The Powerhouse Directories SEO Firms Don't Want You to Know About

Let's face it. If everyone knew all the secrets of the SEO firms and consultants, there just may not be as many folks signing up for those expensive monthly contracts. Fortunately SEO IS a time and labor intensive process normally. However, there are a few tricks of the trade, which SOME consultants and firms know about, which can be the "silver bullet" if your organic rankings are struggling.

One of the secrets that is one of the best kept secrets in town (until now) is, with just a small handful of carefully picked directory submissions, you can JUMP in rankings, many many pages, for many, many keywords, and even establish a formidable 1st page monopoly for your industry. Only sure fire way to prevent this from happening is if you either have an all flash website, a website built in all frames, or you haven't properly optimized your title and meta description tags. Other than that, if those items are not an issue, submitting to a few of these powerhouse directories, will get you SEO results fast.

Now what is it about these particular directories that work so well? Well, the reason the directory submissions are important, is not necessarily click thrus you will get from the directory traffic itself, but the "link juice" you will get from them. And we are not talking about any old directory. We are talking about the BEST. So how is that determined, "the best", that is? Well, you have to examine the QUALITY of the directory in the eyes of the search engines. How IMPORTANT is it? Well, you measure that in a few small ways. First off, Domain Age. How old is the domain of the directory? The older, the better. Second, the PAGERANK of the directory. Not sure how to measure this? HINT: You should have the IE toolbar installed with the pagerank meter ON. (it's a small green bar at the top of your toolbar; mouseover it, and it tells you what the pagerank of the current page is). You want links from websites/directories that have a high pagerank on the home page. Anything above a PR3 is decent. 4-5 is pretty good. 6-8 is great. Even better, if the pagerank of the sub section page where you get the link from (since you are likely to not get the link from the home page itself), is high, that's good. Keep in mind it's not likely the sub page will have a high pagerank, but that's ok, as long as the home page is pretty strong in pagerank. Also the directory needs to be "DO FOLLOW" (most are). The page/category where you get the link must be indexed by Google/Yahoo (usually is). Also, the lower the alexa ranking, the better, which signifies a higher traffic level and popularity of the website. Finally, if you use the yahoo site explorer or alexa you can see how many links come INTO the directory you are about to link FROM, and you will see how strong a link profile they have, which will effect the quality of your link.

An example directory would be the Yahoo Directory. It is nearly perfect in terms of pagerank with a PR8 (most websites don't go above 8 unless it's a google owned domain). It has the BEST alexa ranking of #1. The domain age is going on 14 years (since 1995). Their link profile is huge. Basically, a link from the yahoo directory is like an "electoral vote" for your website.

Another directory that is powerful is best of the web, which has a pagerank of 6, alexa ranking of just over 26,000, about 2,000 incoming links, and has been around since 1996. This is considered one of the best directories to get into as far as creating substantial increases in organic rankings on keywords. I have personally used this one on dozens of client accounts and nine times out of ten within a couple weeks we see a nice push in rankings. It's a bit cheaper than Yahoo, also.

So should you spend a ton of money on directories? No, not necessarily, but the more strong links you can get, the better it will help with your SEO, so it is worth budgeting SOME for paid submissions.

The only other directory out there you should try to get into is DMOZ. It's free, and is hands down the best link you can get, anywhere online. However, it's very, very difficult to get into, and it's rumored that the editors don't look at many of the submissions they receive. The best way to get into DMOZ is to make sure you have a good website with good useful, unique content.