This will always be my first destination for getting 1 way links at the start of any new website. It’s not a major part of my search engine marketing strategies but it still has to be done. There are so many online directories now, many of them look somewhat spammy. It’s getting to the stage where you need to think, “do people even visit these directories to find resources?”. If its Yahoo directory, Dmoz or another big directory then yes, of course people might have a look, but besides the big ones, most directories seem fairly irrelevant. They’re still valuable one way links though, so get this part of the link building process out of the way and maybe go through directories again in a years time.

There’s really only 2 ways of submitting articles. You either do it yourself or pay someone else to do it.

Manual Directory Submission - I personally did this myself a while ago and perhaps you might need to start off this way as well if you’re a bit tight on budget. Even if you have money I’d recommend you do the hard yards and at least get some experience in submitting to directories. Get an idea of how directories work, check they’re navigation processes, check to see if they link to everyone or only quality sites, do they charge? etc. One of the more reliable lists I went through is found at Info Vilesilencer. They have all the free directories listed from A to Z and gets updated about once every 3 months. I wouldn’t pay them to submit your site for you though. There are much cheaper options then them.

Outsource Directory Submission - If you’ve done directory submission before manually, don’t go back! It’s so time consuming and you can use your valuable time to do more important things like focusing on your content, emailing other sites for link exchanges, analyzing the position of your site, keywords analysis, check rankings, think about how to improve traffic. Submitting to hundreds of directories we take a whole weekend! Best place to check for directory submission services is through the trusty Digital Point again (I love this site). Double check the users background, see if they’ve already made a lot of transactions and check other people posts and opinions on their service. Don’t spend more than $100 on directory submissions. Shouldn’t even come close to that mark anyway. Most charge very little for directory submissions.

Cautions For Directory Submissions

From the recent update with Google, news has been that many directories have been banned from their search engine including some major players. Obviously, don’t pay for a directory submission for now since Google is heavily tracking down these sites. Really, the only directory I would pay for (even before all this happened) is Yahoo directory. I personally don’t value a directory link much. It’s always best to have the whole site themed on your niche market website than just one page with 50 other apparently “themed” links. As for Dmoz, submit once then forget about it. If you get in that’s great, but if you don’t, try not to sweat over it. By the time they review your site you’ll be over 100 years old.