Posted on Tuesday, 21st July 2009 by admin
As most old timers would know, directory submission used to work like a charm earlier. Submit your website to 500 directories and voila, you are a PR 4 website sitting on front page of google search. That doesn’t happen anymore. Combine that with google slapping some directories with PR penalty and deindexing some of them altogether; I am not surprised that it has become fashionable to say directories are dead. I am sure most of these people just read ‘directories are dead’ an a so called expert’s blog and just started repeating it until everyone around thought when so many people are saying it, it must be true.
What went wrong?
As expected for any method that was making money some people started abusing directory submissions. It takes less than 20 minutes to get a new directory up and running with some commonly available directory scripts. People started making 100s of directories and guaranteed directory listings were hugely popular (some people still love those). When people start selling links blatantly to manipulate Google’s algorithm it was bound to take some step and it made examples out of some big directory names. Besides this, quality of directories has gone down significantly with each directory looking like a cheap clone of another one.
Are they really dead?
There are two type of people who say directory submission doesn’t work. We have already talked about the ignorant type who are just repeating what they heard elsewhere without bothering to test the hypothesis. The other type has tried directory submissions and have seen a decline in ROI (return on investment) on directory submission. I won’t dispute this; directory submissions can hardly move a keyword in SERPs if it has good competition. What these webmasters need is to outsource directory submission to people who can do it at cheaper rates. You need to find people who are still submitting to directories manually and who are not in turn outsourcing it to others thereby increasing the overall cost.
One can still get a PR 2 or PR 3 with 1000 directory submissions and can still reach first page if competition is not very high. I will ask directory submission bashers to try it out for one of their sites and then make an opinion about it.
Tags: directory submission, directory submission is dead
Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (15)
July 22nd, 2009 at 5:56 am
I have found the same thing. One thing I have noticed is that sites that had directory submissions done 6 months ago have not been hit that hard. Sites that are getting directory submissions in the last 3 months don’t seem to do as well. I have even had one site lose position after directory submissions. The dir submissions could be unrelated jury is still out on that. A pr2-3 is pretty easy to get but takes about 3-4 months. They can help you get long tail keywords with hardly any competition.
I guess it is back to the old hard work of getting backlinks. I did just start using a program called squid http://squid.searchreturn.com. It helps you find links that your competitors have so you can try to get the same link by sending an email or doing a manual submission.
ogletree’s last blog post..On Page SEO for eCommerce Websites
July 22nd, 2009 at 6:30 am
@ogletree: Thanks for stopping by, directory links are definitely not the best type of links. I did go to squid but without any screenshot etc. it doesn’t really drive me to join the system.
July 26th, 2009 at 11:17 am
@ogletree thank you for the tool
I think the real problem is the question what directory you submit to. There are still some important directories out there. I always submit by feeling, and never to directories with a PR below 4.I’d say they are not dead but it is dangerous too submit to all of them.
July 28th, 2009 at 1:36 pm
I think it can still be beneficial to do, however you need o spend more time diversifying where your links come from as well, instead of just submitting to directories.
July 29th, 2009 at 4:17 am
@ogletree thanks as well. Just signed up. Directory submission does have some value. I’ve been targetting long tail KW’s as well and have seen moderate levels of success. I’m pretty methodical in my approach – checking the cache dates of the main page and subpages, PR check…all the usual stuff. I guess saying directory submission is dead is a bit like saying article submission is dead – wrong on both counts.
July 31st, 2009 at 12:30 am
The Submitted directories are not reliable sometimes you need to recheck them if they are true or not, some time the PR of the blogs fall and most of the time they become Nofollow ,so if its a free directory it got to be checked and if you are paying for it you can expect it to reliable.
August 2nd, 2009 at 11:21 am
Hi, I too think so and that was what Matt Cutts said in a recent speech, howeve I know a website that has no natural links (it’s all such cheep directory listing) and it is in 1st page of Google for one of the hardest keywords “Forex” how can they be dead then?
August 9th, 2009 at 12:54 pm
thanks for the info. i am going to be doing an experiment with a new blog of mine to test directory submission. in my opinion it can still benefit you very much depending on niche of course.
suzie@free stuff´s last blog ..Free Summer Samples
August 11th, 2009 at 6:00 am
directory submission give benefits but it’s not a complete solution for the site’s ranking. this is initial stage. the main point is that you are going to submitted right directory and in the category. most of link rejected due to the wrong category submission.
Admin: Keyword spam.
August 12th, 2009 at 10:45 pm
in the place of directory, blogs and article are more effective for the PR and ranking. directory can make help only in starting for indexing. for high ranking and for higher PR you should go for blogging, comments, and article writing. but it’s not a mean the directory submission isn’t important.
August 13th, 2009 at 12:17 am
@Shalini: Thanks for stopping by, I like the balanced approach you have taken. One has to look at ROI for any activity and directory submission’s ROI has definitely gone down in last couple of years. I will still place it above article submissions. Blog commenting is a different ballgame altogether and can have really good ROI.
September 8th, 2009 at 7:30 pm
I’m kind of new to the IM field. I’ve yet to see much success with any kind of backlinks. Maybe I just target the wrong keywords…..I don’t know. Does it take time for these backlinks (specifically directory) to actually give your site any benefit?
Mark´s last blog ..Sony Professional HVR-Z1U 3CCD High Definition Camcorder with 12x Optical Zoom
September 8th, 2009 at 8:59 pm
@Mark:
Yes, directory links take quite some time to show up in search engines and unless you decide your keywords properly, it will be difficult for you to see any benefits.
September 26th, 2009 at 1:12 am
Yes, webmasters should definitely try directory submission out for quite some time before they come to any conclusions.
I still do it for some of my sites because I know it works. If I target some keywords in my submissions, sure enough I’ll see a few more hits coming via long tail searches including those words in the ensuing months.
I’ll definitely keep doing it for a while yet.
January 19th, 2010 at 12:09 am
Well it is not dead but it sure is harder to do now days, there are less and less good directories out there and many lower pageranked directories.. Those that are high PR are just new directories on an old domain, so they may be PR5 until the next update but most likely will drop to 0.
As for the effectiveness its surely not as good as it was 2 or 3 years ago but it still has some benefits, just keep away from those companies that charge $100’s of dollars and look for the bargains.