I am thinking in terms of indexed pages and Pagerank, not actuall rankings(This is because I sell links and use Co-Op). Or do I need blog-links/article-links/footer-links too?
Yes for me. I have sites in various industries that have done quite well in Google with directories as the main source of links (over 95%). These sites are also fairly new (9 to 18 months old).
Yes, it's entirely possible, however, if you're getting your directories from the same source as your competition, it won't take much for them to overtake you. I suggest you diversify your link building and attempt to get your links from as many sources as possible. I'm not saying reduce your directory link building. Quite the opposite actually! Continue doing what you're doing, but endeavour to find additional sources of links (articles, forums, triangle linking, comments [frowned upon ;p] and other means). One thing I do recommend is avoid having the co-op as your sole source of links as weight fluctuations can potentially mean a slow death to your site.
One of my competitors does nothing to promote his site but submit to directories. In fact, he uses the same single keyword in his anchor text over and over again. It appears to work well enough for him-for that one single keyword at least. We still eat his lunch on that keyword (and every other keyword for that matter) but he's been doing it for years. Unfortunately for him though he doesn't seem to check the integrity of his backlinks very often. His only edu backlink 404ed about a month ago... ...pity We've been watching him intently, as sort of a case study for the effectiveness of directory linking efforts. You can learn an awful lot by observing the actions of your competitors.
A variety of type of links is preferable. In fact, the anchor text and destination URL should be varied as well.
I think yes just for small keywords like " oradea webhosting company" or "california seo and hosting" , things like that An submission package is costing not more then 10-30 USd... do you people still hope to make a fortune with a few bucks?!
To follow up, you really have to ask yourself just how much your time is worth. With the prices of submission services these days, it becomes highly impractical to do directory submissions yourself. From an economics point of view, lets assume that your hour is worth $20. You can find a submission service that submits to 300 directories for $100usd (just throwing prices around here). Now if you were to manually submit to 300 directories over a course of time, just how much of your time would you use up? You're actually spending more money doing it yourself. Link building should be done on a holistic basis, directories should be a part of your link building plan, not the plan itself.
Define: "quite well in Google" Guys, this thread is very inspiring for me. I had completely stopped my directory submissions. I am now once again excited about directory submissions and will go through the VS excel list this weekend for all my sites. Cheers! Suggestion for anybody here who is going to attempt submitting their site to directories. Install Roboform. It's very good and is free for up to three identities (at a time). So, you can have a buttom each for up to websites that you can press to automatically fill out directory forms. This is very handy and I highly recommend trying it. Just trust me and install it. Once you install it, simply enter your details in the identity. Then, click on custom fields. Up to three custom fields are available in the free version. Name these: "url" (Set Other matching string to "website") - Enter your url "title" (Set other matching string to "title") - Enter your anchor text "description" (Set other matching string to "description") - Enter description There are pre-set fields for all other info, like first name, last name, email address etc. If you love it and end up buying it (like I have), you can set-up more identities and you can set-up a forth custom field for keyword. No need to thank me. Green rep will do just fine!
Some top 10s and top 20s. Quite well since these are cookie cutter type sites that I don't spend any time or money on. It is also good because these are fairly young sites and because Google's top 10 usually has sites older than 5 years with 100,000+ links.
Sounds good. The top 10s .... Are they for competitive terms? i.e. how many results does it bring in? Ex: If you are top 10 for something with 30,000 results I would not call that competitive .... but something with 2,000,000 is fairly competitive ...... something with 100,000,000 is quite competitive ..... anything over that is totally out of my league. I'm just curious .... don't answer if you think i m being too nosey!
I had to dig around because I don't follow many keywords for these sites. Nothing too impressive but not bad for fairly young, non-original sites, that really only have directory links pointing to the home page. Here are some quick results: #4 & #5 of 5.4 million #1 & #2 of 1.6 million #3 of 3.3 million #19 of 9.3 million If you are serious about a site you really want to suplement the directory submission with other link sources. You also want to spend time getting links from directories in your own niche.