Directory submissions used to be a viable search engine optimization strategy a few years back. However, with changes made to search engines and the way they rank web pages, the importance of web directory submissions has diminished to some extent. In a few years more, I’m very certain that it will no longer be considered a good search engine optimization strategy just like free-for-all websites and stuffing keywords which used to provide results in the years before.
Quality of backlinks
Search engines such as Google rank webpages on the basis of the number of backlinks. For this reason, it is very important to build quality backlinks to your website on a regular basis. Theoretically, web directories can be a good source of backlinks. Because they have content that is relevant to your website, these backlinks can have some search engine benefits. However, in actual practice, most web directories have thousands of links pointing outwards. They also do not have good link popularity and many of them have low-quality spammy links. For this reason, getting links from web directories may not have any benefits at all. It should also be noted that submitting your links to a large number of low-quality directories all at once can adversely affect your search engine rankings. Thus it is a good idea to submit only to high quality web directories that have high page rank.
Time and effort
Directory submissions can take time and effort on your part. For example, if you want to submit your links to the top 500 directories, it can take several hours or days. You can use directory submission software or tools such as Roboform to make this job faster and easier. However, it still has to be done manually and is a time-consuming process. Considering the as SEO benefits, is it really worth the time and effort to submit to directories?
Approval rates
Let us say, you submit your link to 500 web directories. Probably, some hundred of these will approve your link within the next few weeks. Several of them will reject your link outright. And the remaining will approve it months later because they have plenty of links in the backlog. Many directories will simply disappear. Because of this, you will not see any search engine benefits within limited time frame.
Scope of promotion
Most directories do not accept inner pages, no matter how informative or professional they may be. Thus, you can only promote your homepage using directory submissions. Thus it is not a good option to promote your blog posts. It is better to go other better options.
To conclude, it is not worth the time and effort to do web directory submissions anymore. It is better to invest in other promotion strategies such as article marketing, guest blog writing and direct advertisements. Web directories had their golden days, but right now their days are over.
About the author: Aditya Venkatesh is a technology-enthusiast and blogs on www.adiwebs.com. In the past, he worked as a technical writer for a well-known web development company in Hyderabad, India. He has a Master’s degree in Engineering.
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