Over the years I have spent in excess of 300 or more hours submitting my sites to as many directories as possible. Digital Point has an entire section dedicated to directories. Most everyone who owns a website has spent time submitting to directories. Here is my dilemma... Of all these hundreds of submissions, I don't recall one single visitor being directed to any of my sites. Not only that but when I type mysite.com into Google, NOT ONE link appears from any directory I have submitted my sites to (other than Yahoo). So the question is... Is Directory submission a total waste of time? Is there any value whatsoever to spending countless hours submitting your website to various directories?
I think they're worth it. When I look at my back link profile in Google Webmaster tools I see a lot of web directories. I like to focus the most on the niche directories or free general directories so that's what I have the most experience with. Take it for what it's worth.
I think submitting to a couple a day is useful, even if not all of them get indexed by google, the ones that do are still a link with your chosen anchor text direct to your page. Check webmaster tools, you will see how many are recognized by google.
Waste of time who does not know much about directories and their benefits and how to properly submit and use directories. Very beneficial for those who know the above mentioned points.
So the question is... Is Directory submission a total waste of time? Is there any value whatsoever to spending countless hours submitting your website to various directories? The phrase "you're doing it wrong" comes to mind thats all i can think of, you're maybe doing it wrong.
It's a waste of time if: 1. Your website is bad. 2. You submit to off-topic niche and regional directories. 3. You're not using a very good list of directories. 4. You don't know how to write a decent submission. 5. You always put your submission in the highest possible category rather than the best fit for your website.
If you were submitting the two sites in your signature, the truth is that many directory owners would not accept either one. One's a nice looking site with a mostly dead forum and the other is related to betting/gambling. Perhaps if you had invested 100 of those hours getting more threads going on your forum and sought out adult/gambling directories you would have seen a much better return for your efforts.
Directory do deliver traffic, but indirectly. Directory links helps you for achieving better serps and thus you receive organic traffic.
I have been lucky enough to submit to some new directories when they were taking all comers without registration or fee and now have a good PR rating. The links I placed on those directories have given PR to sites that I own and don't go to very often. I am not one of the pros around here, but I feel directory linking should be a major portion of your PR and SEO strategy.
Its useful you need to see which directories are really active and approving the links honestly and not just dumping the submissions Secondly there are many directories which are indexed by google and those have good traffic and alexa So you need to make a wise choice while submitting and not blind submitting There are many friends at DP who have high PR directories and they promote their directories on threads , these kind of directories will approve your link as those Owners of directories are actually working actively and not just set up a directory and forget about the same
I just took a quick peek at my Google Webmaster Tools to look for traffic from directories. Scanning the results, I see for last month 33 visitors from one directory, 16 from another, 11, 9, ... So I get at best, a very minor amount of traffic from directories. And I have submitted to thousands of them. I'm getting somewhat more meaningful traffic from social bookmarking sites such as Squidoo. Last month social bookmarking sites sent 147 visitors from one site, 142 from another, then 31, 29, and so forth. Directories and social bookmarking sites combined are sending about 2% of my traffic. SBM sites are sending far more than directories. That does not discourage me from submitting to directories and SBM sites. Both of them allow you to get anchor-text-rich backlinks, which in turn will help you in the area of search engine traffic.
I don't think this is the truth about directory submission. Directories are useful when you submit appropriate them by using some proper guidelines and I find quality directories in my backlinks. So they are useful for gaining some backlinks evenif they are free or paid..
Yeah, it does take a long time... This is why we get thouthands of new users on http://www.easysubmits.com We made if for a SEO firm that did manual directory submissions at first, but then decided to share... saves a ton of time with directory submissions and its free...