Link Building and Directory Submission

Directory submissions link building is an affordable method to increase the link popularity to your website. Just as business used the yellow pagesin the past to list their business contact information, directories serve to promote your online business. Directories play an important role on theInternet, Yahoo, for example, started as a directory. Though it has expanded its service offerings, Yahoo still maintains one of the most influentialdirectories on the web. Though they charge a hefty $299 per year to get your site listed. ​When your site is listed in a directory it provides a one way link to your website. This non reciprocal link building tactic is preferred by many as they engage in link building strategies. Directory submissions link building requires some work on your behalf in order to maximize the link building potential. A site owner can approach this link building effort by making manual web directory submissions or they could use a directory submissions service, or preferrably, they can do both.

Manual web directory submissions are laborious and time consuming. However, if you plan to select just a few of the most popular web directories, the manual web directory submission approach works well. Many SEO best practices gurus suggest that the site owner manually submits to about a half dozen or so web directories. They don't all cost money, many are free. Do some research as to what web directories best suite your website's content theme and consult with your webmaster or SEO consultant for advice. If your link building strategy focuses on non reciprocal link building, a few manually submitted to web directories is not enough to increase the search engine traffic to your site. The number required is dictated by your competition...in many cases a handful of links is not much help.

Why Directory Submissions Link Building Works

In the above paragraph we used the phrase "increase the search engine traffic to your site." It's important to understand that the directory listins that you accumulate over time is not intended to increase traffice to your site from the directories themselves. Maybe the yellow page listings were intended to drive phone call volume, but your traffic volume comes from the search engines as opposed to your listing directly. Directory submissions link building is all about increasing your link popularity. The more inbound links that you can have, the better your search engine ranking for your keywords. Link popularity is part of the three legged stool of SEO. Directories submission is one or several tactics site owners employ to increase their inbound links.

Directory Link Building Considerations

When you make a manual web directory submission, you must provided some important information. The directory will require your name, your website, your anchor text, description, content theme, keywords, and in some cases the landing page URL. And also your email. Typically, the directory will send an email to you so that you can verify that your request is from a legitimate website, and that the request was made by a human, not a computer. If you do not reply to the email, the request will be ignored.

Once your verification email is received by the directory, they will review your request information and determine if 1) your content theme is relevant to their directory, and 2) if so, what category is best for your listing. If all the information checks out and they decided to list your site, they place it in queue and in 3 to 90 days your site will be posted.

​Now imagine you decided that manual web directory submissions was the direction to take to build link popularity. Keeping track of all the information, all the web directories, all correspondance between you and them, and to follow up to ensure your site is listed requires a large reporting effort on your part. For a few directories, this effort may be manageable, but if you are in competition for search engine results, you'll need many links, perhaps hundreds or thousands to win.

The best directory submsissions link building strategy is to mix a handful of the manual web directory submissions that you manage, and add to that, hundreds of web directory links that are acquired using a link building professional. This way you increase the one way links to your site while selecting a few choice directories that you personally over see.