Directory Submissions; Working Well for Authority Websites
Glen Allsopp / 
25 Comments / 
October 23rd, 2007 / 
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Directory Submissions are often seen as the cheap and easy links, usually a starter foundation to get a site noticed before some better link building work is done. I’ve seen brand new sites stop ranking for their own name after a few hundred directory submissions, even spread out with different titles and descriptions.
So what happens when you are working with sites, that have thousands / millions of links, are getting new ones on a daily basis but can still generate more search engine traffic. Well, apart from the obvious:
- Improving all-over on Page SEO
- Finding Strategic links that havn’t been picked up
- Getting solid Paid Directory links
As 99% of our readers will know, anchor text is an important factor in website backlinks in order to rank for certain terms, so when these huge sites are trying to rank for a lot of terms, things can become difficult.
While directory submissions can kill a fairly new site (especially in a competitive niche), they can do wonders for the rankings of authority sites, these findings are from the work we have been doing ourselves. Some of the thoughts behind why this is happening include:
- The sites already has a high number of links
- It’s viewed as an authority already and is unlikely to be penalised for these links
- Links are very wide-spread to the sites and not just coming from one location source i.e. directories
Maybe you can learn something from all this. We aren’t saying that you shouldn’t do directory submissions for new sites, but don’t make it your main source for quality links. We tend to use these to help ‘bulk-up’ on the anchor text that a site is getting, how long this will work well for we don’t know.
What do you do that is working well?
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Interesting indeed, that’s what only people notice who work for large websites. On the other hand my experience taught me that a certain “size” of a website makes conventional link building useless as adding 5 links to 5.000 or 50.000 is not effective enough. Others tend to start buying high PageRank links on a large scale in those cases, while I say that if a client can spend more than 1000 Euros per month just on link building he can afford link baiting services.
yeah, directories are still useful, for a free list of dirs go to http://www.webdirectoryplace.com/web-directories
Good Article Glen
That is an interesting point in relation to using keyword-sensitive directory submissions for authority domains, in order to build rankings for keyword targets.
Are you looking at both paid and free directories and if it’s the former, have you seen an impact since Google has proclaimed they will devalue paid submissions?
Agreed on the limited usage of paid directories - but I have never really invested the time/money in a larger number to determine if there was something I was missing out on. Thanks for the reply!
wonder if dmoz is in ur list
I have a question about the main directories like DMOZ and Yahoo. Let’s say I have a site that doesn’t have any backlinks at all, and I use those two directories as my first links. Would that be an ok strategy, or should I seek out a few other non-directory links before I go after DMOZ and Yahoo?
Interesting post Glen! I
I have to disagree with you Glenn about the “While directory submissions can kill a fairly new site (especially in a competitive niche)” part.
While not all of my clients have new sites, I do get the sites that are only days old as well. I manage domain names ranging in age from 1998- 2007. I’ve found that the amount of directory links is the factor to take notice of, not how soon you add a PR7 .gov link at a page. The niche my clients are in can be highly competitive, as it is real estate related.
The thing I focus on most is their overall link profile. How many directories, how many book marks in del.icio.us, and so on. While anchor text is agreeably important, I would say another thing to consider is duplicate anchor text. If the majority of the links going to your page/site contain the same anchor text it can be a harmful factor.
Another thing to consider when submitting to several directories is to not use the same description for every submission. A personal preference of mine is to never use the same description given to a directory in the meta tag as the description for the page/site.
As for the clients that have newer sites and domain names, the links from the directories I submit them to, paid and free, do them well.
I noticed that, with directory submissions, its better if you build the links slowly, I’ve tested this on 2 sites, one i got a directory submission package and all the submissions (in the hundreds) were made in a week’s time, I didn’t see any improvements with this method, however with the 2nd site, submissions to directories were done over 2 months, thus building the links slowly (and more naturally) which did bring better results and effect the rankings of the website positively.
I don’t doubt your word Glenn, as you point out, really no gain to admit it.
I am working on a site that has a url that is over a year old. We are currently working on a site redesign and it will be over 70 pages in the end. For the best results, how many directories should I submit to when the site is complete?
This is very informative article …It will help the people working in SEO field.
Do these ^ people use automated software to leave these comments? Not really adding anything to the conversation..
Oh, and I’ve seen new site’s rank on just a few directory submissions - not in competitive niches, but then new sites can’t rank there period.
There’s definitely still value in dirs, but I think there should be more and that Google’s devaluing of directories is arbitrary and lame - afterall they’re not all rubbish, and if Google can’t distinguish that’s their problem.
As with paid links in general, Google opened pandorahs box and profited from it - they and their traffic are available to the highest bidder as are SEO’s, it’s called capitalism. No surprises there. The paid link debacle makes Google look like a fat kid that’s dropped it’s ice-cream..
Quit crying fatty we’ve no sympathy for you..
Hey Glen, just noticed I spelled your name incorrectly in one of the above comments. Sorry about that buddy.
directory submission is really great help on rankings, SE look up on the directories for given the site for each query..