Everybody must have heard that your website must have a lot of links pointing to it so that search engines are able to browse your website and are able to archive the website. We also hear that the more links you have the better your page rank and your website ranks higher on search engines.
Hmmm...
Having links pointing to your website is a good idea and more often search engines are able to index your website more quickly than normal. However, whether that helps your page rank and improves your ranking is debatable. Some may agree while others may disagree but the fact is that Google has become intelligent with passing time and it now takes into account the number of links pointing to your website as well as the websites on which those links have been placed.
If the websites on which you have placed your links are not of the same industry/business as yours then most probably Google will discount those links. Not only that, if the websites with which you have exchanged links are link farms then your website may be penalized.
Its better to submit your website to directories which are human edited because they not only help place your website in the correct category to which your website belongs but there are less chances of these directories be spammed by bots or other miscreants.
Remember it’s not the quantity of links but the quality of links that matters most to all leading search engines especially Google.
Some good human edited directories are as follows. The list will be expanded as more quality human edited directories come up
Dmoz
Yahoo
Link2Have
