Outsource Directory Submission

The next step after you have setup a new site is making the rest of the World Wide Web know so. How does one do this? There are many ways to spread the good news, but the most basic of them is submitting your new site to a number of authoritative web directories where a lot of people visit to seek what they need from the web.

New sites are often sandboxed by Google for a minimum period (about 3 months or less) for observation. When the new site looks spiffy clean enough in intent and content then that’s the time Google starts giving it a Page Rank (usually Zero) and a place in the search engine results pages. This doesn’t mean, however, that we should wait until after the 3rd month to start a link building campaign.

In link building, directory submission is one of the simplest methods employed. Inbound links from a reputable web directory, especially if it is human-edited, is a plus in the eyes of major search engines because a person actually reviews the content of your site to determine its quality. The person reviewing your site will also check if you have a proper title, description and content for the category you want to be considered in. Aside from that, internet directories such as DMOZ provide the links that they have to other search engine databases.

Major search engines like Google and Yahoo! also have their own static directory. There are forms in their sites that you can fill up for your site to be added into their directories. However, these are often paid services because of the quality of placement (it’s in a directory owned by a major search engine).

What Makes Directory Submission Valuable

Many people expect web directories to gradually disappear when search engine technology has obviously advanced so much. However, we can not dispense of static directories such as DMOZ or Best of the Web so easily. Web directories do have something which crawler-based search engines don’t have: the human touch.

Human-edited directories assure their users of links to quality sites relevant to the category they are placed under. Each site has been scrutinized and classified by a human editor so it is almost impossible to deceive users of the quality of the site.

On one hand, because of they are human-edited, each link will have to be paid to cover the costs of hard work that goes into reviewing each submitted site. And when the submission has been approved, the placement of the link is given high value when it is included in one of the top web directories.

Inbound Link Quality

Inbound Link Quality, or ILQ, is a scoring system used to measure the quality of links coming from a certain site. Many factors affect such score including how topically relevant the site is that is linking to the site whose ILQ is being considered.

In a web directory, due to its lack of content, the nearest topical relevance you can get is being categorized together with other related sites. For example, if your site is all about home security systems, you will benefit well if you are placed under the correct category such as Home Safety, Home Security or Home Security Products. If the category has a goodly amount of links then this is where the value of co-citation linking comes in.

Co-Citation Linking

What is Co-Citation Linking? It basically refers to how search engines will associate your site’s link when surrounded with other links. Assuming you have been exchanging links with another site and your link is placed side-by-side with links to other websites, what kind of sites would you want your site to be grouped with? Â Wouldn’t it be better if they happen to be relevant, albeit a few may be competitors?Â The concept of being in a “good neighborhood” as opposed to a bad one comes in handy.

Search engines will then check your backlink from within these neighborhoods and strengthen your link’s anchor text value according to the text surrounding your link. This is the reason why you must be careful not to associate your site with other sites with objectionable content, including spam and malware.

Questions Â of Frequency

So how often and how many should you do directory submissions? Not too often and not too many. Â Modern link building requires that the quality of links should be prioritized over the number. Unlike before, it doesn’t matter how many sites are linking back to yours, rather it matters how many relevant and trusted sites are linking back.

A once-a-week session for submitting to about 20 quality directories is ideal. Getting 20 permanent links per month is alright. In reality, having those links put in place takes time and effort. It’s not enough that a link builder has submitted the information to hundreds of directories. It is, by far, more important and a great achievement if a link builder can get 20 permanent high quality backlinks for your site.