Directories

One of the first things you should do when you've launched your site is to submit your site to as many directories as possible. This ensures that you get some good quality one-way links (although some directories do ask for a reciprocal link). You should start off by submitting your site to the largest directories that have the greatest Page Rank (a measure of how many sites link to a particular site, with 10 being the best, which sites like Google and Blogger have) for the category your site will show up in. This will help you get a good PR yourself and ultimately improve your search engine rankings.

The first two directories that you should submit to are the Yahoo directory and the Open Directory Project. These are the two biggest, and have a great PR rank for pretty much every category page. Also because they are so popular, they literally get thousands of submissions every day, and therefore it can take several months to get your site listed, so you want to do this straight away.

As regards other directories, you can search for them yourself, but there are some sites that list all the major directories and their PR. There are also some sites that offer to submit to hundreds of directories for you, which will save you a lot of time.

In addition to this, you should also look for directories specialising specifically in your particular niche. For example, if your site is related to gambling, you could do a search for "gambling directories" which will bring up a number of additional directories you can submit your site to.

Finally, most directories have a free and paid submission option, or may charge a fee to get your site listed. Don't discount the directories that charge a fee as these can be extremely beneficial, as not only can you get your site listed quickly, but the directories that charge fees often have very high PR pages, so some of this PR will pass to your site, helping you to achieve higher rankings.