Submitting To Directories - Is It Really Worth It?
Many SEO companies sell "Directory Submission" packages to clients, charging hundreds or even thousands of dollar to submit a site to hundreds of so-called “directories”. It's easy to see why a site owner might be tempted by such a service. After all, Google and the other search engines rank sites with more in-bound links higher in the search results. The more the better - right?
Wrong.
With Google, it's all about quality, not quantity. A thousand low quality links doesn't equal one good quality link from a site that's an authority in a given field.Many of these "Directory Submission" services simply involve submitting your site to very low quality links pages. After all, that's what a directory is... a list of links. Many times, the companies selling these services simply just created their own links pages, branded them as “directories” and now sell a submission service to these links pages which they own themselves!
Up until a short time ago, Google actually advised people to submit to directories in their Google Webmaster Guidelines. After all, in theory, submitting to a directory could be done for perfectly legitimate reasons, like driving traffic to your site, or helping the search engine spider to find your site in the first place.
The fact that this advice was removed from the guidelines is telling. It shows that Google has recognized that the practice of submitting to directories has been so abused as a way to manipulate their algorithm, that it has negatively impacted their ability to detect the best sites with the best content. Google needs to be able to recognize “natural" back links to a site, not ones that were acquired in such an easy way with little to no value driving it. Again, how easy is it to create a simple links page directory, or simply submit to a directory to acquire a link back to your site?
To understand Google's thoughts about this, we have to understand Google's Philosophy on Link Building. Google sees each link as a vote for the content quality of your site. If lots of people are linking to your site, your site must have some good content on it.Any practice like mass directory submission is basically giving people a way to vote for themselves. Whenever a practice like this exists, Google is bound to shut it down. In this case, Google has simply stopped allowing most directories to pass their PageRank power down to the sites they link to.
There are exceptions to this rule, however.
What Does Google Think?
There are a few high quality directories that Google recognizes as having value. The Yahoo directory and DMOZ are the two best examples. Google accepts these as legitimate directories since they involve a hand review of each site to ensure quality standard of the sites listed there. Thus, these types of directories actually provide Google with a great 3rd party reference for the sites listed there that they are decent quality (although some would argue that these directories also allow plenty of junk in as well.)
Now lets hear it straight from Matt Cutts, senior engineer at Google. This is taken from his personal blog on a page devoted to his thoughts on paid links:
"Does the directory reject urls? If every url passes a review, the directory gets closer to just a list of links or a free-for-all link site."
Conclusion
While there are a few good directories that are worth submitting to, most do not provide real value in terms of helping your site in Google's eyes. If you want to submit to a directory because you think it might send you some actual traffic, then go for it. However, if what you're looking for is a back-link that will help you gain PageRank to help your site rank higher, don't waste your time or effort submitting to low quality directories.
If it's legitimate links that Google will recognize as valid you want, do what Google recommends instead... focus on developing lots of great content, updating your site as often as possible. This is the only way to develop your site into a true authority on your topic, encourage natural back-links over time, and rank higher in the search engines for the long haul, with no fear of being penalized or banned for using deceptive techniques.
“Give visitors the information they're looking for… Provide high-quality content on your pages, especially your homepage. This is the single most important thing to do. If your pages contain useful information, their content will attract many visitors and entice webmasters to link to your site.” Source: Google Webmaster Guidelines
Steve Lazuka is an authority in the field of natural seo copywriting. Mr. Lazuka is the founder and president of Interact Media, a natural seo writing company that uses the power of high quality writing to improve search engine visibility for its clients. For more about this and other natural optimization subjects, visit Steve's blog at www.interactmedia.com/blog.html
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