In the process of link-building optimizers normally start with the Mozilla Google Open Directory Project (DMoz.com) as the cornerstone of the link architecture. The site is moderated internationally by volunteers in all languages. In terms of measured relative Web importance, expressed by a ranking system known as "Page Rank (named after Google co-founder Larry Page), the DMoz site has an extremely high Page Rank of 8 out of an ideal 10, making it a valuable place to submit a link. The Page Rank of a web site can be viewed on Google's toolbar when activated, giving users a general idea of the reciprocal links and documents that have built value for the site over the years. Page Rank is not an indicator of search engine ranking positions (SERPs).

DMoz.com provides an enormous selection of categories; many businesses aren't closely associated with categories available on average directories. Since the concept of relevance must be priority in your linking thinking, DMoz is a valuable site where your exact business activity can be described in order to satisfy detailed search queries.

When there is a listing in the Open Directory Project the search engines prefer to select that description and title for the search results. Publisher Dan Thies, in a report for SEO Research Labs, explains how search engines use the ODP "Google has been showing links to the Google Directory within their search results for some time. When one of the pages shown in their regular search results also has a listing in the directory, the category and description from the Open Directory are displayed."

A problem exists with the ODP however because the listing information cannot be edited - once it is accepted the title and description are there to stay and in many cases can become outdated. There is no way to know ahead of time so if the site owner needs to change information about his company he will need to get rid of the ODP listing. Since it can't be deleted or edited, a special metatag will need to be inserted in the HTML HEAD section that reads: META name="robots" content="noodp". This will disable retrieval from the Google Directory by all the search engines so that your on-page meta description and title can be displayed, or the listings with content rotations on other directories.

There is a technique for maximizing the effect of general SEO directories. When setting up your content, compose a dozen different possible titles and about 10 differently-worded (and different length) descriptions using the keyword phrases in all possible ways. This provides a random selection of fresh content to give the search engines more display options. By covering all bases there is no need to pre-test a single data set to attract both the search engine spiders and the live searchers; there can be enough semantics available to define the pages to everyone in terms of relevance and quality.

The SEO-friendly general directories containing backlinks are good places to arrange keywords in different descriptions. A linking campaign will normally include several hundred directory listings but their importance has been dwindling gradually as Google doesn't want websites to rely solely on thousands of directory links. Sites now get penalized for using the directories in too high a percentage of their link strategy. Greater importance is given to well-written original content in articles, blogs, eZines, and related publishing sites. Greater importance is given to well-written original content in articles, blogs, eZines, and related publishing sites. In addition many SEO Marketing Blogs suggest adding a blog page to web sites to increase the content scope.

Getting search engines to pay more attention to your web site's pages is accomplished by optimizing and linking each landing page to contribute to the overall strength of the domain. A landing page is one that is visible to the public and one that contains some importance and content. Most landing pages would appear in the menu bar; for web sites with drop-down menus there is a greater chance for expanding the link campaign by including those URLs as well. This can't be accomplished using only directories - the majority of them accept only the main domain; only a few have any deep-linking capability.

The extended URLs of each page offer an opportunity to get search engines to crawl and index your entire site. Each page needs inbound links and unique metadata, again to provide the variety that helps a campaign rise to great heights. There are increasingly rigorous standards of link value evident today that would lead to a greater emphasis on providing expert industry information to promote link popularity. This means honest hard work in the researching, composition, and formatting of articles that can be submitted to SEO article source directories where webmasters go to download content for their sites. Those re-publishing a piece must also include the links, adding to their quantity, quality, and relevance. When these factors build up, the site becomes an "authority" in the subject matter; very after you will see 2 pages of the same site come up, one indented - an indication that both of those pages are strongly relevant to the search. It is also a sign that the SEO specialist has done a good job with the deep-linking.