As someone who has been doing SEO for over 12 years I can safely say that you get what you pay for when you use a cheap directory submission service. At best a directory submission service that cuts corners provides very little benefit - because it involves using the same description on each submission - meaning search engines like google just see the links as having no human input and discount them anyway. (it's so easy for them to spot when links to a site appear 1000 times - all with the same description - google sees this as an automated process and simply discounts those links as they are not genuine votes) The only real way you can get any authority from directories is by using an entirely different description on each submission and this takes a lot more time. The thing is in the past when I offered a cheap directory service on my site I got absolutely tons of business, even though I made it clear to clients that the benefits were minimal, but a while ago I changed the service so it involves submitting with a unique description each time and that meant putting the price up because of the time involved. I haven't had a single order yet !! I do SEO for a number of sites - in the last 3 months I have had SEO companies calling up these site owners saying things like.. "We can submit your site to 2000 high ranking directories for £..."..(actually they are just taking other companies money and paying $10 to some company in India !!) - I asked if they could do this using a unique description on each submission and they said thats not possible....if they really understood SEO then they know that this cheap service has very little benefit - but obviously they just want to make money...the sad thing is people don't have a clue about SEO and will more than likely choose any cheap service that has little effect over a more expensive service that is done correctly and will have a lot more benefit...so this is why the net and places like DP are full of people offering these cheap services, not only directory submissions but loads of other SEO services that cut corners. My point is that real SEO that gets real results takes time and effort - it simply cannot be done on the cheap - however despite these companies knowing that they continue to sell such services. It's tempting to just become one of these cowboys and not give a hoot about clients rankings because theres an everlasting stream of newbies wanting to throw money at things that don't really work !!!
I agree, many newbies are sucked in by the promise of 800 web directory submissions thinking that it will skyrocket their site but the fact is they would have been better of with 50 manually submitted links.
yep - so long as those 50 all have a different description each time. 10 with unique descriptions is better then 10,000 with the same descriptions.
Directory submissions are so 2003. They are no longer reliable for getting quality links to your website. If anything, they seem “spammy†these days.
yes thats my point - they are spammy because of the way they are wrongly done If they are done right then theres a lot more benefit
I use a different, unique meta description for each different page of my website. That is important to do. But the meta description of my home page is the one I submit every time when I submit that home page to directories and anywhere else. There is no need to vary a well-thought-out meta description for any individual page. Differing anchor text? Yes. But differing meta descriptions for the same page? No.
Yes,I completely agree with this.I see many sites on internet offering 1000 to 3000 directory submission.Only Submission;and nothing about approval. Second it is true that manual link submission works.You should use different titles and different meta description for each submission.Many directory owners are not happy to approve free links as they get a lot of links.
It's tempting to just become one of these cowboys and not give a hoot about clients rankings because theres an everlasting stream of newbies wanting to throw money at things that don't really work !!! HTML: Yeah the problem is newbies are attracted to big numbers. When they see big numbers for a cheap price, and smaller numbers for a large price, their instincts will tell them that the smaller numbers are a bad deal. If you offer both and like you said earlier explain to the client the difference in effectiveness you could capitalize on both markets and get your shot at educating newbies.
It's good you've brought it up, because even if there are threads that talk about quality backlinks and links that don't leave footprints to other sites, the automation has been overemphasized. I believe there is no shortcut in IM, unless you don't want quality.
Yeah it's better to manually submit to the web directories than paid submissions. I've submitted to 30+ web directories manually and I can see result in 60 days. I've got PR 5 from PR 0. It works for me..
well people laughed when I cottoned on that it's more beneficial to put only unique content on a site .....years before any other SEO - and Panda update - so in a few years I will be proved right !!