1. Code Format One which can be copied and pasted as is into your directory file, it will need only minor tweaks to style it;
   2. Code Format Two which is for more advanced webmasters and provides only a page header and the content creation script. This should be used by those who wish to create their own directory layout. Line 4 of part one of this code must have your affiliate ID entered into it. You can copy this from line 4 of Code Format One (displayed above it).
6. If needed, you can recreate your directory code if you make a mistake, want to move your directory to a new location or want to change the directory’s metatag titling.
7. Unless already present, remember to create a robot.txt file (can be left empty) and an .htaccess file (apache/linux servers). The .htaccess file should contain the line “DirectoryIndex name-of-directoy-file.php” (change “name-of-directoy-file.php” to the name of the file created in step 3.2 and do not include the quotes). Do not overwrite those files if they already exist.

To install the content management system widget

Wordpress

At the present time, the Wordpress plugin is still in beta and only works with the default permalinks structure. However that is no reason for you not to enjoy using this wonderful directory. You have at least four options to connect your own directory to your blog:

1. Use the plugin
2. Create a direct link to it in your blogroll
3. Put a link to it into a text widget
4. Create a page with a link to it inside of it

To use the plugin

The plugin is now at beta version 0.0.3 (although Wordpress still displays it as 0.0.1)  and now works with permalinks. It is under heavy development. I have spoken with the project’s leader, Robert Lefebure, on many occasions this past week and sincerely trust he will have the plugin out of beta soon – he has already made great strides toward that end. Here are the installation instructions:

1. Install it from here at Wordpress or locate it from your Dashboards Plugins tab by clicking Add New and typing BungeeBones into the search field.
2. Create a blog page called Directory (or anything else you like) and enter the following shorttag into it:
   
[bungeebones_directory]

   
3. Save the page and make a note of the page ID (it will look similar to this ?page_id=544). If you are using permalinks, you might need to disable them while you get the page ID (re-enable them after you have got your page ID). Disabling and re-enabling permalinks will not affect your blog’s functionality provided you re-enable the same permalink style.
   
4. Go to BungeeBones or one of its access nodes and submit your URL. Make a note of the URL number it displays after the submission process.
   
5. During the submission process you will be given the option either to create a Directory Widget or to just Add Your Link. If you wish to add your link at a later time then you can re-visit your Bungeebones Control Panel (User CP Home) and click the “Edit This Widget” link listed next to the URL you wish to place a directory at. The instructions for adding your directory either during the URL submission process or afterwards (at a later date) are the same as listed below.
6. The next screen provides both instructions for the installation and 7 questions about the directory you wish to install.The answers depend on where your blog is installed, let’s go through those answers one-by-one:
   1. The first question requires you to state where your Wordpress blog is installed. When you browse the homepage of your Wordpress blog, does your browser’s address bar show your domain name (e.g http://my-blog.com) or does it show your domain name and a folder name (e.g http://my-blog.com/superblog/ or http://my-blog.com/superblog/extra/). If your address bar only displays your domain name then your answer to question one is root if your address bar shows a folder or series of folders then your answer will be all those folder names inclusive of the forward slashes between them (e.g superblog/extra).
   2. The second question asks you for the name of your directory page. Enter the page ID you noted in step 3 above (e.g ?page_id=544).
   3. This question is split into two parts and is about meta tags. This question is optional but their completion will help distinguish your directory from other BungeeBones directories. In case you didn’t know, meta tags control information such as the title that is displayed within a web browser tab and the keywords that are displayed to search engine spiders. They do not affect the display of the page but can help to improve search engine placement.
      1. The description meta tag is often the description of a web page that is displayed by search engines when it is returned within search results. Enter the description you would like search engines to display to potential visitors when they see your site in their search results. A description should be less than 250 characters (approximately 50 words). BungeeBones automatically provides a description via dynamic meta tags. This description is complete and unique for each BungeeBones page but the same across all sites. If you want to make this description unique for your site, add a few words, say 10 (50 characters) that will inspire someone to click your link and not someone else’s link.
      2. Keywords are used by search engines to help determine the relevance of a website or web page to a search request. Search engines prefer to gather keywords from within a web page but placing them into a meta tag can help a search engine determine that your site is just what someone is looking for. Keep them relevant to your directory and separate each keyword or key phrase with a comma e.g “search directory,music search,find,”
   4. Decide whether you want to display non-paying links or not and if so for how long you want to display them.
   5. Your directory can be branded as either BungeeBones or AdvertiPage. The differences between the two options are purely cosmetic from a human perspective and only affect the submit URL button and the landing page webmasters reach when they click it. Choose the brand that suits the impression you want to give fellow webmasters – AdvertiPage is more stylish.
7. Click “Submit Link Info” to be taken to a confirmation page. Check the setup details you entered on its previous page and click either “Go Back” (to change them) or “Continue and Finish” (to confirm them).
   
8. All being well, when you submit the form you will be taken to a new page that shows some code. You need to get your affiliate number from it. Don’t worry, it’s easy to find. Look at Code Format One and find the 4th line down that looks similar to
   
$affiliate_num = 2584;

   The number at the end is your personal affiliate number. Make a note of it.
9. Return to your Wordpress Dashboard and click the “Editor” tab under “Plugins”. At the top right hand side of the plugin editor you will see a drop down menu, select the plugin called “BungeeBones Remotely Hosted Web Directory” and edit the file “bungeebones_config.php”. There might be two of them so edit both. They are listed toward the bottom of the file list on the right hand side of the page. One of them is as described below (it is usually the second bungeebones_config.php).
   1. Near the top of the file is a line that reads
      
$affiliate_num = ????;

      It’s the forth line of text from the top. Change the question marks (here highlighted in red) with the affiliate number noted in step 8.
   2. If your Wordpress blog is installed in a subdirectory of your root domain (e.g http://example.com/myblog as opposed to just http://example.com) then you will need to edit the eighth text line from the top that looks like this
      
$offset = -1;

      Raise the offset number by 1 for every folder listed in your blog’s URL address after the root domain name when you view your blog’s homepage in your browser’s address bar. For example, if when you view your blog your browser’s address bar reads http://example.com/my-blog then the offset number is raised by 1 from minus 1 to 0, like this
      
$offset = 0;

      Likewise, if your address bar reads http://example.com/folder/my-blog then the offset number will be raised by 2 from minus 1 to 1
      
$offset = 1;

   3. Are you using permalinks? If you are you will need to edit the eleventh text line down that read
      
$bb_permalink_name = "bungeebones-distributed-web-directory";

      Swap “bungeebones-distributed-web-directory” for the name of your directory page (e.g links-directory) so that it looks similar to this
      
$bb_permalink_name = "links-directory";

   4. If you wish to set up dynamic meta tags you will need to perform some minor surgery to your theme’s header.php file. The instructions for this are listed in bungeebones_config.php. I know they work on some blogs but getting it to work with some themes can be tricky. I’ll add these instructions here as soon as I am more familiar with setting them up
   5. Save the file and test your new Directory page. Some themes require new pages to be activated before they become visible in their menubar

To create a regular blogroll type link

Firstly, install create a standalone directory as described above. Then go to your Wordpress Dashboard and look down the left hand side of the page. Near the top is the “Links” tab, click Create a Link Category, create a category called Remote Directory then click Add New and enter the URL of your standalone directory and assign it to the newly created Remote Directory category. This will place a link to your directory on every page that displays your blog links. Some themes might need the link to be enabled before it becomes visible.

I won’t provide instructions for adding a link into either a blank page or a text widget because doing so is fairly straight forward once a standalone directory has been created.

Joomla!

The Joomla! directory component has been available for much longer than the one for Wordpress hence it is a much more mature and more popularly used product. I’ve not yet tried it. I promise I will create a test installation of Joomla! this week to try it and write up the installation instructions. In the meantime the Directory component and full installation instructions are available here at BungeeBones.

I will update this BungeeBones direcotory installation guide whenever merited by the script’s and plugins’ development.

Those Web Links Again

Submit a URL to BungeeBones

View my BungeeBones’ standalone directory

Download the BungeeBones‘ Wordpress Widget (please sign up through my URL to make me look good )

Download the Joomla! plugin, again please make me look good by signing up through my URL.

  Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010

Have you considered how many hours you put into getting backlinks to your webpages? Worse still, do you struggle to know whether or not the backlinks you create are dofollow ones? If you’re like me you will have spent days adding your sites to different directories and putting sneaky little references to them into message boards, forums and social networking sites. Backlink creation must be the most boring part of being a webmaster. When the time to create a few more backlinks rears its ugly little head I start looking for other things to do; anything but create backlinks. I absolutely hate the repetitiveness of it; and the whole idea of it is made worse because I’m not always sure that the backlinks I create are dofollow ones.

A couple of days ago I learned a new trick: to edit Firefox to highlight nofollow links.

Don’t misunderstand, backlink creation is still a chore thought more painful than the prospect of someone jumping on your gonads (although some people do like that); this, however, adds the element of a very friendly nurse into the equation so it’s a damn sight more pleasurable than it was.

The trick is to create a custom CSS value for the nofollw attribute of the HTML <a> tags. Don’t worry if that sounds like gobbledygook, you don’t need to know what it means you just need to know what to copy and paste and to where to put it.

The Firefox folder in your computer contains your profile folder and a subfolder called Chrome. To get Firefox to alert you to nofollow links within a webpage you must edit or create a file called userContent.css with an instruction for Firefox to display nofollow links in a way that makes them stand out.

Instructions:

1. Browse to the directory user/.mozila/firefox/*profile*/chrome

(where *profile* represents your profile folder. Windows users should just look for Mozilla/Firefox/*Profile*/Chrome)

2. Create a file called userContent.css. If this file already exists then use that instead of creating a new one.

3. Paste the following lines into it:


a[rel*="nofollow"] {
color: #000000;
border: 1px dashed black;
background: #ffffff;
}


4. Save then close the document.

5. Restart Firefox.

From now on, whenever you see a link that has a nofollow attribute it will have a black dashed box around it, white background and black writing so you will be better able to decide whether or not to place a backlink.

Here’s another tip: install the Firefox plugin called Autofill Forms and set-up your default form fill data with the details for your backlink so that Firefox can fillout most of most directory submission forms for you.

  Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2009

FREE BACKLINK BUILDING TOOL

Find “free to submit to” link directories on sites that relate to your keywords

1. type in your search term (a keyword that relates to your site or post)
2. click search
3. use the “Refine results for…:” buttons (listed near the page top just below any adverts) to filter your results for specific link directory types.

This link directory submission tool is regularly updated.

If you already know about backlinks and their importance for attracting traffic to a website and raising a website’s Search Engine Ranking then please skip ahead to the first highlighted heading where the methods for increasing backlinks are discussed; otherwise, if you’re uninitiated then please continue reading from here.

Any link from one website to another is called a backlink; and there are two good reasons that you need them: exposure and Search Engine Ranking.

Exposure gives more opportunity for your site to be visited by real people and search engine crawlers. The more links pointing to your site, the more visible those links and the more interesting their anchor text, the more visitors you will snatch for your website. More visitors equals more sales opportunities and more ad views.

In most circumstances, search engines are where most of your site’s traffic will originate. The more backlinks you have, the more relevant the linking page’s theme to your page and the more relevant the link’s anchor text to your page then the more value that backlink adds to your page’s search engine ranking.

You will have seen Page Rank, also known as PR, mentioned in most webmaster forums, blogs and “how to…” guides etc… Page Rank is a calculation of a webpage’s value as deduced from the number, relevance and quality of its inbound links. Most webmasters crave it whereas some think it is less important now than it used to be when it was first defined. What many webmasters don’t realize is that Page Rank is a patented process that is solely licensed to Google i.e only Google can use the Page Rank analysis algorithm that was devised by Larry Page (hence “Page” Rank). Other search engines like Yahoo and Bing use a similar algorithm to calculate a webpage’s value and relevance to their users search requests but Page Rank is specific to Google. For the purposes of the rest of this article I will use the term Page Rank generically to cover the PR algorithm used by Google and similar algorithms used by other search engines.

Page Rank (and the similar algorithms used by search engines other than Goolge) is part of the calculation that search engines use to estimate a webpage’s Search Engine Ranking. I don’t think anybody fully knows the full appraisal system used to calculate a page’s Search Engine Ranking because it is a closely guarded secret but it is common knowledge that most search engines determine part of a webpage’s Search Engine Ranking by comparing backlinks: the more links into a website, the more valuable that website is deemed; and a web page with high PR is more likely to show at the top of a search engine’s results than a page with low PR with the same or similar content.

But oh, were it only so simple as to get thousands of links…

Not every link has the same value: a link from a page with high PR is considered more valuable than one with low PR. That’s not all, the PR of a page is passed on to those pages to which it links but it isn’t a straight passing: the giving page’s PR is divided among the outbound links contained within it; consequently more PR is bestowed to pages from a page with few external links than is bestowed from one with many external links, assuming both bestowing pages have an equal PR.

To put those two ideas into context:

• two webpages on two different websites each have a PR of 4; each has 10 outbound links; therefore a backlink from one of those websites to any other website has the same value as a backlink from the second one to any other website; but,
• two webpages on two different websites where one has a PR of 2 of and the other has a PR of 4 and each has 10 outbound links; therefore a backlink from the second website to another website has greater value than one from the first one to another website; likewise,
• two webpages on two different websites where both have a PR of 4 but one has 5 outbound links and the second has 10 outbound links; then a backlink to any other website from the first website is worth more than a backlink from the second website to another website.

To summarize that:

Search engines use backlinks to help determine a webpage’s Search Engine Ranking. Each inbound link is considered to be a vote for a website. The value of a backlink is determined by at least 4 factors:

• the number of inbound links pointing to the backlinking page (e.g links > backlink’s source page > backlink’s destination page)
• the number of outbound links on the backlink’s source page
• the relevance of the backlink’s source page to the backlink’s destination page
• the relevence of the backlink’s anchor text to the backlinks destination page

In my view, there are three types of backlink:

• those that target humans,
• those that target search engine crawlers and other bots, and

those that target both humans and and machines.

We have to cater our backlink getting strategy to deal with those three types by categorizing our backlink sources accordingly.

To target humans:

• Add comments in blogs, forums and bulletin boards,
• Guest Lists, Guest Books, Visitor Lists etc..,
• Add links to directories,
• Social Networking Sites,
• Write articles for publication to Article Banks with a link or two pointing back to your own website,
• Write press releases for publication on Press Release sites with a link or two pointing back to your own website,
• Use either paid, reciprocated or free advertisement,
• Ask other webmasters to trade links with you,

Add links to your own network of websites,

To target search engines

• Add links to link lists/link dumps,
• Join a Link Farm,
• Create a web template or web application and place a link back to your own website,
• Ask other webmasters to trade links with you,

Add links to your own network of websites,

To target both humans and search engines

• All of the above. Every link has the potential to be viewed by people and/or be followed and rated by search engines,

I consider two of those backlink sources to be better than the others: blog comments and directories. They’re easy to find, easy to use and tend to have high Page Rank (PR). Additionally, blogs (potentially) get a lot of human traffic.

Blogs

Finding blogs is as easy as using Google to search for “Google Blog Search“.

It’s easy to get a sneaky backlink because most blogs allow visitors to leave comments with a link embedded in their username; and remember that these links are one way i.e not reciprocal.

Try it now, open Google in your browser and search for Google Blog Search (or click the link above) then search for blog post subjects related to the webpage to which you’d like to backlink, open a few of the returned results in new tabs, scroll to the bottom of the blog page’s comments to where it says “Post Reply” and look for an input field that says “URL”. as the URL is used to create a link out of the poster’s username, if the reply form doesn’t ask for a URL you should close that tab and move to the next one. When you find a post that does ask for a URL, scan-read the post and leave a comment that relates to it under a pseudonym (username) that inspires people to visit your website by clicking your username.

The blog might not have a high PR, it might use no-follow tags but the longer the blog exists the higher its PR will become and, even if it uses no-follow tags, it will supply visitors to the website or the webpage URL you put in the “URL” field.

Directories (and Guest Lists, Guest Books, Visitor Lists etc..,)

Again, directories are very easy to find; but finding the right type of directories requires a little skill. We can add links to any old directory and will at least get a backlink that might bring traffic from the directory but will it be a valuable link that will raise a site’s Search Engine Rankin and thus bring lots of traffic?

We need to look for directories that potentially have high PR and/or lots of traffic. Fortunately for us, many content management systems like Joomla, Wordpress and phpBB have plugins that provide them with directories. Because we know that blogs get traffic, tend to stay around for a long time and get good PR, all we need do is find those sites that use those directory plugins. The easy way to do that is to use a search engine to look for those plugins’ names, key sentences that are used on their “Add URL” page and/or the backlink that the plugin’s creator has probably added to it.

A few examples,

On this site, JournalXtra.com, I use the Wordpress Directory Plugin; if we google for “Wordpress Directory Plugin” (with quotes) we’ll find many sites that mention “Wordpress Directory Plugin”. Most of these sites will be discussion boards and not sites that use this particular directory plugin; however, many of them will provide a backlink opportunity through another directory system or a comments section. To improve our search, we need to be more specific. “Powered by Wordpress Link Directory” is displayed by default at the bottom of every page that hosts the “Wordpress Directory Plugin”. A search for “Powered by Wordpress Link Directory” (with quotes) brings up hundreds of directories that use that plugin.

Another Wordpress directory plugin, the Business Directory, also advertises itself on the pages that host it by displaying “Powered by Business Directory”. Google “Powered by Business Directory” (with quotes) and you’ll be greeted by hundreds of sites that use that plugin.

Of course, if all you want to do is list your site with the more common directories such as Gimpsy or Dmoz then just search for “add URL” or “free directory listing”. Just bear in mind that the more general directories have thousands of outbound links and pass little PR to the targets of those links (This doesn’t mean they’re useless for Search Engine Ranking, it just means they’renot necessarily good for PR).

Before I briefly discuss some of the other link building options mentioned above, I will offer you some advice: protect the value of your own outbound links by not having too many outbound links listed on any one page and by ensuring you get, at least, as many inbound links pointing to a page as you have outbound links from that page. If you have a directory or link list then try to get reciprocal links (links back to you) for the links placed in it; and check them regularly (some unscrupulous webmasters don’t play fair). Doing so helps maintain your site’s link trade value.

Forums and Bulletin boards

Most of these set a minimum post count before links can be put into posted replies and many of these have a minimum post count before signatures (and links in them) are displayed under posts.

Social Networking/Bookmarking Sites

I used to think these were fantastic; and they can be but they have drawbacks:

• most use the no-follow and no-index attributes so they’re useless for search engine indexing, PR and Search Engine Ranking (read into the no-follow and no-index attributes and their significance for search engine optimization, there’s debate about their SEO roles); and,
• most of their users are freebie hunters – they visit, take what they want and give little back;

On the plus side, they can get you into browser bookmarks and RSS readers; and the traffic is good for pay-per-view ads (the type that get you 1 or 2 cents each time they’re viewed).

Write articles for publication in Article Banks with a link or two pointing back to your own website

Brilliant for back links and exposure of your work & pen-name; but articles take time to write.

Write press releases for publication on Press Release sites with a link or two pointing back to your own website

Works well for backlinks, I’ve done this myself: wrote one press release and submitted it (with minor variations) to many press release sites. Most press release sites use RSS syndication through which webmasters can auto post releases to their websites as full posts or scrolling news feeds.

The downside is that you need something newsworthy to write about.

Use paid, reciprocated or free advertisement

Can be expensive. Paid search engine ads work best, inline text links next, banners last.

Depending on the display method, ads provide as many backlinks as the number of websites on which your ads are displayed. No-follow and no-index tags could be an issue.

Ask other webmasters to trade links with you

Painfully long process. Not all webmasters trade links, not all websites are actively monitored by a webmaster so your link trade request might never be read, not all websites have space for link trades and link trades have to be checked regularly because many webmasters remove traded links when they think no one’s looking.

When you do trade links, add to your site a link to the site with which you want trade before you submit your request; regularly check trades are honoured; and don’t put traded links on your index page (main page) unless you’re getting a good deal.

Try for multi-way links for search engine purposes e.g you link to site A, site A links to site B, site B links to site A.

Add links to your own network of websites (incestuous linking)

Do I need to explain this one? When you do this, be careful that your network doesn’t look like a network or it’ll be penalised by search engines.

Add links to directories

When was the last time you used an Internet directory?

Not many people visit directories when they’re searching for something unless the directory provides a very special and unique service; no, most people use Google, Ask, Yahoo or Baidu (a Chinese search engine). So, in my opinion, directories are good for backlinks and attracting search engines but nearly useless for direct traffic from humans clicking links within them.

Add links to link lists/link dumps

Link lists and link dumps are more commonly used by adult webmasters to get backlinks to their galleries, pay sites and free sites etc… They used to be frequented by people looking for adult sites but, to my knowledge, more people visit TGP/MGP galleries than visit link lists and dumps. They still have their uses though, some are still good for search engine indexing; and there are thousands of them to which you can submit your sites and pages.

Join a Link Farm

In case you don’t know, a link farm is a site where webmasters agree to display a set of filtered and random links on one or more of their websites in return for having a link (or several links) to those websites displayed (at random) on the sites of the other link farm participants. Most link farms rely on JavaScript to display the links.

I’ve used these in the past (I wouldn’t now), links do get clicked so traffic does arrive but link farms are more for attracting search engines than people (not many webmasters display the links in a highly visible place). The reason I no longer use link farms is that search engines don’t necessarily index and follow links displayed by the JavaScript used.

Create a web template or web application and place a link back to your own website

Your template could be for Wordpress, SMF, self-built website or something similar, it doesn’t matter, the important part is that people like it and use it so that your copyright and “designed by” notice (which should contain your backlink) is displayed all over the web thus giving you more exposure and more backlinks (and maybe a few visitors).

Mixed Targeting Sources

All of the above. All links have the potential to bring human traffic and to provide a means for search engine indexing & profiling.

Link Baiting

Getting backlinks needn’t be a proactive process: you can passively get them by baiting others to link to you. Just place something attention grabbing, controversial or useful on your website and people will backlink to it.

Tools of the trade

There are backlink building tools and businesses that specialize in placing backlinks. I’ve not used them so I’m not about to discuss them; I just thought you’d like to be aware of there existence.

FREE BACKLINK BUILDING TOOL

Find “free to submit to” link directories on sites that relate to your keywords

1. type in your search term (a keyword that relates to your site or post)
2. click search
3. use the “Refine results for…:” buttons (listed near the page top just below any adverts) to filter your results for specific link directory types.

This link directory submission tool is regularly updated.