Go to your favorite search engine and type general keywordsrelated to your website into the search box combined with theword "directory" or "submit URL". The searchengines love to put directories and information portals on thefirst page of their search results for general keywords makingthis technique a great first step in your link building campaign.

2. Use Google's Advanced Operators

To perform more targeted searches you can use Google's AdvancedSearch Operators; "allintitle:", "allinanchor:", and "allinurl:"commands. If you have a site about real estate some possiblesearches could include:

allintitle:real estate directory allinurl:realestate directory allintitle:submit url real estateallintitle:free real estate directory

Please note that you must NOT put a space after the colon.

Use the "inurl:" or "intitle:" advanced operatorsto return results that contain the first word in the title orurl of the website and any subsequent words in the body text ofthe document. Using our real estate example you might use thesecommands to perform the following search.

inurl:real estate submit url

Again, please note that you must NOT put a space after thecolon.

This search would return results that contain "real" inthe url of the page and "submit and/or url and/or estate"somewhere in the body of the webpage.

Alternatively you could perform this search:

inurl:real inurl:estate directory submit add urlwebsite site

This search would return results with "real estate" inthe URL and any combination of the remaining words in the bodyof the web document.

Start with the allin commands to get the most targeted resultsand augment that with the inurl and intitle commands for a widerscope.

3. Use other directories to find directories

After you begin to submit your link details to directories inyour industry you will find that many of them will also have asection devoted to listing other directories. This can be agreat way to find directories that may not show up in yoursearch engine searches. 4. Analyze your competitors links

Use the link:http://www.competitordomainname.com commandin your favorite search engine to see who your competitor islinking to. Chances are they have submitted their site to anumber of niche directories and other related websites. Youranalysis will yield results you may have never thought of orwould be unable to find using the "allin" or "in"Google searches.

Please note that at the time of writing Google does not give afull report of backlinks for a website so my suggestion is touse either Yahoo or MSN if you want to get reliable backlinkcounts.

Resources:

Google'sAdvanced Search Operators Explained

SEO Company Free Web Directory List - Almost 200free web directories listed. List can be sorted by Alexa rank,Google PR, backlink count and more.

Best Web Directories List

About the author:Mike Lawrence is the webmaster for a Directory of Website Promotionand Seo Resources. He is also the admin for a Website Design and SeoCompany