we signed up with a member's directory submission service a few days ago. we found out it was automatic submission rather than manual only after the fact. nevertheless, our predicted google page rank dropped from 4 to 1 today. is this a factor or is it something else? previously our backlinks all came through organically, not by computer.
Based on GoogleGuy’s past posts at WMW I’d have to say no. The 301/302/Hijacking/ duplicate content issues are known but if you could damage a site by doing this everyone would auto-submit their competitors sites.
If in the past you've had a low increase in backlinks and in a day or two you add several hundred that may trigger a flag with Google, especially if all the link text looks the same. Better to have a steady raise in links with different text in the links. Looks more natural, and is less likely to raise a flag.
Yes but as already mentioned somehow, if you could really damage the SERPs you would do this more likely to your competitors to get them off the SERPs! But what might really count is to gradually build up outbound links on YOUR site! but that's another topic..
well, the predicted page rank for my site has had a roller coaster ride this past week. it dropped from 4 to 1, then went back to 4 a day later (whew), then dropped back down to 1 (ugh), then went up to 2, and now is at a 3. so, don't get too happy (or too distressed) with your predicted page rank till the fat lady sings.
Even if you submit to all directories at same time it take time for links to go live and after that it take time for link to be picked by SE.
Yes you are right directories aren't that wide-spread at the very beginning so the search engines will take some time to fully index each category ..
Well, you can pick up the free e-book by the owner of SEO Elite (Brad Callen) that is titled 'Search hengine optimization made easy'. There is quite a precise formula there. Another thing you can do is get a good list of directories and outsource the submission process.This is what I do for my sites: I have made a great directory list (nealy 2500) and found a team of people to take the tedious work out of my chest. They have just submitted for me 8 Web sites to this list, over a period of 1,5 months, for $75. I know that they submitted the details of each site to 1650 out of the total 2,117 that the list has. Every day, I see more backlinks (1-way!) to each site, and more revenue.It is a slow process, some sites will reject the submission, but I have a sure 1000 1-way links to each of the 8 sites. I use SEO elite for each site for gaining the reciprocal links-which is dead easy to do.Another 1000 (recip) links! There you go!
There's no way in hell any PR predictor tool would see the difference between manually or automatically submitted sites to directories, they just search for links to your site indexed by google. You should never value PR over visitors. If you've added your site to a lot of directories and your visitor count is falling, that's bad, regardless of any change in PR. If your visitor count is rising, that's good. Just my 2 cents. P.S.: Predictor tools are mostly inaccurate, you shouldn't value them too much, specially not daily changes.