It is time wasting better to do social bookmarking for building backlinks as well as get fast indexing & crawling your site with good serp rankings.
When submitting to directories, make sure to vary your anchor text and descriptions. Don’t use the same anchor text and description for all of your directory submissions. A good way to set up a red flag with Google is suddenly to gain a lot of links to your site with the exact same anchor text and the exact same surrounding text. Ideally, all of your directory submissions should use unique wording. At least, have a bunch of versions of anchor text and descriptions that you use when submitting to directories.
directory submission is still helpful..dont go using an automated one, instead do the manual submission..
Dont agree with you completely, it also depends on the directories that you submit. If you choose crap ones then obviously you'll have low approval ratio. Lets take into one example, if you submitted to 1000 quality dirs. and lets take worst case scenario, say 20-25% approved your link. So still there is good 250 backlinks pointing to your site. I believe 1000 manual dir. submission rate is around $60-70 so getting a link for 25cents is too good for us.
I don't think so. Directory Submission still can be useful. In this way, classifying your directories can help a lot in you. Submit only in Human Edited Directories. In this case, you will have high possibility to be approved.
a very nice read, i am new to SEO and reading your post guys can be a great help for newbies like me... thanks a lot.. I am using directories with only high PR right now to begin with my link building campaign... I also do blog comments and posting on do follow forums and social bookmarking...
Most high PR directories have PR0 or PR N/A on their inner pages, so its equal whether you submit to fresh dirs. or high PR. (dmoz and few are exceptional case) In fact submitting to new ones can give you high approval ratio and there are always chances of getting good rankings in the category.
Quality is the main concern, if you submit your site to low quality directories, it wont give you any benefit.
Directory listings should be last on your list, unless they are high quality ones. For the most part, they still give you backlinks so why not submit to all of them just once.
Lots of opinions, but finding hard evidence on the value/non-value of directory links nowadays is difficult. Strictly on the personal level, I have chosen to greatly cut back on my directory submitting. At the same time I have increased my efforts in building links via social media.
Good. I'm happy hearing these words from you. Give a high priority in Human Edited Directories. It will be great if it has a high Page Rank.
I think quality directory listings can really help you in SERPs. Directories like DMOZ, Yahoo etc. can be really helpful to boost the rankings. Also listing in good directories, gets some quality traffic. This is what I've experienced with all my sites. Read More about Directory Submission.
yes directories are still useful - try to choose high ranking/higher pr directories and/or those that have been around for a number of years as domain age is also important ranking factor in google. quality of a backlink is also determined by more than just the page rank of the page that it's on too... i tend to now stay away from submitting to .info directories as i often see so many of them that are exactly the same setup/script/categories except for the name of the site, it's like they're being massed produced. good to submit to directories that have something unique about them and also have decent website listed already. i would say the past year that directory submissions have helped my rankings.