Quit Wasting Your Time with Directories

I am going to be your best friend today, or I should say I am going to be the best friend that you have even though you probably won’t listen to me anyway because you are a creature of habit. Creatures of habit don’t change those habits easily.

SEO for Dumb Dumbs

SEO for dumb dumbs (me included) has always followed a very traditional sequence.

• Build a website
• Submit to Google, MSN, Yahoo
• Pay some Malaysian kid from Digital Point 20 bucks to submit to 4000 free directories
• Spam a few blogs to build some links….even though they are probably no follow.
• Repeat the process with the next crappy site.

This is pretty much the recipe that I see on the BANS forum for site SEO. Hundreds of people are doing it and I suspect that these same people are experiencing a very low level of success.

Much of the success involved with niche sites involves quantity. It’s pretty difficult to build just a few sites that will build a sustainable income no matter how hard you try. You need to be able to find a recipe that works and repeat it. This need for repitition can really tie up your time if you let it, so you are well served to determine what actually works and what is a waste of your precious time.

Let’s take a look at each step of the process.

Search Engine Submissions

Yes, no question you want to do this. I continually hear of people that will tell you to NEVER submit your sitemap to Google. Fly under the radar. Stay low and try to keep as much of your site a secret from Google as possible.

This is probably the most retarded thing that any of these retards could possibly say. Especially when you consider that most of them don’t even know why they should do this, only that they read it somewhere on some blog and it seemed like a cool thing to repeat. It would make them seem smart.

Submit your sitemaps. You want every search engine to know exactly what you are doing and everything about your site. If you’re cheating, then maybe you want to stay low….but for most normal people…submit your site as soon as you think it’s ready. Do not submit until it’s 90% complete though.

You can submit to Google, MSN and Yahoo. The rest of them aren’t worth the time in my opinion.

Directory Submissions

This might shock some of you.

Most Directory submissions are an absolute waste of your time, effort and energy. I see so many different people offering “200 Directory Submissions” or “500 Directory Submissions” services both on Digital Point and the BANS forum that it makes me scratch my head in wonder.

Now don’t get me wrong, most of these people are not charging big money for these submissions so most people say why not. Well…if you want to waste 50 bucks then why not donate it to charity or something worthwhile because you won’t get anything from these submissions.

In most cases they submit these to “Free” Directories. Google has looooooong since discounted any links from free directories. They are the scourge of the internet and Google knows it. Google has recently penalized a number of Directories down to a PR0 but even if a Directory still has pagerank doesn’t mean it is passing any juice to you. Check the Meta and the links to make sure they are not no follow.

Just right click on View Source and look for something like this on the actual page you want to be listed on.

META NAME=”ROBOTS” CONTENT=”NOFOLLOW”

There are some Directories out there worth submitting to of course, but they are few and far between. Something that ALL of them will have in common is absolutely no guarantee of your URL showing up. If their only requirement is a reciprocal link, then don’t waste your time. If they list anyone and everyone that sends them a link…you can forget it.

A quality Directory listing will almost ALWAYS cost you money and STILL offer no guarantee of inclusion.

I am not going to name any of these bad directories as that isn’t the point of the article but here are a few key things to look for:

• If they are included in any automated or semi-automated software for submissions.
• How do they monetize? Google adsense everywhere – almost a sure sign they aren’t the deal.
• Minimum Requirements – What does it take to be approved?
• Pay Per Submit type submissions. If you pay you are guaranteed inclusion.

Google is onto this stuff. If you must waste your time then please, continue as you are doing but I’d be willing to be that half or better of these links never even index because the Google Bot doesn’t even crawl the directory anymore.

Good Directories

There are a number of quality Directories still in existence and you really should consider these. I know it’s hard to believe that 2 or 3 quality Directory submissions are worth 50 times what 100 garbage Directory submissions are worth but the simple truth is it’s a fact.

One of the most important things to consider when looking for a good Directory is whether they have an editorial policy or not in regards to submissions. If a human editor looks at the submission and then decides whether to include you or not then that is a good sign. It’s only good though if they actually have a quality standard.

Some examples of some great Directories to consider are:

• DMOZ – Owned by Google. You want to be here….it’s free BUT hard to get included.
• Yahoo – $299 non-refundable to submit and NO guarantee of inclusion.
• Best of the Web – $99 non-refundable annually and NO guarantee of inclusion.
• Business.com – $299 non-refundable and NO guarantee of inclusion.

There are many more out there but these will give you a few good solid examples to work from. Once you see what it takes to be included in a QUALITY directory vs. the other garbage ones then you will be able to recognize what is worth it or not.

I can’t stress enough….A DMOZ and a Yahoo Directory listing is probably worth more than 1000 submissions to any of these other useless directories.

Blog Posting Links

These can have a small amount of value but they are difficult to acquire a meaningful number. To make sure they have ANY value at all they should always be on a site that is relevant to the site you are linking to and they need to be Do Follow otherwise it won’t do you much good.

Yahoo still pays no attention to the No Follow attribute but you’re way ahead of the game to build your SEO plan to cater to Google and whatever else you get is a bonus.

Link Building Alternatives

So what do you do if you have no money to submit to these high quality Directories? Good question because it can be a difficult process. The problem for most people is it takes work and that is simply something they are not willing to do.

They want the easy way out. I am not going to elaborate much on the listings below but trust me they are still very viable and very wroth your time to build links to your sites.

• Article Marketing – Ezine, GoArticles, Article Trader etc.
• Social Bookmarking – Very Web 2.0 and Google adores Web 2.0 stuff right now.
  • Digg, Propeller, Delicious, Mister Wong and more…all worth the time.
• Squidoo pages – Build a lens for each of your sites, fill with relevant content and link to your site.
• Hubpages – Hubpages and Squidoo are both Web 2.0 and currently very popular.
• Zimbio – A form of blog posting combined with Article Marketing.
• Directory Submissions – QUALITY Directories. One Yahoo DL is worth 500 crappy ones…easy.

Article Marketing is currently my favorite and most productive free method of building backlinks. I write most of my own content and outsource a small part of it. I haven’t had the greatest luck with outsourcing content as most of the services tailored to this offer crappy writers.

So I write my own and I write it the way I want it to sound. Takes longer but oh well.

Conclusion

So in summary I don’t think it’s too hard to figure out my position on this subject. I usually am fairly outspoken and tell it like I think it to be. I should say that I am in no way any kind of an SEO professional and nor would I claim to be.

I know what I know and I write what I write based on my own personal experience from building a number of these websites. SEO takes time and it takes work, just like building your sites. If you think you can build a site in a day, submit it to Google, buy a 200 Directory listing package and sit back and count your money then you are wrong.

I am going to keep working my ass off today so I won’t have to work at all tomorrow.

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