I see this question asked over and over, people want to know if it is worthwhile submitting your site to directories. The short answer is yes but there are a few caveats. I am basing this on my own experiences of running directories and submitting to directories. All directories are not equal To illustrate my point joe bloggs sets up a generic PHPLD site imports in some standard categories and uses the default theme. Bob has a custom written directory that is 3 years old. Which one do you think would be worth your time submitting to? I love my directory Joes has a backlog of 500 sites to review, he can't be asked to visit each site individually so just approves them all. Bob reviews submissions daily and has some filters he set up over time to get rid of the spam. Only decent sites are approved. Which directory would you submit to? Everyone knows about my directory Joe submitted his directory to some social bookmarking sites and a few other directories. He spent a few hours one day and then stopped promoting. Bob has a plan, he has consistently promotes his site doing a few things each day and he has been doing this over the last few years. Which directory is going to be worth your time? My directory makes money Joe wants to get lots of sites so he has free submission. He also has categories going 10 levels deep and uses nofollow links. Bob charges for premium submissions and has done from the start. Premium submissions are more prominent in the directory. His directory structure is not very deep and large pages are continually restructured. Old sites are removed in a weekly database cleanup. Which directory? Of course these are 2 extremes but you get the idea. I'm not saying that off the shelf scripts are not as good as custom ones, that's not my point. PHPLD is a great piece of software. Take a look from the Search engines stand point, they are seeing thousands of identically structured directories. What do you think they will do? Directory submission is worth your time but just remember that auto submitting to 500 identical directories that get tons of spam is not as beneficial as submitting to 10 quality unique relevant directories. Hand submit to good directories, vary your titles and descriptions and if relevant your URL (for deeplinks).
Phew what an OP I thought when half way through the read, that maybe I was reading a novel There are many well run directories out on the net, that offer good value for submissions
You can't expect Google to give much weight (if any at all) to directory links because 99,9% of the directories provide no value whatsoever.
reading the title i thoguht, yet another newbie with a rant for fun!!! good OP good read, well done M.
Good post. I recently lost all my informenter data but as I only submit occasionally to worthwhile directories decided not to use it again but to think up a unique description each time I submit.
From the thread title I thought this was going to be another crappy thread. It's one of the best I've read in ages. Great post, rep given
Who are Joe and Bob? Same applies to any directory script really. Nice way of breaking it down, but... Do you think the people who use category dumps and dont have time will even read this? As for which ones better to submit to, id still go for both options in your examples as when i have a choice to get a site ranking for some more keywords and phrases and those free dirs accept my titles Like duh? your going to go for it aint you, lol Some paid directories can get more submissions from loosening up a little on what is accepted in titles. A backlink from a crap directory is still a backlink, they add up and help ranking for the little niches that have less competition, this is obvious. 10 quality unique relevant directories. The word unique loses it strength when referring to a directory, even if its coded as a one off, its own template, different structure, its still a directory, if it is anything special its usually no longer a directory. Im agree with the quality thing, but all directories follow the same pattern, regardless of blogs attached, slightly different way of doing things, small team running one......
The Verticals, Vortals and Niche engines might have something to say about that, and are regularly featured in major business magazines. For instance, the jobsearch engines are very famous and hot property, so don't discount specialist websites, as they are unique in what they do. Examples of something unique are: Totaljobs.com customerssuck.com/ cnet.com/ etc etc. Unique means: being the only one of it's kind or unlike anything else. Directories that list everything cannot then be unique - there are too many of them to be one of a kind. But something niche would be unique, but only if it truly is a centre for a whole subject, anything less won't cut it.
And its at that point that i feel it is no longer a directory to reach that stage of being a center for a whole subject.
I agree with Red Knight, who are we to say what a dictionary word can be applied to? Off the top of my head I think of this directory how can you say it's not unique? Is the Mona Lisa not unique because you can't apply the word to paintings?
Thanks for all the input. I was trying to be ironic with the post title I would like to see more niche directories and less general directories. The problem is that it is harder to get submissions to a niche directory. There is also more work needed to review submissions as there tends to be more off topic submissions. Believe it or not some submitters do not read a directories submission requirements
Me too. Not necessarily. Focusing all effort on one niche allows you to explore further into it, push it further, promote it more and target the webmasters more. I like to think I'd rather submit my sports site to a dominant sports directory as opposed to a general directory.
But why stop at related directories? There are few related directories for a given topic, and once submitted to those few, you've exhausted directory options totally. Unless someone suddenly puts up 20'000 sports directories, we are all in deep link trouble. Directories are an easy option - way too easy, and it's much better to combine directory links with related other links too. There is so much more to the web than many realise, and I bet there are a ton of sites that would eagerly link if they could be found. But they aren't being found, maybe their too deep in the search results for any one person to be bothered searching. Now, I hardly get link requests, and I don't want most of my links to be mainly directory - I think people can tell and judge my site on who I swap with.