Basics of Directory Submission

Getting free links without creating content is hard to do, but getting listed in directories is one of the top ways. Directories are listings of different websites based on category. All you have to do is provide a Title, URL, Description, and Tags, and in exchange you receive a listing in their directory under the appropriate category. This is one of the most basic link building techniques you will find.


Some directories that are very thorough have many specific categories to help the searcher find the exact type of website they are looking for. In some of them you can go as far as a 6^th sub category, but this poses problems to those getting listed for SEO purposes, as the link juice from the home page diminishes after so many subcategories. This means that you want to be listed in as few clicks from the home page as possible, as the home page is recognized by Google as the most important page on that site, and in exchange will provide more link juice for your link. Understanding this can help you choose the best category for your website to be listed in.

Directories can range from General directories, such as Dmoz.org or Yahoo! Directory, which offer listings for every type of website, to very specific directories, such as Business.com, which offer listings to only sites that are classified as Business websites. As I say this take note that most of the top directories and listings on the World Wide Web aren’t free, such as the Yahoo! Directory above and Business.com (Dmoz.org is free, but we will get into that later). Before you do anything, you might want to open an excel worksheet or a Google spreadsheet to keep track of the different directories you want to submit to. Start with the top free web directories (you can find these by doing thorough search engine searches), and then find the top paid directories you have found to be worth the payment. The top free general directories can be easy to find, but finding specific directories based on your site can be tough to find. For example, if your website is about HR Outsourcing, you could try and find Human Resources or Small Business directories. This can be done by typing in the following into Google: “Human Resources” “Add URL” (or) “Human Resources” “Add site”. By typing in those two phrases, you bring up websites that are about Human Resources that you can add your website listing to.

While looking for free directories you are most certainly going to find the directory Dmoz.org, which has over 6 million listings, all free. Getting into this directory can be a huge reward in itself, but that’s the catch – getting into it. Since 2008, very few listings have been added to the directory, as submission has become near a stand still. For more information, see my post on Dmoz.org, which can tell you all about this directory legend (that once was).

After you have found the directories you have submitted to, open up a text based tool such as Notepad (even Word Doc will do). What you want to do here is make a Title, Description, and Keywords for your website that you can copy and paste to the various directories (trust me, submitting to a large amount of directories can be tiresome, so having prewritten outlines can make the process much faster). Then make sure you know what category you are submitting to, as this is vital to directory submission. Choosing the wrong category can result in your listing not being added, and your potential leads not finding your website. As stated above, you know that in directories being in a fifth or sixth subcategory can result in your listing getting little to no link juice, as it is distributed to the closest listings to the home page. Although this is true, you would be better off getting as specific as you can, as almost everyone who finds your listing that way is the people you want to see your website. Choosing a category can be a quick decision, but it is monumental to any SEO campaign.

When finding free directories to submit to, you will run across many paid directories that have higher Page Rank, Alexa Ranking, and overall a better directory to submit to. I suggest finding all the directories you want to potentially submit to and pick the ones you think will have the best effect. The top directory in the world is Yahoo! Directory, and they charge $299/year, but in my opinion are well worth it. The Yahoo! Directory offers listings to many sites, and a large population still uses it to find what they are looking for. If you are a business website, consider submitting to the Business.com directory, because even though they cost $299/year, their links have much weight and a large amount of businesses use that website to find companies and websites they are looking for.

Directories can be time consuming, so consider hiring cheap labor to do this work for you. If you have kids, or know high school students willing to work for minimum wage, this is a great job for them. I have experience with high school students doing directory submission and other time consuming SEO tasks for me, and most of them like the idea of working on a computer not far from home (if you don’t allow them to work from home). You will most definitely come across software that auto-submits to directories for you at very low costs, and I caution you to stay away from these. Google is becoming stronger every day in preventing these automated tactics, and if one’s site gives the signs of using such software, their rankings in the search listings will either drop significantly or altogether. Make sure you submit to directories manually, as you will get higher quality listings, as well as not risking any penalties from the search engines.

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Article Syndication for the Average SEO Joe

One of the top free (and sometimes paid) link building techniques is obtaining backlinks through submitting articles to article directories, who allow you a certain amount of hyperlinks in the body of your article or in your About the Author (Resource) Box. Article submission is easy, fast, and vital to any SEO campaign. Here are a few answers to what article submission really is. Note: Article Submission & Article Syndication are interchangeable terms.

Who Submits Articles?

Anyone from an expert, a freelance writer, an SEO marketer (in this case, you), or just about anyone that wants to submit an article they’ve written to get exposure. An expert can be anyone that specializes in that area of work, and has experience and knowledge that they feel that they can offer a specific article directory. A freelance writer is someone who sells their writing services to a company or employer on a short-term basis. In some cases freelance writers could be writing the articles that SEO marketers are submitting, but in more rare cases they are showing off their talents as a writer to get exposure.  An SEO marketer submits articles because he or she wants to get their content all over the World Wide Web with links back to their site in order to increase one’s page rank and keyword rankings in search engines.

Why Submit Articles?

As stated above, your goal as an SEO specialist is to create content all over the web and have it linking back to your site. Article submission is one of the top ways to do this, as each article can have multiple backlinks targeting different keywords. For some less targeted keywords article submission is a great way to rise to the top quickly if you are linking that particular keyword or phrase, but for more competitive keywords article submission doesn’t show immediate gratification. As you are finding out that content is king, you need to keep in mind that putting it on your website is only the first step in maxing out its SEO potential.

Where do I Submit Articles?

The place to submit articles are Article Directories, and they come in all forms. The more prominent article directories are special websites only for article submission, but in other cases they can be found in less traveled parts of a website. For example, Ezinearticles.com is the most used article directory in the world, and the only purpose the website has is to submit articles. Other websites might also be for submitting URLs or they could also be original content sites. Original content sites require that your articles be found only on their website, which is less advantageous to you and your SEO campaign. This is because the search engine would rather see new content on your site than new content on some other site, even if they have backlinks to you.

How do I submit Articles?

Submitting articles is a form of art. Being able to submit articles correctly and in the shortest amount of time takes both experience and practice. To save you time, have your articles in Notepad or another text-only based tool to minimize errors. Start by having 5 Sections: Title, Summary, Article, Resource Box, and finally Tags or Keywords. Setting up your articles in this easy-to-submit fashion, you save yourself boat loads of time, as some manual submitters are still submitting articles in prehistoric fashion (by copying each individual article from the actual page on their site, viewing the source for their keywords, etc.). You also want to watch out for websites that allow you to submit links in your article content that offer an html editor. Because most don’t automatically add line breaks or paragraphs, you have to manually enter the paragraph html strip <p>.

Article submission is a technique every webmaster and SEO specialist should learn, as this can be the easiest way to create a large amount of backlinks to one’s website. My advice – hire high school kids or others that is willing to work for minimum wage to do this unskilled work. Sticking with 2 or 3 different people over the long run to submit your articles helps them gain experience and understanding so after not too long they will be submitting articles faster than the speed of light. Doing it yourself is always an option if you are a small website with a small budget, so don’t think it is a must to have others submit articles. You also might come upon an article submission service that will submit articles at low prices. This is something to be treated with great caution, as one faulty mistake in your service and the search engines will identify you “cheating” and not submitting the content yourself. The consequence is lowering in the search rankings or dropping out altogether.

You might have also heard about the new Google update dealing with content farms, as many article directories were hit hard by this. Don’t let this stop you from submitting articles – just days before I posted this I went on a submission rampage for about 8 hours in 3 days and saw fantastic results days after in the rankings, so despite what others are saying, it still does work.

DISCLAIMER

Warning: Article Submission can be frustrating, as some websites will reject your articles for no apparent reason. Also, an article submission service that “claims” to give you top organic search results can end in a costly manner, as such practices are frowned upon by Google and the other top search engines. If at all possible, either you or someone else MANUALLY submit articles, because the consequence of doing otherwise just isn’t worth it. Although some websites get away with it, Search Engines are getting smarter and more intelligent and are catching more people than ever each day for these practices!

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Choosing the Right Keywords

Choosing keywords might be one of the top decisions and brainstorming processes you can go through in your SEO campaign. If you don’t target the right keywords in the search engines, you could get the wrong traffic, or you get less traffic than what you deserve. Knowing which keywords to put into your Meta tags & descriptions as well as which ones to link in your text, articles, and blog posts is essential.


First things first is to start brainstorming any term or phrase that comes to mind about your subject – Make sure you know your niche, and any subcategories that come with it. Start naming off anything that comes to mind, and ask friends and family to do this with you. Make sure you spend a good amount of time on this.
Next thing you want to do is go to your competitor’s sites and right click and select “view source” on their home page. Towards the top of the page look for “keywords” and find their list of terms & phrases they are targeting. Jot these down, erase any duplicates, and move on to the next step.

After going through a good number of competitor’s websites, you want to start using the blessed technology we have today. By using tools to track how many searches certain keywords get a month and how difficult it is to rank highly for them, you can start pinpointing the keywords you want to pursue. If you don’t have a HubSpot account yet, I suggest you go and take advantage of the free 30-day trial. They have a keyword tool that gives you the number of times different keywords or phrases are searched each month, and the difficulty of ranking for the keyword. If you don’t want to look into HubSpot, you can still use Google’s external Adwords tool.

Lastly before your keywords are set in stone, make sure you know the audience searching those terms. For example, “PEO” is searched 40,000 times a month (that’s a pretty solid number), but not everyone is searching for the same acronym. Some might be looking for a Philanthropic Educational Organization, a Program Executive Officer soldier, or information on the Professional Employer Organization. While this is a good term to pursue, it would also be advantageous to search a term with less searches, less competition, but more relevant traffic. Ranking first for a relevant term that gets 200 searches a month is most likely better than ranking 12^th for a term that is searched 5000 times a month that doesn’t drive 100% relevant traffic. Your goal is to target everyone looking for the type of product/service your website offers, so going after the smaller terms can add up into a large amount of relevant traffic. As the cliché goes, quality is better than quantity (smaller amounts of relevant traffic are better than larger amounts of irrelevant traffic).

If you don’t think ranking for all the much smaller terms is worthwhile, take one of my competitors for example. He doesn’t rank in the top 14 for our 2-3 biggest search terms, yet he still gets enough traffic to be considered a competitor (and a formidable opponent at that). The reason they still get frequent traffic is because they target searches by region, such as state & city. Because there are 50 states as well as about 50 cities worth targeting for SEO purposes, these low amounts of searches (around 100 each) can end up being combined to be searched around 5-10 thousand searches a month! Now that’s not as good as ranking first for a term like PEO (40,000), but if you target traffic by region, you can get some highly relevant traffic that have a higher conversion rate for leads.

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