Achieving success with a website is largely measured in terms of the number of visits it receives. Consequently, to be successful it has to become known, which means promoting it in various ways. One way to have it noticed is to get a high search engine ranking, which can be partly down to a site's perceived "popularity". With a new URL, of course, the site's popularity is nil and so you need to build this in any way you can.

One way to improve matters is to add a website URL to a links directory. The aim when you submit websites in this way is to add your web site links to other sites that are relevant to yours. At the same time, you will generally add a URL link on your site to create reciprocal web links between the sites. (It is more common for individual links pages on someone else's site to require a link back than a directory but it is still quite usual practice.) This results in increased visitor numbers and improved search engine positioning because, when you link your website URL in this way, it increases the ever important "link popularity" that search engines and SEO professionals are always raving about.

But be sure that:

1. The page you get linked to from is within a couple of clicks of the linking site's main page, otherwise there is unlikely to be any traffic from it.

2. That the linking programming used is standard HTML, not Javascript, and/or does not use a PHP redirect - as such could be harmful to your rankings, especially a 302 redirect.

3. You get listed on a page with similar outbound linked to sites as yours. It is unlikely that getting your pet help site listed next to Christian preaching, holistic medicine and "enlargement" aids will be useful for either referral traffic or ranking increases.

You can achieve this manually by identifying sites to which you could link, submit your web site for approval and then code the necessary html to add a web site to those linked from your site. This can require a lot of searching and work but is how I prefer to do things. Others disagree:

"I find it much less stressful to add my website to a directory that will submit my web site link to a list of member sites that are available for linking. By a process of filtering and matching, it is then possible to add my site URL to relevant sites and at the same time add website links to those sites from mine." -- Anon Email

Whilst such methods can often get you listed on many other people's websites quite quickly, you need to be sure that you are getting a decent listing.

Before I submit my website, I want to be sure that I'm only linking back to quality, relevant sites. What I don't want to do is submit my site URL to another site that is wholly inappropriate to the subject I deal with. This won't increase traffic and results in low quality links, rendering the whole submit webpage process a waste of time.

However, if you do plan on submitting a website to a directory that helps out with link exchanges, choose one that has plenty of relevant sites to yours. That way, you only need to submit your website to a few directories at most, reducing the time and cost required. Some directories let you submit a website URL free, making their money from adverts or other paid-for services.

Our directory is one where you can submit a URL link to the main directory and a chosen category so that your entry is correctly listed. You need to submit your link URL, enter the text to appear against your entry and a brief description of your site. The only other requirement is that you reference Internet Heaven at your site. By adding a website reference in a prominent place, you create a reciprocal link and enable our service to remain free. Before you submit your website, therefore, you should add your website link to the form to complete the entry.

Once you submit web page entries, they appear in the selected category and the full list so you should check where yours appears. If it's in the wrong part of the directory, submit URL again to change its category.

Although submitting a URL to a free business directory is a no-cost option, many of these sites have lots of entries and numerous categories, meaning your entry can get rather lost. It's best to add a URL to directories that have plenty traffic going through them and where your site is easily found. Before you add your URL, look at the cached versions of various linking pages. If they're not recent, this indicates a lack of activity and suggests that to submit links might not be too productive an activity. Spend some time researching and selecting so that you submit link directory entries where they will get the best results.