Directory Website Submissions: Tips For Doing Effective Directory Submissions To Get Your Site Ranked

In today’s day and age of internet marketing and SEO, website directory submissions are very important for getting your site to the top of the search engines. Very simply, directories are a goldmine for receiving one way links, and often times you can do so for free.

So what exactly are directories, and how does directory submission help your SEO efforts? Directories are sites designed specifically to include a link pointing back to individual sites. Directories are generally divided into a number of different categories, such as finance, home important, sports, etc. 

Therefore, your job, if you choose to do this task yourself, is to simply navigate to the part of the directory that most corresponds to your site and submit your site there. Now, keep in mind, some directories require a fee to place your listing, and this will vary from directory to directory.

Some of these paid services are worth it, and some of them aren’t. It depends on where they will be putting your link in their site, what the PR of the page they are putting it on is, how many clicks it is off the home page, etc. Keep in mind, the closer your link is to the home page, the better.

Therefore, if you have to pay a directory for a link that is more than 3 clicks of the home page (and preferably only 1 or 2) you should certainly think twice about it. Generally, these pages don’t much page rank at all, and therefore your site won’t get a whole to of benefit from it. 

Remember, here’s a common misunderstanding of the way the search engines view websites-they rank pages, not sites. Therefore, often terms a directory will promote that they are a page rank 6, and therefore when you pay a certain fee, you get a link from a page rank 6 site.

What they fail to mention is that your link is 4 or 5 clicks off of the home page, and that the page it is on only has a PR of 1 or even less.

Remember, the only page that counts is the one your link will be on. Therefore, before you pay to have your site placed on a high PR directory site, make sure it is reasonably close to the home page, and also try to find out what the page rank of the directory page is.

Next up, some directories require reciprocal link instead of money. A reciprocal link is where you place a link on your website pointing to their directory, and then once they’ve found this link and verified it, then they will point back to yours.

Very simply, you should probably try to avoid these kinds of links, as reciprocal l linking is, by all admission, on the way out. Just about every top ranking search engine expert agrees on this point.

Many sites in the past have gotten to the top of the search engines for their keyword solely by reciprocal linking, but those days are certainly on the way out, if they aren’t already. Therefore, while reciprocal linking probably won’t hurt you (at least yet) it isn’t an activity that’s going to provide a big return on investment.

By far the best directories to submit to, at least if you are going after a relatively uncompetitive keyword, are the free directories that require no reciprocal link back. These really aren’t very difficult to find: in fact, some sites will provide a list of 500 or more directories that fit this description, and this sure beats doing a Google search and having to find this out beforehand.

Of course, if the keyword you are going after is more competitive, you will probably want to get a few paid directory links as well. Again, make sure you’ve verified the quality of them beforehand, because you certainly don’t want to pay for it if it won’t be worth it.

Again, there are many sites that will provide a listing of paid directories that you can submit to, and all you have to do is go through and find out which ones are worth submitting to.

Now, all this information is well and good, but now comes the important decision: should you do your directory submission yourself or outsource this important task? Let’s face it-while directory submission are certainly essential for SEO purposes, they are also quite monotonous. It certainly can be tedious submitting your site to directory after directory, even if it is effective SEO wise.

Therefore, if you can’t already, you will certainly want to outsource this task as soon as you are earning enough money. there are many services that will take care of this task for you, and finding them isn’t hard. Again, doing a quick internet search should suffice.

However, before you hire any firm, be absolutely sure you know which directories they will be submitting to, how many per day, and any other relevant information. Also make sure they are responsive whenever you contact them, because you want this feature in case of an emergency.

The bottom line is, directory submission are a necessary part of SEO, but can be very monotonous, it is certainly a task you should look to outsource as quickly as possible. Whether you plan on doing it yourself for the time being or outsourcing it immediately, hopefully these directory submission tips and strategies will help your site get ranked no mater how competitive the keyword you are targeting.