What is Directory Submission?
Over the past few years one of the most important changes in history has been innovation in technology. With such innovation, somethings have become quite easy:
First, information is quite easily available from readytricks.
Second, it has become quite easy for businesses and entrepreneurs to promote their business through the use of the internet.
It is not uncommon to see different businesses having their own website. The purpose of having websites is manifold:
First, to promote their business.
Second, to provide their customers with any and all the information they need as well as to answer any questions that they may have about some product.
But, how easy is it for customers to be able to access this website?
A lot of work goes on behind the scenes to make websites more accessible to the users as well as to ensure that the user is only receiving information or links to website which pertain to what they are searching for.
Directory Submissions are one way in which website owners ensure that their websites have a high page rank rate. A directory is a data site in which there are several entries of different websites and webpages. If you own a website, you can submit the details of your website such as the name, category, purpose, etc., to this directory. This directory will then segregate your entry and enter it into its data base under a relevant category.
Directory Submission Sites List
By submitting your website details in a directory, you can accomplish the following:
You will be able to spread your website to wider audience and gain a higher page rank.
Additionally, these directories will help create backlinks. By creating backlinks, these directories will help you receive more traffic on your website.Before submitting your backlink you should use an URL shortener. Just go this url https://smallseotools.com/url-shortener/ and shorten your main link.
There are mainly two types of listing directories:
- Free Directories: Widely considered to be the best type of directory since nobody is fond of paying money in order to receive certain benefits. In such directories you will be able to submit your link free of cost and get high-quality backlinks to your website. High-quality backlinks means that you will get links to your website from trusted and authorized pages.
- Paid Directories: In such directories you need to pay a certain fee to be able to be included in the directory. These charges are often levied as fees for the hard work that goes into evaluating a URL.
Reciprocal Listing, just as the name suggest, with such directories you will first have to add the link of the web directory to your blog before you get approved for listing in this web directory site. It is another type of web directory listing that is worth mentioning.
Why Directory Submissions are not a good way for long term blogs to build links after Google Updates
If you are a hard working blogger you know all about the time, effort and research that go into producing a blog post that is enriched with relevant details. Every well-researched post has the potential to help out a fellow user learn more about the topic of the post, making all your hard work worth it. When you publish your post for the whole world to see, you eagerly check you traffic status to wait for your post to gain popularity. However, this is not so. A newly published post will obviously not gain much traffic since it is—well, new. But there are a different number of reasons as to why you may not be receiving any traffic of your page even after several days:
Most internet users use Google to search for some topic that they are interested in or want to know about. The most frequented links are the ones that are higher up in the page rank for Google.
How Google ranks its link is a quite complicated process
Google uses an algorithm which checks how many backlinks led to your post or website; the higher the number of backlinks to your site, the higher your page ranking. Directory Submissions are one way to receive backlinks to your website.
Directory Submissions, thus, are often used by Search Engine Optimizers (SEOs) to push a website or link higher up into the page ranking system. Naturally, this is not without its own problems. Since there are free as well as paid directories, it has become easy for spammers to load these directories with several junk posts. Since a directory will sometimes even accept a webpage or post into a particular category, sometimes even irrelevant pages would be accepted to be included in a category.
For paid directories, it is the same thing. Although some legit and relevant users may be willing to fork over some money in order to be able to receive more traffic on their page, there are several people who simply want to pay money to be able to reach a higher page rank.
All these corrupt practices obviously do not go unnoticed by search engines such as Google.
Google, for years, has updated its algorithm in order for the user to get a better experience. Recently, Google has updated its algorithm so that spam or junk links submitted to various directories by spammers is completely blacklisted from their search engine.
While for years Google has not penalized such links (apart from sometimes withholding certain benefits) they have now updated with stronger measures and are constantly keeping a check on all website and page submissions.
If you are someone who is using directories that offers to push your website to a higher page rank in exchange for some money, you might want to rethink your decision:
Or else get an excessively detailed background check on the directory in order to ascertain the authenticity of the directory. Sometimes, a directory may ask for a fee simply as remuneration for the time and effort that goes into a fully and minutely evaluating the link that you provide them with.
Even if you are using free directories, there are a few points that you must keep in mind before you trust the directory with your details:
- Whether or not the directory rejects certain URLs; if not, then you might as well be submitting your details to a website that produces several spam links
- Even when such directories reject URLs, it is important to research and find out whether or not links in their directories are actually relevant to the categories under which they are files, or are simply spam links.
Google is very observant of the backlinks of your website. If you are surrounded by valuable or highly sought after blogs and websites:
You do not need to worry about losing any traffic that you may be receiving from Google.
When you are submitting your URL to a link directory, it is extremely important to check the authenticity of the directory:
It is because if your website details are provided to a directory that is often seen to have a lot of junk or spam links, your website is at risk to be blacklisted from Google.
Whether you join a paid or unpaid directory, it is important to remember that Google is always changing and updating its algorithm in order to provide its user with a better and highly refined experience. Joining directories that may have a bad reputation puts you at risk of being blacklisted by Google. This will obviously result in you losing a huge (if not all) percentage of traffic on your blog.
Keyword stuffing will also cause you problems with Google. If you are unaware of what keyword stuffing means, it is the use of the keyword, for which you want your blog to receive a higher rank, over and over again. The keyword is used several times throughout the article, rendering it almost as an unreadable mass of text. Google will definitely want to avoid blogs that use such techniques to receive a higher page rank since it hinders user experience. Here, keyword density is of utmost importance. Keyword density refers to the number of times a keyword is used in a post. Although it is unknown what percentage of keyword density is accepted by Google as optimum, many bloggers aim for no more than 5% for their posts?
Why Directory Submissions are a good way for Event blogs to build links?
While the above details may discouraged you somewhat from using directory submissions to gain backlinks to your website, Directory submissions are still an excellent SEO tool that may be used by event bloggers in order to gain traffic on their website.
Event Blogging is a niche blogging wherein bloggers create a domain that is related to a particular event that is just around the corner.
These blogs can make great use of Directory Submissions since this blogs only remain live for a small duration and getting backlinks for such a small duration is quite easy through directory submissions.
Directory Submissions are an excellent way to increase the visibility of your website. These directory help improve the traffic on your website by providing you with high quality backlinks.
Through these directory submissions you will be able to improve your search engine page ranking as well as gain domain authority.
If you use directory submissions site that are authorized and highly sought after, you are sure to get backlinks that are not only high quality but also relevant to your website.
While you may think directory submission to be quit ineffective due to Google’s latest update, it is quite a helpful too for even blogging since such domains exist for only a short period of time.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Free Directory Submissions:
As mentioned earlier Free Directory Submissions are those submissions to a directory website for which you do not have to pay any sort of fee. Of course, these types of submissions are widely preferred since it requires no payment.
With the help of directory submissions you are able to receive inbound links that are one way. This means that these directories will link to your website but do not expect you to do the same for them.
Directory Submissions also help you to choose your own anchor text. An anchor text is a clickable link which is used to link to your website. It is essentially the category or topic of your website or web post.
These directories help you not only receive traffic, but it helps you receive well-directed traffic. This means that users who are looking for a particular category find links that are listed under that category.
However, free directories are not without a few problems of their own. While they have a lot of advantages, they also have a lot of disadvantages as well.
The main problem for free directory submissions is that they create low quality backlinks. Evaluating websites and creating backlinks is not a very simple task. It requires a lot of hard work, and if you are using a free directory, you may receive backlinks that are of poor quality since these directories are not receiving any payment for their work.
Moreover, if you are using a free directory, it should always be a good and authentic directory. Free directories often run a risk of being a repository for junk or spam links. If you are associated with such directories, you may even be black listed from Google simply for being associated with a website that has a bad reputation.
Most free directories have a long waiting period before you are finally approved and listed on their site. Since a directory is free, it allows any and all users to submit their website details to them. This results in a giant backlog of URLs that need to be evaluated before they are linked in the directory. Naturally, this increases the waiting period for each user.
Moreover, sometimes a site has options for a free as well as a paid submission. It is no surprise that the paid ones are handled before the free ones (and often in a better way).
Often, there are quite a few limitations to what the free directory submissions site will be able to offer to you. They do not provide much opportunity for link diversity since they require you to only submit your best domain, and not any others.
Moreover, often paid submissions are linked higher than non-paid submissions.
So while free directory submissions are a helpful tool, they are not completely free of hassles and hard work.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Paid Directory Submissions:
Paid Directory Submissions are those submissions for which you have to spend some amount of money before you are able to add your website URL to the repository of the website.
Paying some amount of money ensures that your work is handled carefully and quickly. As mentioned earlier, paid submissions are also linked higher than free submissions in a search engine.
The money that you spend on submitting your website to a directory is often used as remuneration for the person who will be evaluating your website; this means that an actual human will be assessing your website. This ensures that any mistakes that you may have made while submitting your website URL will be fixed right away.
Paid Directory submissions also offer you the opportunity of a higher page rank since they are authentic as well as free of spammers. This makes the money that you spend on paid submissions worth it since it brings in more traffic for you on your webpage.
However, it is also important to note that there are several disadvantages to paid submissions as well.
Firstly, it is not every convenient for many users to pay for directory submissions.
Recently, Google has also become quite stringent in its measures and paying for submissions might even get you blacklisted (under a few other conditions).
Moreover, the directories that link to different websites are not linked to the website at all. This often even qualifies them to be simply spam links.
In fact, the directories are often quite low valued since they do not have much in the way of content and are simply pages of links.
End of directory Submissions Era?
Due to Google’s latest update Directory Submissions might as well be dead. This new update has upped Google’s security against spamming greatly, thus rendering may directory submissions site useless. To use Directory Submission as a SEO tool has become quite tricky since even a small misstep may lead you to be blacklisted from Google and loose a great amount, if not all, of your traffic on website.
Associating with a directory that has a bad reputation because of a huge influx of spam links from them will definitely get you blacklisted in no time causing all of your hard work to go to waste. In fact due to Google’s latest update many web directories have lost their effectiveness and even been penalised.
Thus, unless you are able to submit your website to a highly values and respected directory, it is not worth your effort to use it as a SEO tool.
Best Directory Submissions Alternatives
By optimizing and enhancing your content, you can quickly gain popularity and be one of the top links in Google. All it requires is a little bit of hard work.
Referencing to top influencers or famous bloggers is also a good way to improve your page ranking.
You can also optimise your keyword, and use them sparsely but efficiently in order to gain more traffic in your page.
A popular emerging method of search engine optimization is Guest Posting. As the name suggest, guest posting or guest blogging is when you create and post content for a blog or website that is not your own.
Since bloggers are always looking for new and engaging content to keep their exiting readers interested as well as to gain new readers, they are quite eager to get guest posts on their bogs. Guest posting not only helps the guest blogger but the existing blogger as well. All you need to do is write fresh and engaging content following a few guidelines and then you can publish your post to a different blog which will be read by thousands of different and new people.
If you are able to write content for a famous and highly respected blog, that content is sure to be seen by several people. Since you will be credited for that post, you will be able to receive a backlink to your website from that blog which will increase your reputation. Moreover, links are a primary way to improve your ranking on Google and receiving backlinks to your website from reputed sites is a sure way to improve your rating on Google.
Since this is a famous blog it is more likely that some will click on the link to your website and further explore your work. Thus, guest posting essentially helps in increasing the traffic on your page. Additionally, guest posting is also a very good way to build relationships with the different bloggers in the community as well as gain exposure.
By posting your content on a more popular big, your content is being exposed to a vast audience, where you are more likely to find a user who is interested in your work as well as the category of your website.
List of Free and Paid Directory submissions sites
If you are interested to try out directory submissions, here are a few sites:
Free:
- com
- com
- Scrubtheweb
- Doaj
- Freefind
Paid:
- Allsitesorted
- Alistirectory
- Abc-directory
- org
In conclusion, Directory Submissions are a SEO tool that was once very widely used. But with latest updates, it has become a bit more complicated to use these directories for our gains. Since the main purpose of search engines is to improve the experience of the user, they are diligent about removing any and all spam links that were becoming rampant with the existence of directory submissions. Due to the latest changes in algorithms, many of these directory submissions sites have even been penalised or removed completely form the search engines rendering them useless. However, this does not mean that directory submissions are still not an effective tool for SEO. If you are able to use a directory submission sites that have a good reputation and that is authorized then you are sure to see effective results and gain traffic on your website.
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