I’ve been promoting Directory Maximizer for directory submission for some time now. I use it myself, and count at least a portion of the blog’s PR4 to the links from directories I’ve gotten from them. And while PR itself isn’t particularly valuable to a blog that doesn’t sell advertising, it does represent a large number of backlinks that provide SEO benefit.
I just bought Directory Submitter, though. Why?
Directory Maximizer is very inexpensive, at about $0.14 for each submission. It’s actually a bit less than that, because every time you pay them anything they give you a small rebate that can only be used to pay for other submissions. For a person who has a single site that needs directory submissions, that’s not bad.
I submit multiple sites to directories quite a bit, though, and the cost adds up. Directory Submitter is a one time payment, so after a certain number of submissions I’ll effectively be making the submissions for free.
The program has over 2,700 directories it knows about, and you can add your own, too. Sorting their initial list by PR shows Dmoz at the top, followed by a handful of PR7 and PR8 directories, a bunch of PR6 directories, a whole lot of PR5 directories, on down to PR0 directories.
Each website you want to promote via directory links is added via a profile in the program. Each profile can have multiple link titles, descriptions, and keywords that are used in a rotating fashion. Having some variety in your site’s descriptions can help avoid search engine penalties, so this is a nice feature. I was able to easily copy and paste this information from my Directory Maximizer account.
A bit more annoying is needing to go through and mark all the directories that you’ve already submitted a site to as used in the program. It’s far more convenient if you start using the program from the start on a site, so you don’t need to do this. But it’s a one-time chore and after that you keep track of new submissions from within the program.
If you use directories that require reciprocal links, Directory Submitter comes with a script you can upload to your website that allows the program to automatically configure the reciprocal links, saving your from an administrative chore. I can’t say how well this works, since I don’t use those sorts of directories, preferring one-way links.
Directory Submitter is not an automatic submission program. Rather, it will prefill all the fields on a submission form for you with the appropriate information from your site’s profile, rotating descriptions and titles as directed. You then choose the most appropriate category for that directory, click the Submit button, and move on to the next directory. What used to be a time consuming chore to do yourself turns into a fairly quick thing to churn out dozens of submissions.
I still recommend spacing your submissions for a single site out, so that you’re gradually accumulating links in a manner that search engines find natural. Dumping a link for a site out to all 2,700 directories as quickly as possible isn’t going to do your site much good in search engine results. You’ll end up with a great PR, but it’s search engine results positioning that drives traffic, and search engines look for continued growth in backlinks over time to maintain your position.
The program also came with some free bonuses, including an article submitter, article generator, and an article directory script. I haven’t had a chance yet to play with those, but will report back if they look like they’re worth using.
Great post, I’ve often wondered about the value of directories. Recently we ran a few tests and found that you can get a site to move in the serps by just using directory submissions. This was the shotgun method rather than targeting quality directories. Who knows how well it will hold but we are using it as a link base to build from. Just avoid the directories which require a payment for a site to be included. Many paid directories are launched solely to make temporary money. Their owners will promote the directory and try to inflate its PageRank to attract submissions and then switch to yet another new directory using the same bait. Many also have been banned or penalized by search engines for the practice of selling links without editorial review.
Thanks for the comment…Fast Directory Submitter looks interesting, I’ll have to do a review of it soon.
[quote comment=””]Thanks for the comment…Fast Directory Submitter looks interesting, I’ll have to do a review of it soon.[/quote]
Bought DS. Thank you for the suggestion!