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Sorry guys, I haven't been clear. The link is to my homepage which is not a design portfolio, but a hosting platform for design portfolios The homepage linked explains the benefits and features you're gonna have when using it to host your web design portfolio.

Sorry, I meant my site has PR4 DA43.  The sites in question have very low PR/DA scores of PR1 & DA under 20. Still worth getting links from these sites?

Google Trends is really handy for this. You can check what the "Hot Searches" are right now and find one that is related to your vertical. As others have said, Twitter is great for this as well.

Those are the top three for any website. You might consider joeant.com or a few of the other high-ranking directories. Also added the BBB to the list, thanks to this article.

Ron, When you are performing an activity like this for your website, ask yourself "how do readers benefit from my actions?". If you are struggling to find an answer, then you probably should consider trying another activity. As Storwell suggested, natural links between your sites that help users find information are always a good thing. Google will recognize your sites are hosted together and you wont receive much, if any, actual benefit with respect to having your results rank higher. Directory links are a poor use of time and effort. If you spend that same amount of time writing one great article, you will receive better results. Figure out who the best past band was who played at one of your venues and write a great article about their visit. Include pictures, videos of their session at your place (if it's not a copyright violation), etc. Make the article something that all their fans would want to read. Readers should get the feeling "wow, I missed out on a great show! I wish I was there and I'll make it the next time they play there". Ideally that same band will be scheduled again and you can provide a link to a page that has their next appearance dates and info. You need to generate content others WANT to read. Content that people want to tell their friends about and link to. The payoff for a fantastic article that is well promoted will be more quality links then the rest of your efforts.

Very information reply as always EGOL. Any rough estimates on how long for the full link's effects to be in place? 4 weeks?

Yes, a good one. And simple

Thanks Brent! More info to read AND learn. Love it!

Thanks a lot guys. Plenty of advice there for me to be looking at and cracking on with.

Every domain is unique. seomoz.org seomoz.com seomoz.hu The above represents three separate domains. They could all be owned and operated by the same person or company. They could all have separate owners. Either way each domain would be considered it's own entity. If seomoz owned all 3 of the above domains, and they chose to link to you, then you would receive three unique links to your site from those domains. The value of those links would be determined based on the DA of those sites, and the PA of the pages which are linking to you. I know for Yahoo, you can get listed in all their local country's Yahoo directories. I am unsure of how the process works for Google.

I see you point Egol and thanks for your input.

LOL. Thanks for the advice, lets see where we stand a few months from now...

I will thank you.

Something I read (from Dave Naylor i think) was to understand what your keyword/url structure is going to be. Then while you are building the site, you seed those urls with viral content to gather links. When the time comes, you just swap the content of the page and your good to go, with links already secured