Free vs Paid Directory Submissions And Search Engine Marketing
Date Added: November 04, 2007 05:56:52 PM
Using website directories is a very popular and effective way to achieve the SEO benefits you desire for your website. Directories organize massive lists of websites into relevant and easily searchable categories. In spite of most people using search engines for searching today, directories are very useful and house a vast amount of information on numerous websites. They also provide food for search engine spiders and pass value to your website based on the authority of the directory it is listed in. These links then improve your serps and traffic to your website.
Now that the benefits of being listed in a directory are clear. They allow you to gain links to your website which increase your search engine results and with that your traffic. The more authority the directory has, the more valuable the listing in the directory. But how do you know when the directory is worth paying a review fee to be listed?
The very first thing you should know is what the differences are between free and paid directories. Here is a list of the major points.
Free Directories
- Lower link acceptance rate
- Generally poorly maintained and links get lost in thousands or other listings
- Less visibility for your site means less traffic
- Submissions are time consuming
- But it is a free link
Pay-for-review Directories
- Will improve search engine position
- Will increase traffic, one way links, page rank, etc..
- Rich in content and professionally maintained
- Higher acceptance rate and fast reviews
- More exposure for your website
This does not mean that free directories are a bad, but if you choose to use free directories you need to be very careful about the ones you submit to.
Next we will go over the things to look for and things to avoid in both paid and free directories. The first place to look is at the sites already listed in the category you are submitting to.
- Are there any “Authority” sites already listed in that category? These are highly regarded sites within their niche that have an abundance of content. Authority sites carry a lot of weight in search engines and finding sites like this listed in the directory is a great sign that the editors are looking for high quality sites with relevant content to add to the directory. These are the sites that you want to be listed among.
- Take a look at the sites already listed in that category you are considering. Does the theme of those websites relate to the category? When a directory lumps unrelated sites in a category it can appear like a link farm. This results in creating a much less relevant category than you are looking for and it passes less search and link benefits on to your site.
- Search engines appreciate when the link text and descriptive text is related to the category and content of the site. You want to see link and descriptive text that is clearly related to the category and site being linked.
- Are the sites within the category quality sites? Be careful of submitting your website to categories with sites that you do not want to be associated with. If other sites within that category are low quality or spam sites, you run the risk of search engines thinking that your site is also a low quality or spam site. This gives you the opposite effect that you were looking for with your submission.
- Be very careful of submitting to directories that are spam sites themselves. You can recognize these sites when you see a number of sponsored site listings on the first page. These can be located in various spots on the page. Most common is a box to the side or in the footer. These are generally just a couple words with a hyperlink such as “business blog.” Also watch for ad-sense on the site. Excessive advertisements offer little relevance or content for visiting traffic and will decrease the effectiveness of listing your site there.
Some additional submission tips.
- Some pay-for-review directories charge as much as $299 per year per submission. Do not waste your money on very expensive listings unless they meet every quality criteria and leave you very impressed.
- If you submit to free directories understand that they will not be as clean or well maintained, so they will not be as effective. It could take literally hundreds of free listings to get the same effectiveness from one quality paid listing. If you have that kind of time, there are a few decent free directories to be found.
- If you find a directory that meets most of your criteria, but not every single item. It can still be a valuable directory to submit to. For instance if you cannot find a clear “Authority” site listed, but it has a few slightly lower quality, related links. It could still be a quality resource for you to submit to.
- The main consideration is, if you are paying, to get what you are getting what you pay for. A directory that has quality information and a well edited, relevant category is just about always worth the review fee to get listing consideration.
