Conceptual SEO

Manual Directory Submissions Services

Autor Conceptual SEO | 20.10.2008 | Category manual submissions

In the post 5 ways to get indexed by the search engines, I mention manual directory submission. When you submit to a directory and the editor approves your website, they will link to your site. Through these links, Google is able to find you and can then index your site in their search engine result pages (SERPs). What is more, Google’s rankings are for a large part based on the number and quality of the links that point to your site. The more links and the better links pointing to your site, the higher the rankings will be.

Directory links are not the best quality links that you can get. However, there are thousands of directories and if you add up all the little bits; it will be enough to influence the rankings. It all depends on the competition as well. Do not expect to get a #1 ranking under ‘make money online’ with a few directory submissions. It takes more than that. But for not-very-competitive keywords, directory links can make a difference.

If you want to know which kinds of links to your site are best, a few high quality ones, or a couple of hundred directory links, the answer is: You need them all, if you want to achieve the top rankings. It is a combination of quality and quantity.

Submitting the details of your website into hundreds of directories is a pain. First, you have to find the directories. Then check whether the directories to give genuine links, without ‘no follow’, java script, etc. And then manually submit your information. All together you good spend a lot of precious hours (or days) to do enough submissions to make a difference.

Luckily, there is such a thing as outsourcing. You can outsource this time consuming job and spend your own time working on your website or sales. If you do a quick search for “manual directory submission services”, you will find numerous services offering to do directory submissions for you.

Which one of these companies should you outsource your submissions to? It is hard to tell when you only see the website. There are so many companies out there that are happy to take your money, but will not deliver a quality service. A quality service will:

• - Check directories thoroughly before submitting to it. This will make sure that there is not time (read: money) wasted on submissions to directories that give only ‘no follow’ links, java script links, or indirect links. Or directories that accept only paid links. Or local directories; a website selling only in Europe will not be accepted in a “Pittsburgh directory”.
• - Submit manually. Some services use programs as DigiXmas to submit your information. It is proven that approval rates of these submissions is much lower (more than 60% lower) than when submitted manually.
• - Choose an appropriate category in each directory. When submitting manually, you can take time to review the categories available. Each directory has its own way of categorizing websites and the most appropriate category should be chosen with each directory. Directories that do not have a suitable category available for your website (such as non-related niche directories or local directories) should not be used at all.
• - Recommend on the choice of data to be submitted. A good service does not simply take the data that you have offered, but checks your data and does a recommendation to make improvements. You think that you have written a nice description of your website that will surely make visitors click on your link, but will it be approved by the directories? A good service understands these directories and the human editors that decide whether a submission should be approved or not. Besides that, directories state guidelines for their submissions that should be closely followed in order to pass the spam filter. It are usually little things as words as ‘we offer’ and ‘you’ and ‘best’,’great’,’discount’, etc. It might look nice in your description, but will not be approved, which means that you do not get any link and have wasted you money on the submissions. A good service prevents this by helping you to get the best approval rates possible.
• - Does not make promises on approval rates. Whether a submission is approved or not is still always up to each individual human editor of the directories. A good service will do all to submit correctly, but did not put your website together, and does not control the editors. Therefore, a good service will never make promises on approval rates.
• - Does not have a very detailed report of all the pages of the directories. When submitting to a directory it takes somewhere between 24 hours and six months before the directory reviews it. Then there are categories that have multiple pages in a directory and you would not know on which page your link might or might not appear. If you get a full report from your service with the exact pages on which your links will appear, you can believe that the submissions are done with an automated system, or semi-automated submissions program as DigiXmas.

Ask questions before you choose your manual directory submissions service. Directory submissions are really the lowest step of SEO and may not seem utterly important, but if a company can’t even get that part right, then don’t waste your money on it.

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