How to Use Directory Submissions Effectively
One very easy way to start building links is to submit to website directories. Directories are websites that have lists of other websites broken down into categories.
Some people confuse directories with search engines but they really are not even close to the same thing. One of the key differences is that a directory will never come looking for you like a search engine will. Search engines will send out the crawlers to pick up new information on the internet. That’s how they’ll eventually pick you up.
Directories on the other hand will never come looking for you. In order for you to be included in a directory you will have to go to the directory and submit your information in order to be included. Then, a human editor will look over your information and decide if you will be included or not.
So first of all, where do we find these directories? Personally, I like to use the list at AddURL.nu. Another popular list can be found at SEOCompany.ca. Rather than going over the difference between the two in this post, I mainly just want to get to the basics of how to submit to a directory.
Check the Directory PR
If you’re starting out with a brand new website, I’d recommend only submitting to those directories that have a home page with a PR3 or above. You can come back and do the other ones later if you want to, but when we’re first getting starting building links let’s stick with the sites that will have the highest quality for us.
Find the Right Category
Whenever you come to a directory, the first thing you need to do is to find the right category on that directory to submit your site to. This will probably vary a little bit for each directory, but as you do more and more of these you’ll get used to where the most likely places are. As a side note, if you have a website where you sell a physical product you should probably look inside a “Shopping” category first if they have one.
Choose the Right Link Option
Here I’m talking about the pricing option. Most directories will give you several different submission methods to choose from, everything from a featured listing to a reciprocal. First let’s talk about reciprocals with directories. My recommendation: don’t do them. Remember, whenever you’re getting links we want to try and stick with related websites. Well, directories are not related to you, so why would you need to link back to them? Unless the directory has a lot of credibility or a high PR, I would normally just stick with the Free option.
Use an Appropriate Title
This is the most important part of the directory submission. When you’re submitting to the directory one of the first things you’re going to fill in is the title of you website. Unless they say you have to as part of their guidelines, DON’T use your website name as you’re title. Now go back and read that sentence again. Whenever we’re building links we want to try and focus on our main keyword phrases. Most likely the name of your website is not just a main keyword phrase. So instead, use one of your main keyword phrases as the title for your site. This is the most important step!
Fill Out the Rest of the Form Appropriately
The rest of the form should be pretty self-explanatory. Just fill in the information that they ask for. Different directories will ask for different things, but most of them will at least ask for a title, description, and URL. Beyond that just do what they ask for.
Keep Track of What You Do
Personally I have a spreadsheet where I keep track of everything that I do with directories. You can use this same format if you want to, or feel free to modify it. Here it is column by column: Directory (usually just the domain name), PR of their home page, Date that I submitted / Reason I didn’t submit (in case there was a problem), Title used (keyword phrase), Description used, result once I’ve heard back from the directory. If the directory is only a PR0-2, I’ll fill in the first two columns and then move on to the next one.
That’s directories for you. This is a very basic set of notes on them, but in the end submitting to directories is a pretty basic task. A good pace for directories would be to do about 20-40 a week. You can go faster or slower than that, but that’s a pretty good pace.
As a side note regarding AddURL.nu. When I use this list I prefer to do it sorted alphabetically. This is only because the list shifts every week or two and if you do it sorted by PR it’s very easy to lose your place.
Directories are boring and very repetitive, but they are also a very easy way to build some good links when you’re first getting started.
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A Small Reminder on Directory SubmissionsGoogle Sitemaps Series Part 2 - Creating the Sitemap
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Great information in this post. I find too that you can hire people to do submissions like this very cheap if you look around some webmaster forums.
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Country Music,
Yes, you can find people to do it for you but you want to be very careful of how they’re going to do it. Some of these guys just spam the directories and that is not something that we would want. Personally, I prefer to just take some time and do it myself so I don’t have to worry about how it’s being done. But, that’s just me!
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I once hired someone to submit one of my sites to 200 directories over the period of 1 month, but he spammed them all in one day with some kind of tool.. I do the submissions myself nowadays.. :/
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mr handy,
I’ve heard enough similar stories to where I do the same thing. Thanks for sharing your experience!
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I pay my liddle brother to submit my pages to directories
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That’s a good idea Simon! LOL
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[...] How to Use Directory Submissions Effectively [...]
Great Article! I think it is more safer to do the subscriptions manually.
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The question is if you even need any submissions nowadays.
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Myby is right, submissions are a waste of time imho.
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Thanks for explaining this. I have a blog on wordpress.com but until now did not understand about wordpress.org.
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The article miss out one very important tips
TARGET RIGHT KEYWORD (keyword optimation)
if you can target right keyword, it would be the best to capture natural traffic from Google
For example, when picking keyword related to car,
don use keyword car, cause it too common,
you can use blue big car, or sport car with more niche capture
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I think one shouldn’t focus too much on the PR of a directory as that’s a variable factor and it’s been noticed that when many directories increase in PR they start charging for submissions. So by not submitting to them when they have no or low PR could mean losing out on an opportunity to get a free link.
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Very very interested article.
THX
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Dan Reply:
October 20th, 2008 at 12:46 pm
Glad you found it interesting!
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Very good article! Personally I think if you should do it manually but as always I would say content is king.
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Thanks for the good article, has been very useful for me. Thanks for sharing.
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I also think you dont need the directorys anymore for a good link building campaign… sure a few dont hurt and when you submit to a few good ones I would do it manually!
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