SEO Tutorial Part 10 – Directory Submissions
Submitting your website to both free and paid directory sites is a great way to increase the backlinks to your webpage. Directories are compilation sites that list links to all sorts of sites. To get a better feel for how these sites are structured, check out the Open Directory Project at dmoz.org – it’s one of the best known directory sites on the internet today.
Traditionally, directory sites are broken down into two different categories – free and paid – depending on whether or not they charge you to include your site in their listings. Both types can have a place in your search engine optimization campaign, depending on what type of budget you’re working with. However, whether paid or not, it’s important to realize that not all directories are equal in their potential to improve your site’s ranking. You’ll need to do your due diligence to be sure the directory you’re submitting your site to gives you the best return for your efforts.
Getting your site listed in targeted directories that relate to the theme of your website will likely be seen as a premium by the search engines. In addition, you might even receive some traffic from them.
For example, if someone who’s interested in dog training finds a great directory dedicated to gathering links in their area, they’ll likely bookmark the directory and come back time and time again. To find these highly targeted directories, search for “your niche +directory” using your favorite search engine.
In addition to finding targeted directories for submitting you site to, you also want to look at the quality of the directory. Submitting your site to directories with higher traffic and higher PageRank will lead to better SEO results for your webpages.
Another important thing to check into before you submit your site to a directory (especially if you’re going to pay) is whether or not the directory makes use of “NOFOLLOW” attributes. Basically, these tags tell the search engine robots that any outgoing links on the directory page shouldn’t be considered in the search engine rankings. These tags were intended to prevent spam links from gaining popularity in the search engines, but if you submit your site to a directory that uses them, you’ll lose the backlink benefits of directory postings. If the directory doesn’t explicitly state whether or not it uses these tags, you can find out by looking in the code for rel=”nofollow” or by using a special plug-in for your browser that marks these links as red.
When it comes to submitting your site to directories, you again have two different options. You can manually submit your site to each directory you’d like to be included in, or you can purchase software or services that will do the submissions for you. In fact, if you search for “directory submission” on any of the major search engines, you’ll see a number of different advertisements for bulk directory submission services. In most cases, these services won’t dramatically impact your site’s search engine optimization, since the directories they submit your site to may not be well optimized for your niche.
Submitting your site to directories by hand is more time-consuming, but it may be worth the money saved if you’re only going to be including your page in a select few directories. And you can save your time altogether by outsourcing this task.
Individual directories have their own rules for how a site should be submitted, but most include selecting the appropriate category for your link and including details like your link, anchor text and a brief description of your site. The amount of time it takes before your link is visible will also vary by directory. However, if you’re diligent in finding well-ranked, high-traffic directories, you should see increased traffic to your site in a short period of time.
Additional Articles in the Search Engine Optimization Tutorial Series:
SEO Module 1 – SEO Introduction & Keyword Research (Watch Online Video)
-Part 1: What is SEO?
-Part 2: Keyword Research
-Part 3: What is LSI?
-Part 4: What are Long-Tail Keywords?
SEO Module 2 – On-Site Optimization (Watch Online Video)
-Part 5: On-Site vs Off-Site
-Part 6: On-Site Optimization Details
-Part 7: What are Meta Tags?
-Part 8: What is Anchor Text?
SEO Module 3 – Off-Site Optimization (Watch Online Video)
-Part 9: Off-Site Optimization
-Part 10: Directory Submissions
-Part 11: Article Submissions
-Part 12: Press Release Submissions
-Part 13: Forum & Blog Commenting
-Part 14: Social Bookmarking
-SEO Tutorial Conclusion
In my experience it can take a while before links from most directories are indexed. If they’re even indexed at all! Besides the indexing factor the links are mostly on low pagerank pages.
That’s something I’ve wondered about a lot. Some directories, such as Yahoo, are probably big deals to Google. Others, the random ones you find out there, I question.
Basically, how is it different than paying for a link? Wasn’t advertising/link buying why Nofollow was introduced in the first place?
Directory submissions are a very good way of getting some backlinks to your site. I find that free submissions to be a more long term strategy as many of the free directories take up to a few months to get your site listed. So if you have some cash, paid directories are usually the better option.
It is not a good idea to use software for directory submissions, since most directories implement Captcha. Most software submissions might seem tantamount to spamming. But some semi-automatic software exist that make the job a lot easier for you. In that case you still have to visit each directory you want to submit to. Manual submission is better because you’ll be able to browse to the category that is most suitable for your site.
In the true essence of it, payment doesn’t guarantee inclusion into most directories. The money you pay is normally for link review and not for buying a link. You get your money back, if your link is not accepted. That’s how I understand and practice it in our directory.
I have submitted my site to hundreds of directories and im definitively getting results. The bad thing is that is takes time. I am still waiting to listed in dmoz and it’s 3 months now.
Paid subscriptions are faster but if you are looking for long term results and you want to be listed in many directories it might be expensive, so getting a free subscription is still an option unless you are in a hurry.
I’ve also tried submission softwares but i would not recommend them, unless you really do not care about the QUALITY of your subscription, as you may want to change your descriptions and ads for every different directory you are submitting to.
Good Luck with your subscriptions!
When I submit my sites to web directories I follow few simple rules:
1. I submit all my sites manually.
2. Check the page rank of directory (home page + category where I will submit my site)
3. I submit my website only in free general directories & free niche directories, directories that are only paid can be very bad for your site, Google penalize paid links.
3. Check the number of links where my site will be listed, there must to be maximum 10 links per page.
4. Check for nofollow in that page where my site will be listed (in mozilla firefox press ctrl+U , then ctrl+F and there type nofollow to see if that directory use this tag)
5. I submit my sites in maximum 50 directories / week, because this link building must to look natural, and I have 4-5 different titles & descriptions because I don’t want to look spammy.
I agree that manual submission is comparatively beneficial as opposed to using automated submission tool(s).
Also quite a few paid listings are recognized/identified/tracked by search engines, esp. Google & treated as bad. Hence, I avoid acquiring paid links from websites that are not considered as authority or hub websites by search engines.
Free directories are more important for me.