SEO: Directory Submission & Link Building Tips

There are two very pertinent reason why we submit to directories, first, to get more targeted traffic to your site and secondly, to build link popularity in hopes of a better page rank. Acquiring links from other websites may obtain the same results, providing they are qualified links meaning the website you want to exchange links with pertains to your business.


The search engines (SEs) have evolved over the years and will continue to evolve in the years to come. Google is by far the furthest along the evolutionary path.

Submitting your website to quality Directories is perhaps one of the best ways to acquire valuable inbound links. Directories, DMOZ and Yahoo hold significant weight. Google draws its directory results from DMOZ and Yahoo draws its directory results from its own Yahoo Directory.

Keep in mind that Directories have human editors they gather all the listings in that directory, getting listed in key directories means that it is seen by many people, therefore you are more apt to get your website's links recognized by the crawler based search engines.

 If your site is in a competitive search field then you really have no choice. Without a large number of links to your site, you have very little chance of achieving high search engine rankings.

The following are some suggestions on how to build effective SEO links while minimizing the risk of having your hand slapped by the search engines.

 There are many important tips to follow when submitting your web site to a directory.

What to look for

• Here are some of the most important criteria's to take into consideration when submitting to directories:
• Are your listings going to be posted on Static pages
• Are you going to gain any Page Rank benefit
• Are you able to add descriptive title to your link
• Are you able to specify your own keywords
• Are you able to submit multiple links under one listing
• Is the directory listed in DMOZ or Yahoo
• Are there more than 50 links on a category page
• Can you enhance your listing by purchasing category sponsorship
• If you are looking for additional traffic, does the target directory's Alexa rank justify the submission costs

Before You Submit

• Make sure your site does not look like it is under construction and is not full of broken links.
• Verify your site is not already listed in the directory. If you have a new site it is not likely that it exists within any directories.
• Read the overall directory submission guidelines.
• Choose the correct directory category: this is what adds value to the directories (organization).

Vary your link title text
The search engines look for evidence of unnatural behavior. In a perfect world, the SEs would like to see all links gained naturally. Since it would be highly unlikely for a large number of individuals to link to your site using the same link text you should vary your own link text.

Vary your link descriptions
Google is likely getting better at analyzing the text surrounding a link. Again it would be unnatural to always have the exact same text. The same descriptions could also trip duplicate content filters.

Seek links from related sites
It is widely believed that a link from a website in the same field is much more valuable than an unrelated link (most applicable for Google and Yahoo). Perhaps too many unrelated links can even get you a penalty.

Mix homepage and internal links
You should have some of your links pointing to internal pages of your websites, rather than have all you links pointing to your home page. Again, naturally attained links will seldom all point to your homepage. Having links pointing to your internal pages will also help your SE results.

Seek links from authority sites.
Links from authority sites will provide much more weight than non-authority sites. We can only guess at what sites might be considered authorities. Google seems to favor .gov and .edu sites.

Seek links on the upper half of the page
It is believed that the higher a link is on the page the more weight it will provide.

Seek links within page content
Links located within content will provide more weight than links in the margins or footers of a site.

Seek non-reciprocal links
Do reciprocal links provide less weight. I don't know if the proof is conclusive on this issue. If not, algos that handle this could be around the corner. It is feasible that sites with too many reciprocal links incur a penalty.

Seek links from older sites
Links from older, more established sites will provide more weight (applicable to Google) 

Subdomains or Subdirectories? From SEO point of view

 First, let’s define what we are talking about: “blog.domain.com” is a subdomain while “domain.com/blog” is a sub directory or a folder within a domain.

A sub directory is used as a folder within one domain to organize smaller pieces of content, like a category of several pages. For most people they will only ever need subdirectories.

A sub domain creates more separation than just a folder, basically creating a stand alone site that could easily be it’s own domain. However, you may want to piggyback on the main domain name. For example, google.com is the main site. Gmail actually lives at mail.google.com. Google Maps lives at maps.google.com, and Google Documents at docs.google.com. These are each stand alone sites and could be their own domains but they make more sense under the google umbrella.

How do sub domains effect SEO?

sub domains used to help with SEO because there was a chance domain.com AND blog.domain.com would show up in results while there was (and is) a limit on two pages per domain in a search engine results page (SERP).

One strategy that could make sense would be to create a subdomain for a section of your business or site that could really be a standalone site. If you are a department store, you may have “mystore.com” and use “electronics.mystore.com” to create a site with great SEO specific to electronics, since the searches will see it essentially a stand alone site about electronics. Then use “food.mystore.com” to target searches specific to food. If you had those things combined (along with ten others – shoes, jewelry, etc. ) the content is not as specific and may be confusing as to what the site is about. Meanwhile, they all still help pump up the image of the main domain “mysite.com”. You have created several specific relevant sites all benefitting from the main brand of “mystore.com”.

Which one should I use?

For most situations and for the average website, the easiest solution is a new subdirectory. If you are setting up a new blog, you can create a folder called “blog” install wordpress and you have your blog at “mydomain.com/blog”. There is no reason to use a whole subdomain for that. I like the simple idea that if you could almost justify starting an entirely new (but related) site, then use a subdomain. If you are simply adding a new category of pages with similar content, then just use a subdirectory. Save the subdomain for something that is big enough and clearly separate enough that it needs to be its own site.

If you can afford the time an money required to develop out each subdomain and if your main domain would be too convoluted by having too much on it, I’d say yes. If not, save yourself the heartache and extra work. Just make your site easy to navigate, use folders and you should do just fine.

Drawbacks to using sub domains

Each sub domain would be looked at by search engines as a new site, which means you will need to do everything you would normally do for a new site.In short, creating back-links, battling the sandbox, and all other problems associated with domain development are still present. If this sounds like too much trouble, you may want to consider creating sub folders within the domain.This would look like www.mydomain.com/folder.

Benefits to using a sub domain

Let’s say you had a site that had many categories in it. If you were to submit to directories you could submit each sub domain as it’s own individual category and not get penalized. The links from the subdomains to the main domain would be looked upon as one way links from another domain.

If a sub,domain becomes banned will it effect the main domain?

The answer is yes. It may get the main domain banned if they are linked to each other. There has been proof of main domains being banned, yet i have heard of many instances where they have not.The main domain may not get banned under certain circumstances. The question shouldn’t be whether the main domain can get banned because of a sub domain, but instead, why would your sub domain get banned in the first place.If you want to experiment with untested or controversial methods, do so on a new domain.