22. Submitting to Directories

In the last chapter we talked about article submissions and how that technique can spread your articles around the internet and create backlinks, link reputation and PR for your site.

In this chapter, we’ll look at another great way to get backlinks to your site – Directory Submissions.

As you know, it is very important that you get quality links into your site, and the more ways you can get them, the better.

One way of getting one-way links to your site is by submitting your site to Directories.

This is often not always as easy as it should be for reasons we will mention in a moment. Firstly, let’s look at why submitting to directories is a good idea:

If the directory is edited by humans, as is Dmoz.org, the directory tends to be filled with quality sites. A directory setup this way is likely to have more weight given to any backlink (in the eyes of a search engine) than a directory that accepts all submissions.

Directories link back to your site, giving you a backlink. If you have been able to choose your link text, that is an added bonus.

Popular directories are likely to send you traffic, purely because they get a lot of visitors who go looking for sites.

OK, the reasons why directory submission are not as easy (or as valuable) as they should be:

Not all directories pass PR back to your site, in which case link reputation is not going to be a benefit either. These directories can use a variety of techniques for stopping PR, as we saw previously with the nofollow tag.

Not all directories are fr-ee, and those that are not don’t guarantee inclusion even if when you pay.

Human-editors of directories can have hidden agendas. Take dmoz.org as an example. Lots of categories do not have an editor, and invite applications. If you could become the editor of a category, you have control over who you let in, and who you don’t. My impression is that a lot of these editors use their powers to help themselves, which is why I have had perfectly good sites ignored when I submitted to dmoz.

With dmoz.org, you often have to wait months before you hear anything, and even then you may not hear anything. There does not appear to be any system in place for checking up on the progress of the application of a sites once it is submitted.

A lot of directories do not accept affiliate sites.

Despite the potential problems with directory submissions, they still do offer a great way to get quality backlinks to your site. It is quite possible that the search engines (especially Google) will start to devalue links from some directories (e.g. directories were all sites are accepted, and paid directories that guarantee inclusion), but that should not stop you from submitting to them. One of the great benefits of being in popular directories is the traffic the directory sends you from those browsing the directory (meaning that the search engines are largely taken out of your traffic equation).

So which directories should you submit your sites to?

Well, here is a web page you can use for reference. It shows lots of directories, their PR, and whether or not PR is passed back to your site.

Strongest Links

Clicking on the info link next to the directory brings up other valuable information about the directory, including the submission URL, Alexa ranking etc:

Important Notes:

1. if PR is passed back to your page, the PR you get is based on the PR of the page your link is on, not the PR of the directory homepage. If PR is not passed, still submit to the directory if there is a lot of traffic at that directory (you can see the Alexa stats for each directory in the list by clicking the info link).

2. Read the directories submission guidelines before submitting. If you don’t follow guidelines, your application will be rejected.

I suggest you work your way through that directory link page and submit your site to as many as you can.

For those looking for short cuts, there is a pretty cool tool that will speed up your directory submissions. Directory Submitter comes preloaded with over 300 directories and growing (and works in much the same way as Article Announcer does for submitting articles to article directories) and keeps track of where you have submitted, and where you still need to submit to.

In this chapter you saw how directory submissions can help increase your backlinks, your PR and link reputation, and therefore your rankings. In the next few chapters, we will continue to look at ways to increase targeted traffic to your sites.

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