Now that we have covered ideas and concepts surrounding link building, and learned about how to measure your link building efforts, we will now turn to the hard work: getting links.

A standard tool in the link builder's arsenal is to secure links through link directories. A link directory is a website that is wholly devoted to categorized lists of links to other websites. The Yahoo! directory (now defunct), the Open Directory Project (DMOZ), and business.com are examples of large established directories, but there are tens of thousands of smaller general, local, and niche directories throughout the world upon which free links are available simply by applying. Before you begin building links with directories, be warned: if you overuse this technique or get links from poor quality directories, you are risking harm to your rankings. We'll outline some best practices.

Link directories were very popular and effective until a few years ago and were once ubiquitous...