SUBMIT 2.0

Directory submission has always been the favorite of online marketers to gain one way back links which may help increase the PageRank of the website. There are thousands of directories offering such services either for free or in exchange of a link or money. Of late, search engines realized that directories are transforming into the breeding ground of spamming rather than aggregator of quality resources as marketers buy links illegitimately to increase the number of one way links pointing to their website. This compelled the search engines to discount the importance attached to these links and penalize the directories involved in spamming by removing them from their index.

But this change in search engines behavior has not deterred the spirit of marketers to use directories for the benefit of their website. Google has already clarified that it will not count the links which look spam and submissions only in the most relevant category will be counted.

There are many companies offering manual directory submission to directories for small amount and guarantee the approval from them. This kind of assurance confronts the approval procedure of the directories and should be dealt with the utmost caution. However, if an individual is carrying out the directory submission then the following points should be kept in mind:

1. First of all, the person should check the online image of the website by checking the status of the website in Google. Submission should not be carried out if the website is banned by Google. Simply put the domain name of the directory in Google search box and click the search button. If the website is not on the first page of Google for its name then it means that it is banned by Google for carrying out some illegitimate process.

2. Check the PageRank of the home page of the website where you are planning to submit the website. If it has some PageRank then it means that Google recognizes it and has attached some amount of importance to it. Moreover, if the inner pages also have some PageRank then it is the best option for submission. But it is a rare case to be seen.

3. Another method of checking the quality of the website is by viewing the site links of the website. Site links are the links to the sub pages which Google feels provide some quality information to the user. Site links can be viewed by typing the name of the directory in Google. If links to the sub pages can be seen below the website snippet then it means that the directory has some quality pages.

4. Check the number of inbound links to the website. The higher the number of backlinks from different domains, the higher the chances that the directory is a good choice to carry out the submission.

5. It is very necessary for a directory to be constantly updated. Always check the cache of the website to know when was it last crawled. A good directory will always have the recent cache.

6. Check the number of pages indexed by the search engine. Additionally, check for the number of pages in the main index of the search engine.

7. Check the reputation of the website in public by asking about it in forums, blogs, social networking sites or other places.

There are many directories where we can submit the links to our website and it will be a bit tedious process to analyze the directory on the above stated parameters, but, in order to reap benefits a bit of pain is always necessary.

Source: EzineArticles

Filed under: Link-Popularity