12. Create your own directory of links

You may have been able persuade many people to link to your website. There are two advantages to this, one of which takes place immediately the link is created back to your site surfers on that page may then visit your page. The second and perhaps greater advantage may never transpire and it is up to you to make this more probable.

In checking the links back to your site Google can only see those pages already in its database. It is conceivable and in fact likely that many of the links you get will not be on pages that have been indexed by Google and as such you will never get PageRank or any kind of link credit.

Once you accept this you can do something about it. In fact you have at least two specific choices of what you can do:

• Submit the sites containing your link directly to Google yourself

• Create a directory on your website the entries for which will consist of all those pages that indeed do have a link back to your page on them.

There may be an advantage in creating a new website. For example you could make the directory your home page for that site which means the page is pretty sure to get indexed by Google so long as it is well written and has useful content.

Note I said useful content. This means a page of basic links is out. That is the equivalent of a link farm frowned upon by Google and others.

I would suggest the approach could be as follows:

Create a meaningful page Title, with a good page heading containing important keywords appropriate to your directory topic as we have discussed throughout this book. Then create a list such as in the following example. Each link in the example is from the page containing your link back to your site. This does mean you may have to search around the site to be able to pinpoint the location exactly.

Often the link is on a links page which can be found using Google assuming the home page is indexed often the home page is indexed but the links page is not. Type the following to try to find quickly. Of course if the site is not indexed at all then you will never find it using these techniques.

Site:nameofsite.com intext:links OR

Site:nameofsite.com intext:ponds-for-africa (if this was part of your text link for example)

The point is if you know what you are looking for you can probably find it using Google; reiterating the home page must be indexed of course. See the chapter on Google searching later in the book for advanced search tips.

12.1 EXAMPLES OF A GOOD STANDARD METHOD OF ENTERING DIRECTORY INFORMATION

1. http://www.ponds-for-africa.com/bigponds.html This site about bigponds in Africa created by T. Jungle is an excellent resource for those gardeners and koi keepers to refer to when they intend to build or maintain a fish pond containing at least 25,000 gallons. It would not in the main be appropriate for the small pond gardener. For useful information on small ponds rather refer to other entries in this directory

2. http://www.ponds-for-america.com/smallponds.html This site about small ponds in America was created by John Jones. It is an excellent resource for those gold fish keepers to refer to when they intend to build or maintain a fish pond of about 200 gallons or less. This site offers 20 free goldfish to all people who subscribe to its newsletter.

By creating a web page like this it can now be submitted to any search engine or directory and because the links are on an important page there is a good chance that the search engine spider will eventually follow all the links back to the pages which in fact have your link placed on them. You therefore help the spider to complete the loop and to get your back links indexed by the search engine. You have also done your link partner a big favor and he will also start to get more traffic without the partner possibly realizing that you helped.

This approach is the theory behind most directory type websites. I think this particular link page is best however created manually as suggested. There are numerous automated directory site creators out there Zeus and Arelis are 2 of the pioneers. Unfortunately because of abuse such automated tools for creating directories are now frowned upon. Despite this these 2 items of software do have other valuable uses.

It is important work.