Building Traffic Through the Power of Backlinks Part 3 WebSite Directory Submission Sites

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This is a continuation of Building Traffic Through the Power of Blacklinks series. As mentioned before, building backlinks is important part of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and getting referral traffic back to your site. We have all ready gone into detail about using social media to build backlinks and using bookmarking services, such as blog Engage and DesignGizer, to build your backlinks.

As we all know, there are many ways to build backlinks, some are better than others, while others ways should be left alone and never attempted. Today, I want to talk about building backlinks using directory services such as DMOZ. I believe that website submissions to directories is a less popular (less liked by website owners) way to get back links but is vital for SEO reasons and link building . Submitting your websites to web directories is an easy way to get back links. It does take time and little research and you do not get much traffic from these. But in most cases, you get a high page ranked link back to your site and get indexed by the search engines faster.

What is a Web Directory?

Web Directories display pages by categories and sub categories. Unlike search engines, web directories entries are not found by search engine spiders, but are submitted by users. Usually when a site is listed, it based on the subject of the whole website and not just a page or two of a site. Most web directories will allow site owners to submit their own sites for inclusions.

What to look For When Submitting Sites to Web Directories

When looking at web directories, you need to look at their about page and information pages. You need to know what features they offer and what is mandatory for getting your links approved and added to the directories.

Common Features

The most common features offered by web directories are;

• Free Submissions
• Paid Submissions – One-time or recurring fee is charged for listing a link
• Reciprocal Link – Must have a link back to the directory must be added somewhere on your site.
• No-Follow or DoFollow – rel=”nofollow” attribute is added to the link. This means search engines will not follow the link. You should look for sites that offer DoFollow links, but it is advised that having a mixture of dofollow and nofollow links will help your search engine ranking.
• Featured listings – links are given a premium position in a categories. Usually there is fee to get added to the premium or sponsored listings.
• Bid for position
• Affiliate links – directory earns commissioned for referred customer from the listed sites.

Source – wiki

My Advice for Choosing Directories

When choosing the directories you want to submit your site links to, you need to think about the features of the directories you are interested and if they are in your site’s best interest to do that. Remember free doesn’t mean its the best way to submit your site links to. One of the new trends with web directories is to offer a premium link service or for a few dollars they will put you on the featured lists for your categories.  The directory services, that offer premium services or only accept links for a price, generally have better ranking, links, and spam/junk sites are almost non-existent on these directories. So if its in your budget, I would look into some of these sites when you are first starting out.

Directories I Avoid

When I submit a link to a web directory, I  look for free and premium sites that do not require anything in return for adding my links to their sites. If you have to add a link back to your site, just for the privilege to linking to them, it isn’t worth it. Especially if you have  a ton of links like this. These type links will make your site look like a link farm and this will count against your search rankings. Besides, there are plenty of good directories  you do not have to add a link on your site to theirs.

When looking at sites, look at their links, check and see if they are DoFollow/NoFollow (not necessarily a big deal) and if you see the real link, not some redirect script instead of the true link.

When Looking for directories I like sites that are;

• Free submission
• free with the option for premium services
• DoFollow
• Human edited and not scripted
• Clean links – some directories add a script to the links so they can track reader traffic. This makes SEO backlinking worthless.  Avoid these sites.
• Meta mention of a directory is okay, but keep this limited to just a few. Metadata can slow a sites load time.

Best Web Directories to Submit To

There are lot of directories out there. To make things simple for everyone, I will list a few of my favorite ones. I will not be listing any directories, that you have to add a reciprocal link in order to use their service, that are not indexable (unless noted), or not clean links . However, I will list few sites that require metadata added in order to get links approved.

Information about each site taken from the about / info pages from each site.

23 of the Best Free Web Directories

DMOZ – “The Open Directory Project is the largest, most comprehensive human-edited directory of the Web. It is constructed and maintained by a vast, global community of volunteer editors.

The Open Directory follows in the footsteps of some of the most important editor/contributor projects of the 20th century. Just as the Oxford English Dictionary became the definitive word on words through the efforts of volunteers, the Open Directory follows in its footsteps to become the definitive catalog of the Web.

The Open Directory was founded in the spirit of the Open Source movement, and is the only major directory that is 100% free. There is not, nor will there ever be, a cost to submit a site to the directory, and/or to use the directory’s data. The Open Directory data is made available for free to anyone who agrees to comply with our free use license.”

So Much – “SoMuch.com is a SEO friendly free link directory where you can find the best human edited links sorted by topic and category. Our policy is to make it easy for you to find quality sites that aren’t just filled with google adsense advertisements. We try to add web sites that ultimately have something to offer, and are constantly checking our links to meet that challenge. If you feel you meet our qualifications please add your web site.”

SoMuch is a free web directory with  link submission options, but you can become a reciprocal link partner and this can get you another listing in the partner pages. SoMuch approvals can take anywhere from 48 hours to a few weeks. Because of this, they offer accelerated submission guaranteed. If your submission fails to be approved, you get a 100% refund. SoMuch also offers enhanced link services that will get your site noticed easier than the free services.

Joe Ant – “is about providing a directory of quality sites for Internet users. Our goal is to list the best sites for a wide variety of topics giving our users the most relevant results for their searches.”

In order to submit an article, you have to become an editor/member of the community. But its free with an option to give premium suggested URLS that will give your links more visibility.

GeniusFind – “is a directory of thousands of search engines, databases, and archives organized into convenient categories and subcategories. These resources are specific to a certain topic and will greatly cut down on the time it takes you to find exactly what you’re looking for.”

TurnPike Directory – “is listed as one of the Internet’s top 100 search engines. Many find it a convenient alternative to the giant databases that give you much more than you want.”

OneMission – is another web directory but controled by the community. Free to submit, but you have register as an editor in your field.

Land of Links – is a free directory, but you have  give an email in order to submit a link.

Arakne Links – “is a human edited general web directory created to offer a selection of quality sites on a large variety of topics.” Takes a while to get approved. There is an option to do reciprocal links (but the site shows this feature as disabled).”

UUiq Directory – Free directory but you have to have a valid email for validation of link.

Directory Link – Free directory, you will have to provide an email with your submission.

eCommerce Directory – is a free directory for  eCommerce sites. You must have a shopping cart on your site in order to submit a link to their site.

Cache Directory – is a human edited internet directory organized by categories. All you need to submit is a valid email address. All webmasters are encouraged to submit their sites.

EZWeb Tools Open Directory – is an SEO friendly directory that has over 41,000 websites listed. All you need is an email address to submit links. For a one time fee, you can get your site a lifetime featured placement. This will get your site indexed quicker, more backlinks and traffic.

SEO Friend Web Directory – is an SEO Friendly directory that only requires an email to submit URLs to.

Add Good Sites – is a free directory that requires only an email address for validation for any URL submitted.

Onion Hunt – is free directory. Must provide an email to submit URLs. There are also reciprocal and premium options as well.

Web Friendly Directory – is a free directory that only requires an email address to submit URLS.

Best Web Directory 4 You – is a free directory that only requires an email address to submit URLs.

Inteligent Directory – is a free directory with premium options.

My Ends –  is a free directory but you have to register for an account in order to submit URLS.

World Wide Wub –  is free directory with no requirements.

Web World – is a free directory that only requires you to have a valid email. However, there is no guarantees that your URL will be listed and they will list your listing below the premium links. They highly suggest going with premium options to get your site listed.

Yeandi – is a free submission site with a premium option. It can take up to 12 weeks to get approved and you only get your site title only. With a premium account, you can get your site approved within two days and you can add a descriptive title.

Gimpsy – is a directory service with a free submission option. But the current wait for approval wait is at least six months. But they offer a standard submission fee with approval within thirty days and Premium option with an approval time of four days.

Final Thoughts

There are so many directories to submit URLs to. I spent the better part of two days researching and looking at different directories and directory listing sites. I have narrowed down the list to 23 SEO friendly directory sites. I have ignored sites that use redirections, require a reciprocal link and sites that require payments. However, I did mention sites that have an option to reciprocate links or have the option to pay for more services.

You may have noticed that, I have not mentioned directory listings for blogs, and that was on purpose. Since this list is so large and the article so long,  I decided to spend more time researching those sites and add them to a separate article.

If you know of any other good directories that are SEO friendly and free, feel free to contact me or add a link to a comment as well. If its a good directory and is Free and you do not have to reciprocate links, I will add your link with a mention of you and your site as the source for finding the site.

If any of these links are bad or they are no longer free, let me know and I will update this list. This list will be updated as needed. I will and remove sites when I find out about them.

Image Source: Flickr