Backlink Building - The Truth About Directory Submissions For SEO, Search Engine Optimzation

This article is part 1 of a series of articles intended to save you time and money on your SEO marketing. It is based on the author's own experiences in performing Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for his own websites. The directories mentioned in this article are free directories. Free directories are the only directories SEO marketers include in common SEO marketing packages. The author of this article has not reviewed any paid directories. Paid directories are excluded from the author's analysis and conclusions.

Directory submissions have long been a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) technique used to generate one-way backlinks to a website. Getting links to your website from other websites is mandatory if you want to rank in search results on major search engines. A backlink from another website is like a vote for your website from another website. SEO Marketers often promote directory submissions as part of an SEO website marketing package. Often, SEO marketers make claims that submitting your website to thousands of directories will earn you high ranks in the search engines. There are many SEO marketers that charge high prices for their marketing packages. Directory submission is usually one part of the SEO service. It seems that SEO marketers like to constantly repeat and push the directory submission services because of the lustrous sound it has. Having your website submitted to 1000 directories does sound attractive. If you submit your website yourself to all these directories you will spend months on this task. The question is do directory submissions actually work the way SEO marketers claim? This article will explain the truth about directory submissions and help keep you from wasting your money and your time as you work through your websites' SEO. This article will also show you a free tool that SEO marketers use and don't want you to know about.

The truth is no one every uses these directories. Virtually everyone on the internet uses one of the major search engines and will almost never use these secondary types of directories. So how does submitting your website to 1000's of directories help it's ranking in the major search engines? The purpose for submitting to these directories is an attempt to get your website included within these directories thus creating one-way links back to your website. The claim from SEO marketers is that these backlinks show the major search engines that your website has been "voted" for by 1000's of other websites thus increasing your rank, or does it?

One thing that many SEO marketers don't mention is that the quantity of backlinks to your website means very little in its own and can actually hurt your website's ranking. For example you can have 10, 20, or 50 backlinks from different directories and your traffic will increase a mere small amount if you have good luck. SEO marketers forget to mention that the QUALITY of each backlink is more important then the quantity of them. The directories that SEO marketers intend to submit your website to have little ranking themselves within the major search engines. As a result you will be granted a low quality backlink to your website if it is accepted in the directory. Most SEO marketers will not give you a list of directories they intend on submitting your website to. If they do, they will give you a partial list of only the highest ranking ones. Checking the Google page rank will demonstrate that these directories will not have a page rank of more then 5 out of 10. Other directories will have a page rank then less 5 of 10 and most of them will have a Google page Rank of 0! Having backlinks in directories with low to no page-ranks is not a good idea. If you have a high quantity of backlinks in low ranking directories and you have NO backlinks within quality websites, the search engines may view your website as a spam website. This will create the possibility that the major search engines may not rank your website at all despite the number of backlinks you may have. The best way to understand how important the quality of the backlinks are, imagine your website being listed on every bathroom wall in filthy bars, truck stops, and gas stations. Now imagine your website being listed on a bulletin board within the front lobby at a Wal-Mart store. Do you think your website would get high approvals if it is seen on every filthy bathroom wall? I would rather have my website listed at one Wal-Mart store instead of 50 filthy bathroom walls. Most of the 1000 directories mentioned by SEO marketers are seen as bathroom walls by major search engines. It is simply not worth spending your time or money submitting your website to all of them. Focusing on the "Wal-Mart" types of directories will be in the best interest in promoting your website. Later in this article we will show you how to easily find the good directories and separate them from the not so good directories.

Another fact that SEO marketers forget to mention is that submitting to 1000 directories requires an automated process. It is simply not possible to hand submit your website to 1000 directories in the time frame that marketers give. Automated submitting is not accepted at just about every directory on the internet regardless of its ranking in major search engines. All of the directories have submission forms that contain some type of image verification. The verification consists of a combination of letters and/or numbers that only a human can read. These numbers must be typed into the submission form by an actual person in order for the directory submission to be accepted. The purpose of this is to prevent automated submissions and spam from being submitted to each of the directories. As a result, it is simply impossible to automate the submission process and have your website successfully submitted to 1000 directories. Also, directories that have good Google page rank will charge you to submit your website. The payment process also requires an actual submission. This leaves a high amount of doubt that SEO marketers successfully submit your website to the 1000 directories they mention. They may submit your website, but, how many of their submissions are actually successful? Ask them to provide you with a screenshot of the successful submission confirmations from each directory. Successful or non-successful SEO marketers should have no problem providing proof of directory submissions from each directory they submit your website to. Taking screenshots is an easy task whether it be by hand or automated process.

Submitting to directories does not guarantee that your website will be accepted. SEO marketers will promote that "We will submit" your website. They cannot guarantee that it will get accepted into the directories. Just about every directory has a review process. They review every website submission before deciding to accept or deny its inclusion within the directory. If you successfully submit your website it will be placed in a "pending review" status. The review can be conducted in a few days, weeks, months, or never. For most of the 1000 directories, reviews are usually a few months or never. This is because these directories do not charge submission fees. The webmasters have no incentive to make the review process a priority. Your website is usually 1 out of 100 or so submitted in any given day. It's a timely process for a directory webmaster to review websites. Not getting paid makes reviewing your website a low to no priority for most of these directories.

I've submitted both of my websites to the top 100 of the 1000 directories marketers normally submit to. I've submitted both websites by hand to each and every directory. The entire process took a whole weekend with about 36 hours invested. This was a very timely and boring task. Submitting to 1000 directories would of taken me 360 hours or 7 weeks! Over a period of 4 months my websites have been confirmed and accepted in only 4 out of the 100 websites. The other directories have not reviewed my websites as of this date. I have not received a decline notice from any directory. Both of my websites have experienced only a small amount of traffic increase as a result of these 4 new directory inclusions. I feel that my time could of been better spent performing more effective SEO techniques. Submitting to more then 100 of these directories would've been a waist of my time for the reasons mentioned earlier. I feel that even submitting a website to more then the top 25-50 directories is a waist of time. The top 10 directories normally have a Google pagerank between 3 and 5 out of 10. Directories further down the top 10 rank much lower in major search engines. Most directories below the top 50 have a Google page rank of 0. Therefore, it is a mere waist of time to submit your website to 1000 directories. It is in my opinion that submitting your website to the top 25 to 50 directories is all you need to do. This will take you about 1 day to complete. The top 50 directories usually have a Google page rank of at least 1 while the top 10 directories have a pagerank between 3 and 5. If your website is accepted into at least one of the directories it will receive some benefit in the major search engines. Don't waist your time or any money submitting your website to more then the top 50 directories. Submitting to the top 50 directories is something you can do yourself for free. You do not have to pay an SEO marketer to do this.

A free website located at: http://info.vilesilencer.com lists the top 100 directories that have free directory submissions! You can see each of the directories' Google pagerank and Alexa ratings. The directories are listed starting with the highest Google pagerank to the lowest. You can easily distinguish the good directories from the not so good ones. As mentioned above directories that are below the top 25 to 50 have small or no page ranks and are not worth submitting your website to. This website requires a username and password. Registration is free and there are no gimmicks to use it. After registering click the link called top 100 to view the current list of top 100 free directories. It is believed that many SEO marketers, whom will actually hand submit your website, will use this tool exclusively and submit your website to only the top 10 - 50 websites instead of 1000. The author of this article is not affiliated with this website in any way. An SEO marketing consultant sent this in an email to the author of this article by accident. The email was mixed-up and this tool was intended for a co-worker to the SEO marketer whom had a very similar last name to the author of this article.

Like most people the author of this article was interested in promoting his websites and consulted a handful of SEO marketers. It seemed that the service many marketers enjoyed talking about the most was that they will submit my website to 1000's of directories. Each of the SEO marketers kept alluding to this portion of their service and discussed their other services very seldom. It does sound very impressive to have a website submitted to 1000 directories. Being suspicious the author felt that this was simply a plug for many SEO marketers to promote their services. The author decided to investigate this on his own. It in his opinion that directory submissions will benefit your website, however, submitting to only a fraction of the top free directories as mentioned above is all you need to do. You can perform this service yourself using the tool above. It is in this author's opinion that it is best to spend your marketing dollars and time in more productive SEO methods then directory submissions.