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Boosting link popularity with manual directory submissions

Shashikant Shinde, Online Marketing & Research Associate, On Target, Singapore

Singapore, July 25, 2006

Building link popularity of a website is an integral part of any search engine optimization (SEO) campaign. To reiterate, two of the most important factors for a website to be ranked high in the search engine results pages (SERPs) are high-quality original content and the number and quality of inbound links to the site In a previous article, we touched upon some of the common steps for building inbound links to a website, with the ultimate objective of improving its rankings in the search engine results pages (SERPs) and thereby driving more targeted traffic to the website.

Online directories ("a web directory is a well-organized collection of links placed into different categories") have an important role to play in getting a website crawled, indexed and ranked, mainly because of the way they are organized. While the value of general-interest directories as a source for direct traffic may have gone down (though they do generate some traffic) because of the improvement in search engines, niche web directories can still contribute to traffic. The main advantage and objective of listing in a well-respected directory is to be able to help in the SEO process and generate more traffic. To that extent, good web directories will continue to be an important part of a link building and SEO campaign.

Focus the link building campaign on the above three aspects to achieve optimum results.

Interested in boosting your link popularity? Let us help you with devising and executing a comprehensive link building campaign, with directory submissions, building one-way and themed, highly relevant reciprocal links, article marketing and online PR services. Contact us today!

Benefits of manual submissions to web directories

Directory submissions can be automated and there are probably software products available in the market. However, we belong to the conventional school of search engine optimization and are more in favor of manual directory submissions. This may be labor intensive, but it definitely gives us greater control in the submissions.

We see the following main benefits of submitting sites manually to search engine friendly directories:

Manual, not mechanical

It is often misunderstood that directory submissions are purely mechanical which can be done simply by applying a cookie-cutter approach. Certainly not.

If marketing objectives are to be met, then one has to apply considerable amount of thought in ensuring that each submission meets the unique quality guidelines of each directory as well.

Also, as mentioned above, ensuring the right titles, descriptions and anchor text requires specialized expertise (and some copywriting skills!), a good understanding of acceptable SEO practices and an appreciation of overall marketing objectives of the website/ company.

Manual directory submissions are an extremely cost-effective way of building one-way links and thereby boosting link popularity. However, time, effort and money needs to be invested in realizing the full benefits of this activity.

Our experience in this area definitely tells us that it is more than worth it.

Shashikant Shinde is an Online Marketing & Research Associate with On Target Media & Marketing, responsible for planning and executing link building campaigns for clients. On Target is a Singapore based provider of search engine optimization (SEO) as well as PPC marketing. Contact us to devise a cost-effective, comprehensive online marketing campaign with measurable results!