Hi guys! I decided to try directory submissions on monthly basis, but I'm pretty much new to it . Okay, everybody around are talking about submitting your website to AS MANY directories as possible, but at the same time we know that excessive links coming unexpectedly from everywhere to your website might harm your website in search engine SERPs stand point. While at the same time too few incoming links will not help your website much. So, taking into attention that not all directories will accept your submission (and maybe majority will not - I don't know even average acceptance rate really), and also that many of those who accept you drop with time sooner or later, how many directory submissions per month would you recommend from your own experience for website that is PR4, is 3+ years old and already has 1320 backlinks according to Yahoo and 40 backlinks according to Google? I was told I need 200 submissions/month, but I'm not sure this will be the strongest option, at the same time I am afraid bigger amount could be treated as "suspicious activity" by Google and discarding all the incoming links. Really looking for any thoughts or advices! Thanks, Dennis.
The things is if you submitted 100 in a day you might only get 10 responses all up and they usually come in 24 hours. After that give up on them!
Thanks, Michael. That gives me a little more understanding on how low acceptance rate might be. So, if I submit to 100 and get, for example, 10 responses (i.e. get most likely listed in those 10 as a result) I can adjust the number of actual accepted listings to what I want, but I'm not sure as to how many finally accepted listings I'd need for best results, that's actually the main question.
It depends upon the credibility of site, domain age and trust rank it has gained over the periods. For the 3-4 year old site even thousand back links in months might be legitimate, on the other hand couple of hundred back links/month may set an alarm for a new site. anyways its quality of back links that matters not the quantity. I would prefer 10 good back links/months over thousand's of crap.
Thanks, coolseo36, I've been tending to think about that too, I mean about website age. Just from my experience, I do link exchange and I do gain about 10 good links per month, at least I believe they're good, they have PR1-4, mostly no farms, but that still won't improve my rankings significantly. Maybe the problem is in the high competitiveness of legal/law niche. Also, I tend to believe there must be some really good links, and decent amount of simple links from unique content, like articles and directories, pages of PR0 or even simply indexed by Google without any PR, just like blog posts etc. Am I right? I hope all these backlinks will improve my rankings.
There isn't a specific amount of dirs to submit to. And Google DOES NOT punish you for submitting too many links. There probably is an optimal amount of link building but noone knows it. Find what's best for you with trial and error.
Well, everything gets more clear here. I have been thinking backlinks should be built slowly, and didn't know what numbers to start from.
What I try to do is just spend a few minutes every day doing directory submissions. It adds up to a hundred or so a month. I suspect this looks fairly natural to the search engines because my rankings seem to slowly improve over time. Directories should be just one part of your link building efforts.