I am trying to do anything i can to get more traffic because my traffic stinks. So one of the things I am doing is working on backlinks by submitting to directories. I was just wondering if anyone has any tips they could give me that would maybe make things a little easier. All I know is that I should not use the same description on each directory. So I am trying to be in the habit of changing the description I use daily. I submit to 25 - 100 directories per day. So if there is any tips that would be great and I thank you ahead of time.
Well, it looks like you are already doing what needs to be done. Just keep doing the same and sooner or later you'll get results. fastreplies
Worry less about the description and more about your titles as they become the anchor text back to your site.
Vary the titles that you use and use titles that you want your site to rank for but do some research before that to make sure that its worth trying to even rank for those.
So the title should not necessarily reflect the actual title of the website but more along the lines of keywords I want to rank for? Is that what your saying? So if my site is based around household pets and maybe one of the titles I should use is "household pet forums" or "pet forums" instead of the actual title of my site which is "journeyoftheanimals.com.?
Correct, do make sure that those keywords can be found on the page that you're submitting though, usually the homepage, but if you're submitting an inner page then go by the keywords on that page instead. Well definately use the word forum but maybe with other keywords that can be found on your hompage (if submitting the homepage) for example i dont see the words "household" or "pet" there, but i do see "animals"
Not necessarily a good idea if you actually want your submissions to be accepted by a directory worth being listed in. Good directories will see the keyword spam and you will get a high rate of declines. Look at the title as the sign on the store front. If you're driving past a Wal-Mart the sign out front is going to say Wal-Mart - it will not say - "buy cheap discount stuff" - There are two fields for submitting to a directory - one is title and one is description - best advice is don't confuse the two. In some cases something along the lines of "Journey of the Animals - Pet Forum" may be a good alternative. That is also something that could work on a store front sign. Along the lines of Wal-Mart - Discount Store. This also happens to be a good method of determining the quality of a directory you are considering submitting to. If the listings are all keyword spam you are probably wasting your time by submitting.
Also a waste submitting possibly if a directory will not let anything other than the domain name as the title, because most submitters wont need another link with their site name only. I agree, not too many keywords in a title, if the balance is got right, both by directory owner and submitter then its beneficial for both. Clearly a submitter is trying to improve their sites ranking, and clearly a decent directory owner doesn't want 8 words in a title or a title with repeating keywords.
Thank you swedal for the reply. You mentioned determining the quality of a directory. I kind of laughed because I do not really do this. I am trying to submit to so many directories that I go for speed and do not really research the directories I am submitting to. Can this be a problem. Can submitting to bad directories actually be counter-productive? I mean, don't get me wrong. The information I submit is good information and not entered sloppy or anything. I just do not tend to research the directories themselfs.
If only they would follow the best advice money can buy, but.... why should they? After all there is always will be some "who cares what you submit to my directory" and "give me some more of keyword stuffing" owner who will list every piece of crap just to make numbers in Index. fastreplies
The most productive method for directory submission is start with the best quality directories first. Some may be free, most will be paid. I am not going to start listing them out here as it will inevitably start a war. However I will say that there are few free directories of any quality there are also some poor quality paid directories but they can be quickly sorted by just looking at some of their current listings. If they have garbage listed with titles like Buy Cheap Viagra move on quickly. If the directory is on a .info domain submitting there is a complete waste of time. It sounds like your doing directory submissions the way most newbies start and that is backwards of the way one should work. I did it backwards also for a while but after one actually experiences this stuff you find that quality really does far outweigh quantity. Work for quality first and when you have worked through submitting to the quality directories then you can waste some time on these free directory lists you find all over the web like the ones at vmoptions etc. The directory lists touted here in forums are nearly all useless - run through one and if you see a directory built on a .info domain in the list move on because the list is worthless with no quality standards for listing directories. The reason those lists of directories are built is to boost traffic rankings to the site usually for another purpose. For example, directories will add those free lists to their directories to build traffic rankings to make the directory appear popular and gain paid submissions. As far as submitting to low quality directories being counter productive it depends on what your time is worth to you. It is pretty much a time waster submitting to poor quality directories so if your time holds any value whatsoever - well..... On the other hand I have not seen any evidence that links can harm your site (unless your getting massive sitewides pointing to your site) which is why one should spend their time submitting to quality directories first - then you can waste all the time you want later submitting to the garbage sites. @Pipes - Ranking for keywords does not need to be solely derived from keyword stuffing directory submissions. Search engines don't just weigh the anchor text for rankings. They also look at page content, meta descriptions and tags. Build many links to a site to tell the search engines that - hey this site is important and the engines will also find the content that will also be used for ranking. I would take a plain jane title from a directory like Yahoo, BOTW, or Business.com any day over any keyword stuffed title listed on any directory which allows for them. No contest. Blogs are an ideal example of how pages will rank based upon content as long as there is a good inbound link profile pointing towards the site. How else can articles posted in them rank at the top of search results within minutes of being posted? You can bet there are no inbound, keyword stuffed links to those articles that quickly.
Thank you Swedal. That is some very useful information. I am not doing paid submissions because I can not afford it and also because I feel that if i could afford it there is other stuff my site could use before paid submissions. I think for now I will continue to just work my way through huge lists of directories, submitting to all of them since I do not know a way to easily sort them. I appreciate and respect your post. Thank you for the great information.
Oh and I decided I do not want to mess with the title of my pages. Sounds like that can cause more problems then it solves. I was already noticing some rejections and i could find no other reason for the rejection other then the title of "animal forums"
Make sure the category you are submitting to has been recently cached by Google (say, in the last 6 weeks). Otherwise you won't get any benefit. Most of the best directories are paid directories, and worth paying for, imho, because the link in them will actually get counted. Go for: botw.org (expensive) - PR7 joeant.com ($40) - PR7 hotvsnot.com ($100 or free with reciprocal) - PR6 business.com (expensive) - PR7 yahoo dir (expensive) - PR8
Blog commenting and forum postings are better option than submitting to various directories to get backlinks...
Oh and I decided I do not want to mess with the title of my pages. Sounds like that can cause more problems then it solves. I was already noticing some rejections and i could find no other reason for the rejection other then the title of "animal forums" By the way I seem to be finding a lot of "your site already exists in our database". Did I really already submit to these directories or do new directories just ad sites to beef up their databases?