Directory Submissions - Should you go for it?
Directory submissions are a part of overall link building strategy of any SEO company. But they are not the only ones you should concentrate on since adopting any noticeable single approach will probably make the search engines look at you with a microscope.
It is important to gain links from every possible approach & directory submissions is one of the many pronged approaches. Why? Well for one, they offer a year's worth of permanent one way links which will help maintain a stable ranking and two; consider the reality - just why would anyone link to you on their own?
You have just hosted your brand new site and are raring to go. But you just cannot rank well, that is if you can rank at all, without link building, and nobody is willing to link to you! It takes a very good content filled site to get links on its own without going in for link building. Even if you have great content, you want visitors - remember - to spread the word.
So, a certain of amount of internet marketing is a must to take off, but unless SEO is adopted, you will find it very difficult to rank well in the SERPs. And directory submissions are a part of SEO.
One way editorial links from high quality similarly themed sites is the single most powerful way to drive your site up in rankings.
Directories may not offer editorial quality links but are still valuable since you are listed under pertinent categories & SEO friendly pages. Three way links may help initially but the search engines have got on to the game and you are likely to be found out sooner than later and penalized by them if you do it too much.
But then, if directories offer such value, why did the recent crack down happen? Why did so many directories lose their ranking? It is not very hard to guess. It is probably because they were not following the guidelines from Google. Not the others.
There are still many directories out there who have maintained their ranking and growing by the day. So, you can always submit to the good ones safely and also profit from it. The above discussion refers to the conventional directories and by that we mean directories started solely with the purpose of listing every single site in an appropriate category.
But did you think that these are the only directories which exist on the net? Not at all! There is an entirely different class of 'directories' which is not only SEO friendly but also offers a lot of value in terms of respect and prestige. These are the ones which will really get you to the top and keep you there.
Take for example an MBA school in New York. If you wanted one way links, you would normally get it listed under a category such as XYZ.com / New-York / Education / Higher-education / MBA / MBA-schools in a directory. This would be a conventional directory. But if you could get yourself listed in a directory listing all the MBA Schools of New York on a site such as MBA.com ( if it has such a directory ), or if you are articulate enough, write an article and submit it to a high quality article directory, that would make a huge difference. That would offer true value for your time and effort in building links. This would not only boost your ranking but PR as well.
Now comes the part that you won't like to hear. Why would an authority site list you unless you happen to have a very good reputation? This is a typical catch-22 situation. You won't get links until you have a reputation & you won't get a reputation until you get links (which is basically votes from people)!
What do you do in such a case? It is better to start off with sites having lesser authority so that not only do you gain links faster but also come up in rankings quite near to the top 10. Wherever you get the links, just be sure to get it from the most relevant page with PR and you will be on your way to success.
The bottom line is that directory submissions are here to stay. To do it at conventional or authority sites is a choice that you have to make.
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