The following is a Link Building Bible guest post from Bill Woosley, owner of vmoptions.com (backlinks below).
There seems to be some myths regarding free web directories and the benefits they offer for backlinks. In this post I will try to clear up some of these myths and offer a few tips to get the most out of your free web directory submissions.
First, it is important to note that high pagerank free web directories get quite a few submissions on a daily basis. These high ranking directories often have backlogs that will take months to clear. I have found many of the people that claim free directory listings are ineffective usually are the same people that submit to only high ranking directories. It would take months for these people to realize any benefit from their free submissions. Being listed in free directories does help offpage SEO, but one must use a different approach to get immediate results.
Besides operating a deep link directory, I also operate a free directory list that contains more then 1,600 SEO friendly general web directories that are free to submit to. This is the same list I submit client sites to, and I constantly update the list. Even though this directory list can be sorted by PR, I always start submitting client sites to the newest free web directories I have. Newly launched free web directories have few listings, a small review backlog, and usually have more favorable listing standards. The bottom line is newly launched free web directories will get your submissions reviewed and posted in a fraction of the time it takes high ranking directories to review free submissions. And because there are fewer competing listings in new directories, the search engines will index your links rather quickly. If you want immediate results from the time you spend submitting to free directories, then you should focus on submitting to the newest directories you can find.
Those that want to improve their PR can take some additional steps to get the most out of their directory listings. Look at the homepage of any free web directory. In many cases there are dozens of sub-categories listed. If your submission is acceptable in any of the sub-categories you see listed on the homepage, submit to that category. PR flows down from pages linked to from the homepage. If your listing is in a sub-category that is directly linked to from the homepage, you stand a much better chance of getting some PR distributed to your site.
It is also important to vary the submission titles, descriptions, submitter’s name, and meta information as much as possible. As with any link building method, it is important that these links look natural to the search engines as well as appealing to anyone viewing the listings. As a standard rule of thumb, I completely change out submission sets every fifty submissions for bulk submissions. For even better results, change submission sets more often. In the long run, this will reduce the likelihood of the links being devalued.
While most agree that free directory listings are not a silver bullet to top rankings for competitive keywords, I can tell you that they are effective. I have a number of sites, under one year of age, that are PR 4’s and rank well for their keywords. These sites have only backlinks from free web directories, and in some of the sites the PR is distributed rather well to internal pages. For competitive niches, web directory submissions are just a small part of a diversified link building strategy.
