Are directory submissions useful?

It’s a question which is asked frequently and there is only one answer to it ‘yes’.  Directory listings are very effective and the most convenient way to bring valuable backlinks and traffic to your website. In fact it is also one of the easiest ways to get valuable backlinks for your website. Directory submissions also help you in getting higher search engine ranking positions (SERPs).

Directory submissions also help you in getting higher rankings for very high competitive keywords by targeting specific keyword as an anchor text during submissions and thus it is directly involved in getting higher sales/traffic for your website. While creating promotion strategy of your website you just can’t neglect the importance of directory submissions. More backlinks also means that crawling of your website by search engines gets faster, so that your newer content gets indexed quickly.

However you just can’t make thousands of directory submissions under one targeted anchor text as it’s an open invitation to google’s sandbox scanner. If your website gets placed under sandbox effect then you will have massive blow to your SERPs and also the traffic from the search engines. So the solution to this is to use various anchor texts and various descriptions in the submission form.

While planning directory submissions, first thing is to make list of high quality directories which has no spam listed, fast approval ratio and must have good amount of human traffic. Remember, listing in spammy directories can hurt your website’s ranking in search engines too. Many people chase PageRank of directories before submitting their website which is useless. The PageRank of that page is important where your website is going to be listed in order to get link juice benefit.

Submission to new born directories is also highly advised as they approve your listing lot quicker than other directories, they are user friendly also. If your site is submitted in wrong category then webmaster of new born directory can make it correct and approve it too as they are also in need of listings for their directories.

There are also other strategies for link building like link exchange, dofollow blog commenting, forum posting, paid reviews etc. but they are very time consuming, expensive and less effective. Directory submissions are also a bit time consuming but it consumes less time than other link building strategies. However if you can’t spend time behind it then you can easily hire directory submission provider.

There are two type of directory submission provider in the market, one is automated submission provider and other is manual directory submission provider. If you want to save some money then choose automated submissions as they are quick but inaccurate too. But if you want quality work then go for manual directory submissions. Automated submissions are worst and it is advised to just neglect it as there is no guarantee of perfect category selection which is the most important part of the game. A directory owner will simply reject your listing if it is placed under wrong category and thus automated submissions deliver poor approval ratio.

On the other hand manual directory submissions are purely human attended and thus have one in a million chance of wrong category selection. This also means higher approval ratio of your website and more valuable backlinks for your website. Also a manual directory submission provider visits each directory individually whereas the automated submissions do not and are not welcomed by quality directories.