Are Submitting to Directories that Effective?

So if it is out of date what should I do instead?

 

You can start by stopping listen to idiots who're know less than you do.

All you need is to submit to a couple of hundreds of top directories to get
good backlinks and place in SERP but that is of course you have solid content.



fastreplies

 

??? "time trouble" ???

Nothing's "out of date". Directory submission is an integral part of the SEO process, and certainly not out of date.

 

No, never. Unless the directory in question is Yahoo. I'd otherwise suggest against it. The exception to this rule is a highly targetted, high PR page with few OBL's on it. Otherwise, It is, in my opinion a waste of your money. I, as a whole, avoid article submission alltogether as I've found it to be pretty ineffective. Obviously that's only been my experience.

 

By itself, its no more effective than running one add in one newspaper for an entire year. In an effective and concentrated campaign centered around targeted listing, manual submissions to SE's, directories, proper meta, alt tags, content relevant to keywords, along with other paid advertising depending on how far you plan to go, or your budget warrants, from TV, print, direct mail, etc. After 15+ years in the industry, and creating several campaigns around the field of advertising, I can assure you that no single method of promotion by itself is any more or less effective than the collective and combined strength of a number of factors.

Back in the late 90's we used to poll new customers at the time of sign up to see where they heard about us. One of the possible answers was TV add. We got a number that said that. We never ran a TV ad (EVER). The majority would say PHONE BOOK. Not that they found us in the phone book, but that was usually the first thing that came to mind. The truth is it was a culmination of a number of different places that we were seen that continually re-enforced our image, brand and awareness. Sometimes it takes more than one form of promotion to close a deal. The same is true of driving traffic or increasing a links popularity.

To simply discount the effectiveness of any one element in SEO is to discount the entire SEO process itself.

 

So what is the most effective SEO method?

 

LOL, we seem to be finding the same posts today

I agree with what you're saying 100%. Each aspect of SEO should, by right, work as part of a larger more organized plan.

My response was to the initial question, I didn't realize that the question had grown in such scope though. As such, let me expand a bit on my response as to avoid any misunderstanding.

Link directories, in my experience, have proven fairly ineffective as part of SEO. Not in terms of garnering targeted traffic (i've never personally used them for that though). The value of a link, found within a link directory, I believe isn't nearly as valuable as a link found on say a similar page as yours. As such, I believe the efforts are better spent trying to get your link there, especially when a monetary exchange is taking place.

Paying for inclusion in a link directory, in my opinion, is not the way to go IF your desire is to improve your SERPs. I think that we both can agree that an in-content link will prove much more valuable to their SEO efforts than a submission in a link directory. Hence, why i say that paying for inclusion is not the best approach.

 

Like MIA pointed out, there is no 1 magical step that will put you in number 1 spot. It is a combination of many things working together. All the link building efforts in the world won't help if you've chosen poor anchor text. The same way that a car can't drive without wheels. Doesn't matter how tweaked the engine is.

 

Always been and always will be content of your own site.

If you have garbage for content, then you are dreaming if you think that anyone will be linking
to your site and most of all if top directories will be giving backlink to MFA site without content.

Build your site for people's benefit and not for Google and sooner or later Google will notice your site
and give you good SERP and that will bring visitors to your site and maybe even some $$$ sale



fastreplies

 

That is totally true. Regardless how many directories you submit to, or how many visitors to your site. Without good content your visitors won't stay or generate decent conversion rate.
To perform effective SEO. Link building, copy writing, page optimization etc. They are all important to get you a high SERP. Submitting to directories is only one of the many things you need to do.

Cheers,
Felix