Beware Of Directories Submission

Would you care to give a well-reasoned explanation why? Just calling people "idiots" in a professional forum is not likely to give your post much of a hearing.

 

Hi Jim, i agree the few a day approach will always help and bring continued benefits, i just get the feeling sometimes that some submitters are nervous about how many they submit to.

I dont use directory submission services either and prefer to do it myself, with some sites i will go on a submission marathon that can last days at a time, through that effort its easy to get through quite a few hundred, and this is where i feel people get uneccessarily nervous, i see some sites get plenty of links in a very short time and it seems fine.

I dont think that you can get them too fast if doing them by hand, so if you go on a frenzy to complete 500 over the next few days i think its perfectly ok, as some will be declined, some wont get seen to till a couple of seasons have passed, some will never be seen to as the directory may turn into something else or change hands before that and the rest will get approved at various times, on different days, mostly coming from different IP's and hopefully with lots of varied titles and descriptions.

Slow and steady is cool, but doing 500 submissions by hand in a week is also cool in my eyes.

 

Very true. I do have the advantage over most of you that I'm retired. That allows me lots of time to do the submission work myself. Plus, my site is nonprofit, so I don't have the time pressures that most webmasters face in getting a site up and running and turning a profit fairly quickly. That allows me the privilege of leisurely directory submission — an option that may not work for commercial sites, which most DPers seem to have.

 

Funkymario, most of the issues you noted apply mainly to well established web directories with average to high pr. For example:

1. New directories won't have a backlink profile, but one would hope time would fix this. If not, directories are not seen as authoritative links anway (except Yahoo, DMOZ, BOTW, etc.). They still help in ranking for the anchor text used.

2. With new directories normally one can choose their desired anchor text or something very close to it.

3. new directories have few listings, therefore it greatly improves indexing time. Even as links are added to the directory, normally ones link detail page is already indexed.

4. Closely related to 3.

5. I agree here, in the context of establsihed and average to high pr directories. The key is to send free submissions to newer directories.

6. Most directories turn paid after one pr update. Time will tell how these directories weather the directory explosion that previously took place (and still is). But many of those directories will probably still exist, although accepting paid submissions instead of free submissions.

7. That's the submitters burden. Duplicate content can be avoided by manually submitting unique information. Even other listings that may have duplicate content issues will not influence your link detail page.

8. Spam is an issue, but one that is easily controlled by the submitter. I always advise clients to use a disposable free E-mail account for submissions. This way they have no lingering issues with spam.

Many of these issues can be avoided by using free directory submissions at newer web directories. BTW, I have no issues with established/high pr directories. Because everyone is chasing pagerank, their free submission backlog is huge and the temptation to delete free listings waiting to be reviewed is great. I'd rather spend a few bucks for an express/featured submission to avoid the long wait and get reviewed/listed.

Directory submissions are link building 101. More advanced and more effective link building techniques exist. But for novice webmasters and those experienced webmasters, directory submissions still are quite effective if done properly.

 

"Very laborious" — how true! One disadvantage I have (probably many others do, too) is lack of an available budget for webmaster-related expenses. That's especially true of a nonprofit site. So I/we do the best we can with the available mix of time, energy, and finances.

By the way (and somewhat off topic, but helpful), I do another labor-intensive, but very fruitful, type of promotion of the website. And that is a direct, personal email campaign. In brief, here's how it works. My site is in a narrow niche — bible studies and free sermon outlines from a Pentecostal-charismatic perspective. There's an old saying about "fishing in the right pond". Well, my pond from which I get by far the best response is other pastors in the Pentecostal-charismatic mode. There are millions of them across the globe.

So what I do is to Google lists of Pentecostal church denominations worldwide. Many of those denominational websites include lists of all their churches, including the pastors by name, plus email addresses. I send a personally addressed email to those pastors, introducing the free resources of the website — resources that are precisely in their niche. I have received literally hundreds of personal emails in reply from these pastors. And they apparently bookmark my site and have become a major source of direct traffic. How do I know that? Well, pastors around the world are often preparing their sermons on Saturday for Sunday service. My StatCounter shows a huge increase of pageviews each Saturday afternoon and evening? Busy pastors who procrastinated and are now looking for last-minute help.

The point is: a well-focused, personally targeted email campaign to qualified prospects within one's niche can produce great results. Sorry for the OT excursion, but the email idea just might turn a light on in a few webmasters who face a similar situation and haven't thought of this way to fish the "right pond" (their niche). But this too is very labor-intensive.

 

Directory submissions are still useful and an important step towards the success of any web based business which has a website. I agree that there are quite a few minute details that need to be considered these days - when it comes to submissions (directory, article, social and any other content) on third-party sites. However, if it's done correctly and patiently (manual submissions) - it definitely help in ranking higher on organic search results and getting better SERPs for your website.

 

Directory submission does work, I've been approved by over 1000 directories, I appear in the top 10 for all my anchor text phrases.

when people say PR4 directory i don't assume I'll inherit the PR4, all it tells me is that the site is being crawled on a regular basis, and google is crawling enough pages so it indexes my link.

Simple logic.

 

This probably pertains to many of you out there, how many of you have a website with let’s say 10 backlinks from PR4 sites, and your site is PR5 cause of those backlinks. Then your other site which has 14 PR5 linking to it and it’s only a PR4. I’m sure it gets many of you to think that the PageRank system is messed up since it just doesn’t make sense. Well, the PageRank system isn’t really messed up, it’s just that you aren’t enlightened with how PR works yet .

A PageRank does is not something that’s infinite; imagine it like a piece of pie. The more people your sharing the pie with, the smaller piece you get right? That’s exactly what happens with PageRank. If a webpage has a PR6 and has lets say thirty outgoing links on that page that means there are thirty backlinks. So, there are thirty links that are taking a chunk out of the PR6. Now let’s use this tool:

http://www.services-seo.net/pagerank-calculator/

HTML:

So how’s the outcome? Since thirty people took a bite out of the PR6, instead of the PR6 distributing PR6, it is giving an equivalent of a PR4. Now let’s keep everything the same besides change the “assumption links per page average” to two.

You see, if there are only two outgoing links on that PR6 Page, then both of those links would be turned into a PR6! That’s the magic in this, if there are very little outgoing links on a high PR page, then those links will gain the same exact PR as the site who linked to them! This is why PageRank varies from site to site, you must check the sites that linked to yours, look at how many outgoing links there are on that page that will explain to why you’re not totally benefiting. You could have a site with 2000 backlinks from a PR5 and only be a PR2 if those PR5 pages had hundreds and hundreds of outgoing links. You could have a PR 6 site, if you have 2 PR6 backlinks that only have 2 links on that page! I hope that this will explain to everyone the mystery behind their website PageRank.

 

Thanks for the information guys... I think i'll continue with my few a day approach for now by submitting my sites to between 5 and 10 directories a day

 

I think the key for any sort of success for directory submission is getting the right anchor text in place, and many directories only allow the name of the site as the anchor text.

I've been sandboxed in Yahoo and MSN for submitting too quickly to too many directories, although this hasn't happened with Google.

 

PageRank 'calculators', 'predictors', etc, are a load of BS. The PageRank table given is useless and far from accurate IME.

 

There is no such thing as a PR0. It will always be 0. something, but not one

Good post nonetheless

 

so is it best to try and use a combination of different anchor texts to one domain name - or concentrate on just one anchor text?

 

Lots of different and relevant anchor text, pointing back to your homepage and inner pages when possible.

 

I have had a bad experience with free web directory submissions when I tried them. You get spammed with emails from companies who want to charge to advertise your website.

 

This so true with the hoards of copycat directories. Many are set up to extract email and other contact info and sell it for £2000 a go.

So the directories doing this aren't actually serving the sites that are listed.

You got to be careful who you submit to....

 

Yes.I know that.. I don't submit sites just for pagerank..it'll get some traffic aswell.
Thanks for taking time to write the post.