Free directories, are they worth the effort

Search engines base a certain factor on directories in judging a website’s popularity and relevance. Depending on the quality of the directory and the number of back links your website has, search engines will be able to determine your relevance and qualify your website accordingly.
Directories were the primary source for web users to find websites on various topics. Today search engines have taken over but directories have not lost their importance yet. You cannot obviously expect too much traffic from a directory submission. But you can expect an improvement in your search engine placement.

I think they are. Links are always good.

I like the free directories,now my pr=3

Quality still comes into play. You may choose what directories to submit too - the ones with high PR and the ones with heavy traffic. Keep also in mind that traffic coming from directories tend to be targeted

there is nothing wrong with submitting to directories, it wont hurt your score or anything, it can only help even if it does nothing

submitting your site to free directories, your site will have more backlinks and as a result high page rank.

I used them, but as other have stated...They don't really bring any traffic to your site...I'm assuming that's what you want.

i find directories with no or low pr are a waste of time, i paid for 1000 submissions to these and it was the biggest waste of money ive ever spent. stick to high pr quality rather than quality.

J-G-Ju wrote: Hi,

I'm kind of new to all this SEO stuff. I been submitting my site to free directories and some did give me result in terms of search engine crawling my site but I don't really get any hits from the directories.

My question is, is submitting your site to free directories worth the effort?

Directory submissions are an important aspect of SEO.But what direcotry owners do is to tempt people with promotional offers ,i.e paid subscription on a yearly/monthly basis,so that your website is featured in the front page and gets traffic.Later when Google updates PR and backlinks you get an extra inbound link that enables you to increase your PR.
What Google did after it conducted an Update for PR and Backlinks in the month of October was that it made it mandatory to use the Google Adsense account whether you purchase or sell a link.People purchasing a link from a directory without the use of the Adsense account will not have it counted as a backlink when Google updates it and directory owners who sold links without the adsense account would have their ISP'S banned from Google.

Now for those who are going in for free submissions.It makes no sense to do bulk submissions when you know that it would take up indefinite amount of time to get the reviewal of a moderator and then get the approval.What one should do is to opt for a category that one relates too and has the minimum amount of submissions.Say you have 10 keywords and you relate well to them ,but you prefer 2 amongst them.So even if the prefered category has a greater number of submissions pending,it would be wise to skip the category and opt for another term that you relate too.This helps,since the category with lesser number of pending reviewals will have the submission reviewed quickly compared to a category that has a greater number of submission pending.
My personal opinion is for those who are into free submission opt for social bookmarking or networking sites.These sites have maximum traffic and in that case if your content/article whatever you post is appealing and is of quality your visitor/traffic rate will improve.

If the free directories have PageRank or , at least, get indexed by search engines, it will be great for you.

However, I often see web directories with PageRank at the category pages are available for sale only. But it is their rights for selling good web-traffic webpages from their directories because they have worked hard to get the great traffic to their websites. They should get the gifts in return.

The specific business directories or niche directories will be better than general web directories. However, the niche directories should pay more attention on their website maintenance too.

I always submit links to free directories and this is good way to reach the good results in SEO. And thos not a time wasting. At list you will have manualy checked directory list

Some important things to consider when selecting which directories to submit to (whether free or paid):

High PR - indication that Google sees some value in the directory.
Well maintained - listed sites are in the proper category
High Traffic - getting traffic could be minimal form directories, but majority are targeted
Kewords ranking high in SERP - Well optimized, shows that the directory is well-marketed and SEO'ed.

Which to avoid:
Link farms that pose as directories
Directories that require reciprocal links
Crappy ones with crappy sites listed

J-G-Ju wrote: Hi,

I'm kind of new to all this SEO stuff. I been submitting my site to free directories and some did give me result in terms of search engine crawling my site but I don't really get any hits from the directories.

My question is, is submitting your site to free directories worth the effort?

So many of them have been devalued. I like Pegasus, Linkdirectory, Turnpike, Indexit(paid but cheap)

Its worth it but you need to find the good ones you need lucky.

Quote: My question is, is submitting your site to free directories worth the effort?

Yes. Think of it also as a source of traffic. A directory alone may not give you that much traffic - maybe just 3 to 5 visitors a week. But they sum up especially if you have inclusion in 100 quality ones... The key is proper selection - which is the harder part of it

Submitting to free directories works, but be selective in which directories you submit to. Since everyone seems to be chasing PR these days, many of the high PR directories that have huge backlogs. IMO, it's better to be listed in a PR 0 directory then waiting to be reviewed in a PR 4 directory.

I submit my site, and client sites, to my personal directory list. The focus of the list is on new directories. The advantage, especially for low PR sites that are being submitted, is that there are few competing listings. This get's my submissions indexed much much faster.

The high PR directories are still good to list at, but spending a little money will get your review ahead of the hundreds, and even thousands, of free submissions waiting to be reviewed.

Well, many believe that even the new free directory links can be good because anyway, they still are regarded as one way links.

If they are free, what is the most it can cost you? Time? I would submit my site to any and every space on the Internet that would allow me.

I also prefers directories, it also helpful in Backlinks

I've been posting submissions to free URL Directories and it helps out in some instances, and not in others. It's kind of fickle in my opinion.

Hey its worth a try in my opinion i submit to some of the free directories from time to time is it effective? not sure but it is cheap even if it isn't effective.

Interesting to see that there is a continuing disagreement about the benefits of submitting to directories. But I have had success with them recently.

On this subject, here's a really good searchable resource which lists directories.

thanks for the links, with all the different techniques to promote a site, its quite hard to identify which ones work effectively... and what is working today may not be as good tomorrow... again thanks for all the valuable information...

I only submit to directories VERY related to my niche and I've avoided a lot of trouble that way.

Hello,
Directory submission is very useful part of SEM. Before submiting our site on various directories at first we check whats's the PR of Directories and we also select relebent categories of our website. It's Also good if Particular categories have good PR. Dmoz is good directory to submit websites it's free.Google give priority of those websites which is submited in Dmoz.

There are some high quality free directories out there. If you put a back link in them it will help with your pr. But make sure you only use the high pr ones

Free directory submission is good idea for promote any web site but before submission We will think about site Relevancy as for what is directory PR, whats category PR.

Hello,
Directory submission is the key to building your website one-way links and increasing your site popularity with search engines!

I think that any link is a positive thing...certainly can't hurt to use the free directories submission sites.

I don't spend to much time on directory submissions, At least 10 a day, I submit my site to pr3 and up...

Directory submission is always help to drive traffic on site, submission in good quality directory is always helpful

I am always hearing conflicting views on the value of submitting to free sites...I tend to think that if you want to take the time to submit, then go ahead because a link is a link!

Submitting to good quality directory may help you to give back links. But I don't think we will get good traffic from directory submission.

use dmoz

"DIRECTORY Submission is not basically for 'HITS'. Get our sites BACK LINKS on web is MAIN purpose of directory submission.
For hits you can submit your site on classifieds, do business listing, participate on yahoo answering .......etc

Share with us your site LINK.

Thanks
Beena
{links removed}

Free directories are definitely worth the effort. There are thousands of them, which means thousands of listings across the internet (basically Yellow Pages Online).

it just means that directory submissions should be done with attention to the traffic value, that is - you’re submitting to a directory for the direct traffic from that directory - not for the link juice that may or may not be passed on.This isn’t to say that directory submissions will have no SEO benefit - in some cases it will have some benefit at least to some degree - but if you do it with traffic in mind, and only submit to directories you believe will refer targeted traffic, then any SEO benefit is a bonus.