Pros and Cons of SEO Directory Submission for your Company

[seospan]

I read a lot of seo articles/blogs related to seo strategies and then I try to mix them all up and sort only the good/healthy seo strategies. I encountered 2 articles last week about SEO directory submission for companies and I was confused what strategy should I pick because the first article talks about that you should ALWAYS submit you site to directory sites and the second article said DO NOT ALWAYS submit your business to directory sites because it can cause harm to the site. Which is which?

[ameerulislam10]

Directories are useless now a days. You will not get any or very little traffic from them. It's harmful when you use spammy directories, another reason could be the use of automatic link submitters.

Human reviewed directories like dmoz is however recommended.

[raviv]

Directories are still good if your site is in a specific niche and you have a related niche directory to submit to. Moreover, if you are ranking your site in your city (local marketing), then you should submit to the popular local directories especially if your site is new.

This is not because of link juice that you get back to your site. It is because the search engines crawl the local active directories actively and finding your site's link helps them know your site exists (apart from submitting Google sitemap from your Webmaster account etc). They schedule your site to be crawled and subsequently indexed.

In this light I will not write off directory submissions. Today on the web all the good directories charge a fee one way or the other and there are very few "good" free directories left at the global level.
Best
Raviv

[marioke]

When you do directory submission, you have to make sure that the site isn't a link farm wherein everyone could put their spammy link and descriptions.

I suggest you to do paid directory listing if you want to have a good start. Or if you want free with good reputations, start with yahoo dir, google and allthewebsites

[dake]

Originally Posted by raviv

Directories are still good if your site is in a specific niche and you have a related niche directory to submit to. Moreover, if you are ranking your site in your city (local marketing), then you should submit to the popular local directories especially if your site is new.

This is not because of link juice that you get back to your site. It is because the search engines crawl the local active directories actively and finding your site's link helps them know your site exists (apart from submitting Google sitemap from your Webmaster account etc). They schedule your site to be crawled and subsequently indexed.

In this light I will not write off directory submissions. Today on the web all the good directories charge a fee one way or the other and there are very few "good" free directories left at the global level.
Best
Raviv

Thanks for detailing the search engines working on the directory submissions. Is it done automatically by the search engines or is it a manual effort by their teams?

Thank you

[Alishalopej]

When you submitting your web site to the Internet directories, surely it will be noticed by the thousands of individual users. The main advantage of directory submission is to get the more the links and better ranking. When you submitting the directories few point you have to keep in mind like do not submit sites that contain overlapping or repetitive content under different URLs and do not submit under construction sites because it may be harmful. One main problem with the directory submission is that it can be tough task to track exactly how many links have been placed, as well as difficult to ensure that they have all been placed on the reputable directory submission sites.

[stuartpanter]

I am new to article submission, which I am using for linkbacks rather than traffic. Currently I am writing and uploading to the top article sites Buzzle, Ezine Articles etc. still very early days as I only submitted in the recent weeks, and havnt yet seen any backlinks shwoing on Google webmaster tools

[raviv]

Hi Dake
Once the spiders pick up your site from an active good quality directory, then scheduling and indexing are automated processes. There is no manual intervention.
Best
Raviv

[Dan B Rusu]

I've found directory submissions still work. Only, be aware, only a fraction of directories that you submit to will accept your submission.

[khenmhike]

Directory Submission still works, you just have to find a good directory submission site. Avoid Spammy directories

[dotcomken]

Just like everyone else has said. Look for quality and not quantity. Getting into DMOZ unless your proven to be high quality is very tough and waste of time. Yahoo directory for a price is another top suggestion.

Google this:

keyword + "suggest url"

This way you know which directory's are highly ranked

[joesmith1608]

Directory submission provide you link but not traffic. You will get popularity..

[BriceGH]

What annoys me about most directories is the fact that most insist on reciprocal links or want money.

[rosesmark]

One of the main benefits of directory submission is highly quality back links. All the search engines consider the number of back links you have. Directory submission will give your website the required back links. You cannot find any other easier method to build links for your website. This is not the only benefit of directory submission, there are many other benefits.

[jammu143]

From Directory Submission you might be not getting traffic but from quality directory you can get good backlink of your site. You can use them to increase your number of backlinks.