Offsite SEO: Directory Submission

Something that might be able to help your offsite SEO efforts is Directory Submission.

There are a few pay-to-play website directories that carry clout with Google.

While I do not think taking time to submit your site to directories is horrible, my experience shows me that this is not a great use of your time (if you do this yourself) or money (if you pay someone else to do this), especially for the free ones.

There are MANY free directories that will let you leave YOUR link on their Directory Website for free (or a small fee).


What is the harm?  Free is glee, right?


It can be.  I like free things as much as the next person, but often there is a price that comes with "free."

However, the more links there are on a page, the more it's "backlink juice" gets divided.  If you are able to list YOUR website for free, how many other people can list THEIR websites for free?  How much "juice" does that leave for you?

Often, these sites take a long time for Google to crawl them, meaning that you won't get "backlink credit" for a decent amount of time.  In fact, my experience tells me that only 1 in 20 sites ever get "approved" officially.  Most of my directory submissions are never taken into consideration by Google (or Yahoo).

How do you find Directories that allow you to submit your site?

Okay, you still want to submit to directories.  Where can we submit them?

The Yahoo Directory is $299/year, but it tends to be taken more seriously by Google (and Yahoo, of course).  The higher price means that it is less likely to be spammed, and you are amongst a smaller, more select group of websites on this list.

DMOZ is considered to be a high-ranking directory site, because it is approved manually.  I've never gotten anything approved on here, but I've heard that those sites that are approved benefit greatly.

When you submit to free directories, you want to make sure that they relate to the content on your site.  Otherwise, Google will more likely consider your site to be a Spam site.

Type any of the following:

• "keyword phrase" directory
• "keyword phrase" listing
• "keyword phrase" website submission
• "keyword phrase" site submission

Between these, you should have a few places to submit your site.

You can do the same thing with similar but different keywords that relate to your website.

It probably would not hurt to submit your site to one of these per day.  This will help you build your backlinks gradually, which makes Google less suspicious of you being a Spam site.

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