Today’s SEO tip is about using citation and search modifiers to find creative solutions for link building. Citation (a websites footprint or popularity matrix) is a prominent principle used by search engine algorithms to assess importance.
SEO Tips to Find and Qualify Directories
Hence, authoritative links in to the quantity or percentage of links out a domain has, determines how much link flow a domain can produce in tandem with its contained volume of content.
Popular websites with user generated content are always ahead of the supply and demand curve, because they always have something new for search engine spiders to dig into, which keeps them coming back for more in addition that they also receive a healthy flux of inbound links.
Wikipedia is a prime example of a website with a 94% deep link percentage and all user generated content with millions of relevant themed pages and subjects.
Directories of that magnitude may not exist, but you can find smaller more potent themed directories to acquire links to your homepage or more importantly deep links to individual pages with keyword-rich anchor text that pass just as much value.
On the contrary, websites that constantly link out, offer bleak editorial value or are dripping with commerce laden jargon often do not make the grade when it comes to developing an authoritative domain. When picking potential directories to submit your site, you should focus on quality and relevance rather than bulk submissions.
There are only a handful of directories that have kept a clean link profile as a result of a human review editorial process. In addition to the neighborhood of a website, you can also use off page citation as a measurement of if that directory is worthwhile for submission.
Search engines scan their index for duplicate, so vary your title and descriptions for more impact. Use other websites as a yardstick to assess how authoritative a domain might be.For example, using Alexa ranking as an indicator could signify what type of imprint that domain has. Another great website you can use as a yardstick is DMOZ.
If a site appears there, in most cases you know it has passed a stringent editorial review and has been around for some time. You can also visit DMOZ and just use their search box and type in keywords (topic) directories such as legal directories, shopping directories, etc. and find dozens or hundreds of hard to find pre-qualified directories for consideration.
Another method is to use the *wildcard technique in a Google search such as:
furniture * directories
legal * directories
blog * directories
rss * directories
Google will fill in the blanks based on authority and return a list of top domains that feature related searches based on the shingles (words) used in the query.
Or you can even search for
www directories or
www AND legal directories (just replace the word legal with your category).
If you just typed www into a Google search box, it would list the most powerful sites online in chronological order based on citation. By adding the word “directories” to it you are adding a modifier for the information retrieval parameter to lock on to and return relevant results.
Cut down scrolling time by using http://www.google.com/ie?&num=100 first to view 100 results at a time or just click your advanced options in Google and switch results to 100 (to view descriptions and meta snippets in addition to titles).
Then by context alone you can skim for relevant directories to add your website. Age, trust and authority are crucial elements here, not the submit your website to 1000 directories wild west approach.
Quality is the cornerstone of search engine result page longevity and combining this with deep links (links to specific pages) you can create buoyancy for pages nested deep under the surface in your website.
Another method is to add a modifier to the category such a:
legal directories AND deep links
*See example http://www.google.com/ie?q=legal+directories+AND+deep+links&hl=en&num=100&btnG=Search
Once again, replace your category in front of the word directories and see what the spiders have crawled and what is in the index as a potential link candidate.
Just replace the legal category with the one you are targeting to find the directories you are considering.
Next check to see if they are in Dmoz, Yahoo or Alexa and then check the PageRank of the homepage and sub category you are considering to determine crawl frequency and indexing.
If it hasn’t been crawled for a while, then it is more than likely penalized or the page suffers from link attrition and is not a good candidate for providing a link.
Also consider that the more links that are on the page, the smaller the percentage your site receives. Although you may not consider PageRank important, in this way, using it to assess crawl frequency and how much authority and citation a page has is not a bad idea.
Personally, I prefer using Majestic SEO to conduct a page level analysis of the AC rank (which is a much more straight forward metric), but to each their own.
Remember, as you develop your link profile, quality is better than quantity, so think before you link and remember, everything leaves a trail…
Happy directory hunting.
Those are some great tips for finding directories. I like to use Directory Critic to find different kinds of directories. Paid, free, niche, etc.
Great post! Thank you for this info!
excellent as ever, Jeff. amazingly, about 90% of seo;s don’t follow this method of qualitative linking and of the 10% left, most of them cannot be bothered to do it. that leaves some room for those who have studied AND that then action their knowledge.
@Ralph:
Thanks for sharing the link to Directory Critique, seems they have already put in the time to sort through directories and separate the wheat from the chaff, great resource…
@Double N, sure thing.
@James:
Appreciate the comments, search operators are indeed a magnificent thing when coupled with tact and purpose.
Google tells it how it is.
Thanks again and hope to see you all around.
Good tips information thanks for share it.
I am working in a SEO company. These tips will really help me in link Building and DirectoryThanks for sharing such tips here in this site.
Thanks for sharing the information. I was bored using the traditional link building strategy using directory submissions. I got to know some new and innovative method of link building after reading your blog. I look forward to some more new post from you regarding link building.
Great insights into link building via directories. I’ll definitely be adopting some of the methods you explained. One thing I’ve always found frustrating with link building is exchanging or paying for a link and never knowing if that link is still live months after I’ve received it.
I’d love to get your feedback on a tool that I created to help track your backlinks and automatically verify if the link is still live. It also tracks the PR of the linking page, contact info, price paid, anchor text, and more. The tool’s free, but requires a link to use it. It’s brand new, so I’d appreciate any feedback that anyone has. You can find it at http://www.BacklinkReporter.com.
In link building, finding what anchor text is linking to a page or site is really a mind boggling task. But with back link analyzers it becomes quite handy for our link building professionals to gather their competitor’s links.
Nice Tips for optmization our site.
Thank’s a lot
It’s a wonderful! easy to download
Good article. Here’s something that may also be useful – an excel spreadsheet with 500 directories arranged by pagerank and Alexa rank.
http://www.money-while-you-sleep.biz/freestuff/DirectoriesJan09.xls
Hi Guys is there a way to find all the middle east directories?
Very good post. I am facing some of these issues
as well..