My Test: Are Directory Submission Services worth it?

I have a mountain biking website that is currently on the 6th page of Google when searching for "Northern California Mountain Biking". I recently paid $22 to have my site submitted to 200 SEO directories with the searched terms as keywords, titles, etc. (The service should be performed within this week).

My test is to see whether the service is going to help my page move up (or down) on the google search pages. I will be including a screenshot of the search result from today (11/14/05) as well as a week or two after the site is submitted to see if it made any difference at all.

Will this work? I don't know.
Will it provide some insight for people spending money on Directory services? Maybe

Lets wait and find out.

Peace,

Ivan


11/14/05 screenshot:

 

Do you know how many backlinks that you have currently? It will be hard to measure the impact of the just the directory link since there are others linking to the site.

 

There is currently 3 backlinks?! according to "link:http:// ... " on google search. I am baffled since the site has been around for a while. Haven't really looked into SEO till now...

-Ivan

 

Yeah, that would be interesting to know especially after jagger

 

Are Directory Submission Services Worth It?

I would say yes they are, every link helps, and it saves you a few hours work aswell.

 

I would like to believe this as well, but the google guys don't think this way anymore

 

Not a bad idea, but it make take some time for the tests to show any results. I'm not sure how powerful these free directories are or how quickly they'll influence search results.

I wouldn't mind doing another test with maybe a few powerful paid directories such as joeant or site-sift.


Anyway, great idea. Keep it up.

Brandon

 

cool, keep us updated on your progress. BTW, which submission service did you go with?

 

Hand submission by yourself is likely to have a vastly different result to an automated submission system (which may even be detrimental to your interests in some cases).

 

I think you're misunderstanding; it's not an automated submission service (correct me if I'm wrong). He is paying people to hand submit for him.

 

Yes. There are some members offering this service here: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/forumdisplay.php?f=60 . I am still waiting for my site to be submitted and will report back soon. Cheers, Ivan

 

Site was submitted to 200 Directories by 'Alfredo' between the dates of 11/14 - 11/17/05.

Titles:
Northern California Mountain Biking
Extreme Mountain Biking Forum
Northern California Downhill Mountain Biking
California Downhill & Freeride Mountain Biking
Northern California Mountain Biking Forum

Description
MSDHW.com, Mud Sweat DownHill World, is an online mountain biking community based in the San Francisco Bay Area that caters to bike riders in Northern California. Site includes reviews, pictures, videos, event and race coverage, a forum, daily rides, and much more.

Category
Sports -- Cycling --- Mountain Biking ---- Downhill
Sports -- Cycling --- Mountain Biking
Sports -- Extreme Sports

Keywords
Mountain Bike, Biking, Cycling, Downhill, Freeride, BMX, Extreme, Northern California, Bay Area, Picture, Videos, Interbike, Reviews, Parts

I wont bother listing out the 200 directory URLs. So the test is ON! I will report back over the next couple weeks to see if it made an improvement on google search, "Northern California Mountain Biking".

Cheers,

Ivan

 

Result from tonight 11/16 after the submissions were completed. -Ivan

 

Actually this won't help you know any better whether directory submission services help you or not, since the site is already PR4, its obvious that there are already links pointing to it.

Instead I would suggest to start a brand new site with absolutely zero links and see if it works. From my experiences this have worked and the maximum PR I got was 4 from free directories.

But as an internet marketer, you should not entirely depend on directories, google might one day decide to devalue entire links from directories. Then your ranking will be lost.

My 2c

Regards,
Tuning

 

Thanks for your input, Tuning. I will probably redo the test with a "new" site, but for now I will continue what I have going. At least something for the sh*ts and g*ggles factor . MSN and Yahoo results: http://www.indexofimages.com/uploads/bbf51d3b02.jpg

Take note that I changed the Site slogan from "Bay Area Downhill Freeride" to "Northern California Mountain Biking" last week after I completed redesigning the site.

Cheers,

Ivan

 

I would just keep going with what you have Mud. Your goal is help your current site, not to just run a test. You can still get a general idea of how it might help by keeping track of things, although there are other factors that might affect things (such as on-page optimization and other marketing efforts). You'll also need to consider the age of your site...is it fairly new? Have you changed content a lot? How much content do you have? etc.

A new inbound link from a directory might not help much now, but if that directory gains authority over time it could be quite a boost down the road. Course some people think Google has devalued directories across the board.

I personally don't worry too much about how much of an impact specific elements will have when optimizing a site. While keeping general track of them, I focus on the big picture by integrating my seo efforts with other marketing tactics. Once you learn the major seo techniques then you can find ways to implement those as part of an overall promotions plan.

You can use the Keyword Analysis tool at http://www.mcdar.net, to get a better idea of how your stats compare to those sitee in the top serps for your keywords. Google does not show all your backlinks, so be sure to check the Yahoo count.


Just had a thought by the way...there are hundreds of owner operated vacation rental homes in your area. Most of them have websites with activity resource pages. I'd start emailing these folks to see if you can get your site linked on theirs. Trading links with local bike shops would also be a good way to go.

Btw, why not put a link to your forums in your Sig here?

 

Interesting test will be good to see the results.

I have myself caried out some experiments for one of my site (brand new at that time) and with links from directories only the site got a PR 4 (was submitted to almost 300 SEO friendly directories) as far as the ranking part goes i guess is takes time in Google due to the SandBox factor, the rankings did improve on Yahoo and MSN (thought i didnt check particular keywords for the ranking check but i started getting traffic from Yahoo, Msn and little from Google too which means the rankings have increased).


Waiting to see what result you get

 

Personally I feel that the directory submissions are worth it. Even if it doesnt move your site up in the search engines very much you still get the odd visitor every now and again from the actual link.

 

Dreamshop you bring up some very good points. My site has been around for a while, but I have never really promoted it until now. I find the Site Submission Test interesting since there various services offered and is a fairly cheap way if it does indeed work.

I must definitely learn the major SEO tactics and focus on the big pictures. Thanks again for your advice.

Btw, like my sig

Cheers,

Ivan

PS. I will update in a couple days with goog,msn, and yahoo results.

 

11/22/05: Google Results. Mid Page on Page 4.