Posted on May 31, 2008
Filed Under Directory Submission, General, Link Building
In today’s age of cutthroat competition, it is imperative for every business to have good visibility online. It is the goal of every website to appear high on the search engine ranking pages in order to attract more visitors or traffic. There are several ways by which this can be done. One of the oldest methods that has successfully stood the test of time, is that of directory submissions. Submitting websites to directories is a tried and tested way of improving web popularity and thereby achieving higher search engine rankings.
The best way to explain this entire process is through an example. Let us take the case of a site – http://www.statisticalforecasting.com. Apart from directory submissions, this site has never used other methods of web promotion and link building. As an experiment of sorts, it has banked solely on directory submissions in order to get links. The results will hopefully give us a better idea about its impact and benefits.
Before we get down to the actual results, it would be worthwhile to understand some important features of directory submissions and how they work. While submitting a website to directories you would need to submit your homepage URL along with a title and a description for your site. The title that you submit becomes the ‘anchor text’ or the text with which you will receive links from the directories. Hence, choosing an appropriate title that targets specific keywords or key phrases (with which you expect your site to be searched) is of utmost importance.
Getting back to our example, the site: http://www.statisticalforecasting.com was submitted to directories using 5 different titles and descriptions. The titles used were ‘Forecasting & Statistics in Business’, ‘Statistical Forecasting’, ‘Methods of Forecasting’, ‘Statistical Techniques’ and ‘Statistics and Forecasting’. If individual searches were conducted in Google for each of these titles, you would see that the first two titles rank at the number 1 position while ‘Methods of Forecasting’ is placed at the 12th position, ‘Statistical Techniques’ at number 3 and ‘Statistics and Forecasting’ ranks at number 2.
Considering the fact that this site relies solely on directory submissions to get links, the high rankings on Google do seem impressive. Some would argue however that the titles the site was submitted with, face lesser competition when compared with more general keywords or key phrases. In response to this, we would say that it would only be wise to target specific words related to the theme of your site. Search engines read these links to identify the purpose of your site. Besides, if yours is a new site, the directory links with related anchor texts help the search engines classify and index your site. Hence when someone makes a related search for the words or phrases you have used in the titles, your site will probably rank high in the search engines.
For a long time now, rumours about the decline in the importance of directories and directory submissions have been doing the rounds across blogs and forums. This study only goes to prove that even today web directories continue to be a valuable means of link building provided submissions are made to good quality, search-engine friendly directories.
Tell us what you think of this post.
3 Responses to “The Possible Impact of Directory Submissions on Search Engine Ranking Position”
Leave a Reply
Another good post. I have a site where i had been plodding away at SEO for a couple of years. That was back when I first found directory maximizer, I submitted the site to around 500 directories using directory maximizers service, and I have to admit didn’t expect any result, but to try out didn’t cost much, and it was really an experiment, my thinking was who looks at these directory’s other than other people looking to submit there site and looking for the right categoy. But I thought it would be interesting.
I couldn’t believe what happened on this site, the site until the submission was getting an average of 5000 visitors, with a couple of months that had doubled, and stayed that high for a couple years now, magic stuff, I was sold, and have submitted quite a few sites since.
Is it really now the importance of directoru submissions is gone ? as far as search engines are concenrend?
There are several myths doing the rounds, however I will still say that Directory Submissions do help if done for niche well-targeted terms.