Directory Submissions to Boost your Website

Google is link driven. And, typically, for the webmaster who wants his or her site to surface in the serps or to achieve some prominence in a crowded and/or competitive field, this means getting links.

What kind of links? This is debated on a daily basis in many notable forums. For the most part, everyone agrees that the links should emanate from pages that:

1. Are indexed in Google.

and

2. Have some degree of pagerank (Though not an absolute necessity, more PR is better than less PR, and some PR is better than no PR--however, use caution in weeding out candidates for links as the site that is a PR0 today could be a PR5 a year later. Not likely, but always possible).

The links themselves should, ideally, be normal static html links versus javascript links and, ideally again, should not be nofollow'd (however, if a large traffic site offered nofollow links, the actual "visitor traffic" benefits might replace or even outweigh the benefit of gaining a pagerank-passing link, i.e. a link is not always about pagerank or anchor text, sometimes its really about getting visitors).

These things are generally agreed upon. Where you should get your links from, however, is hotly debated.

I won't use this post to discuss all the places you might concievably score a link from. But I would like to mention directory admissions and something that occurred to me this morning.

Submitting to directories is widely and deeply discussed in some places and barely discussed in others (despite the fact that webmasterworld has a directory forum, you don't get much discussion there and most of the threads are variations of "Is it worth $300 to get into Yahoo?" and "I submitted to Dmoz four months ago and still haven't heard anything").

And, unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a concensus on the value of submitting to directories.

What we do know (and I say this loosely) is this:

1. It's never wise to link back to a directory because of the google "bad neighborhood" thing.

...and that's about it.

Everything else (will directory links boost your site?, does a specific directory pass pagerank, are directories viewed as link farms?, will mass submitting to directories hurt you in some way?, will scammy directory owners steal your page titles and content?, etc, etc, etc,) is all conjecture when you discuss "directories in general". Though, in specific cases, a directory may actually be a link farm, may actually be a content thief, may actually be a bad neighborhood, and may not actually pass pagerank.

The truth is, not all directories are alike and not all are treated by Google in the same manner. Some directories are well indexed, some are not. Some directories are ethical, and some are not. Some directories pass fair amounts of pagerank...and some have their pagerank stripped from them when Google determines they are the equivalent of a free-for-all link farm.

A discussion of directories could take up several hundred posts. However, here's the thing that occurred to me this morning.

If you plan to submit to a directory, consider a premium submission that allows your site to sit on top of the other sites in the category. Why? Because, it is increasingly the case that the top level pages of directory categories are indexed while the lower level pages are not.

Example: You plan to submit a cancer site to the cancer section of directory XYZ. The cancer section of directory XYZ has 5 pages. It may be alphabetized, or sites may be listed in order according to their pagerank or date of submission. However they choose to organize the directory section, if you submit to the cancer section and don't get your site listed on the first page, you may be wasting your money.

Why? Because the first page of that directory section may be indexed by google while the second, third, fourth, and fifth may not. And if they're not and your site ends up listed on one of those pages, you've just wanted your directory submission review fee.

How can you check this? Look to see if those deeper level pages have pagerank. However, even if the toolbar shows no green, don't stop there. To verify whether or not those deeper pages might be able to provide links, copy their urls into the google search window to see if they've been indexed or not. If they haven't, you might want to take a pass on submitting.

That is, unless the first page of the directory category has been indexed and has pagerank. In that case, you may wish to consider paying a few bucks extra for a premium submission that places your site on top of the other sites in the category (i.e. on page one).

The downside to a premium submission is that it costs a little more AND the fact that you're typically only guaranteed a top position for a year. After the year is up, you either pay again or have your site moved off into the regular listings...on a page that may be indexed by google or not.