Per our previous blog, on Link Building Basics, building links, inbound links, or back-links to your website and/or blog are key to building search authority and improving rank in search engine results pages (SERPs). Advanced link building includes submitting your website, blog, articles and white papers, and news releases to online directories to achieve links. This blog shares top link building submission options for different types of content.
Website Directory Submission
In addition to submitting your XML sitemap to search engines, it is equally important to submit your website to various web directories to build links. Here we’ll cover the top website directory submission sites we’ve used, including paid and unpaid.
Top 3 Web Directory Submission Sites (PAID):
- Yahoo Directory – The Yahoo directory is the best paid option for submitting your website. Cost: $299 per year
- Business.com – Business.com is a great paid option, also a little pricy but worth looking at. Cost: $299 per year
- Best of The Web – Best of the Web is a cheaper option for a paid directory and is quite popular. Cost: $149.95 per year
Top 3 Web Directory Submission Sites (UNPAID):
- All The Websites – Allthewebsites.org has been around for some time and is one of the top free directories that hasn’t switched to paid yet.
- IllumiRate – Illumirate is a top free directory, but does take time for your listing to be verified.
- ExactSeek – ExactSeek requires membership in order to add your URL to their directory.
A Note on DMOZ:
In an effort to figure out whether DMOZ, the largest free directory on the internet, still allows users to submit their URL, we did some quick analysis of the DMOZ site. It is true that you need to literally dig through the categories until you find a place that best fits your website. We found that News/Weblogs is still taking submissions because we were able to see the “suggest URL” on the top right of the page. Keep in mind that DMOZ is extremely strict in which websites it accepts into its directory. In the past, when submitting client sites, we’ve noticed that it is really “hit or miss” when it comes to your site being approved. This is why we’ve taken it off of the top free web directory listings as it works for some, but not others. DMOZ does seem to influence search results a bit, so if you can get your website listed, we applaud you!
Blog Submission as a Link Building Strategy
When submitting your blogs, be sure to check out the site. While it isn’t preferable to join sites that require you to add code to your website, in some instances this is okay – especially with blog submission sites like Technorati, where adding a “token” is only temporarily needed. Below we’ll cover the top 3 blog submission sites we’ve used based on experience.
Top 3 Blog Submission Sites:
Technorati – Technorati is a very well known blog submission site. However, they have a tedious submission process. You must create a profile and then you are allowed to “claim” your blog. When doing this, Technorati will ask you to provide your feed link (rss feed burner), your facebook page link, your twitter link, and any blog profiles you know of that link to your blog currently. This shows how important it is to connect all of your social profiles, website, and blog! You will need to put a small code within a blog post, have Technorati check that it exists, and only upon approval can you then remove that token.
Blog Search – BlogSearch.com allows you to quickly submit your blog and confirm that you are the owner through an email verification process. Upon verification, they will review your blog and add it to the category you chose. The submission process takes under a minute!
Blog Catalog – Blog Catalog is another great blog submission site that requires you to validate your account through email before submitting your blog. Then, you can add your blog through your profile. A positive aspect of Blog Catalog is that there are a ton of categories to choose from to make sure you submit your blog to the most relevant listing. You will be required to verify your blog through adding Blog Catalog’s link somewhere on your home page (you can do the footer if you do not want it overly visible).
There are hundreds of other blog submission sites. Keep searching for ones that work well for you.
Article Submission as a Link Building Strategy
When submitting your articles to article submission sites to build links, it is extremely important to provide original content created by you or your company.
Top 3 Article Submission Sites:
Ezine – Ezine is a great site to submit your white papers and articles to. Membership is free and you create a profile as a person, not an organization. So, if you are the person who writes for you company, be sure to sign up as yourself. In your profile, you can connect your Twitter, Facebook, Google, YouTube, and LinkedIn accounts, which is great if you are trying to build a link relationship back to your website. Search engines can recognize that you are the original author of the content and give you authority in search results. It is important to follow all the steps Ezine outlines in generating article content. They will contact you if your first submission does not pass all of the guidelines and allow you to go back multiple times to fix it. Below is an example of the statistics page Ezine gives you to check on how many visits your articles have received:
Articlesbase – Articlesbase is the easiest and quickest article submission site to submit your articles and they get back to you about whether or not your articles have been approved quickly. Like all article submission sites, this one offers statistics on the number of times someone has viewed your article. Notably, they have a keywords performance, like Google Analytics, that shows you what people searched to arrive at your article.
Yahoo! Voices – Yahoo! Voices is the most strict article submission site. It is difficult to get your article or white paper submitted to this site as they seem to be a “three strikes you’re out” type of site. So, make sure that your article follows all of their guidelines and is practically flawless in errors. They only give you two chances to resubmit your article and will then reject it if you do not pass the test. If you can get your article submitted to this site, it will certainly help you in search.
White Paper Submission as a Link Building Strategy
To further build links, we recommend submitting your white papers to the above three article submission sites in addition to white paper-specific resources listed below:
Edocr – Edocr is a great site for generating leads from your white papers. It allows you to submit, for free, up to 5 documents of your choice, title them and give them a description. In addition, you can view who has looked at your white papers and commented on them. If your business has many white papers, you may consider upgrading to their paid options.
Compliance Home – Compliance Home is a regulatory white paper submission site that allows you to submit white papers quickly after you sign up as a member. Keep in mind that this is a regulatory whitepaper submission site and good for construction firms that have various resources and regulation documents to post.
PR and Newswire Submission Sites and Directories
It’s very important to get out your press releases to various newswire sites. For more information and a list of newswire services, read the post on The Newest Rules of PR: Distribution Options. See why services like PRWeb, BusinessWire and PRNewswire are the top 3 PR services.
Additional Link Submission Tips
As you submit to website, blog, article and white paper submission sites, and PR directories, be sure to avoid link farms and robot linking. It is detrimental to submit your sites to link farms in order to gain more back-links to your website. Google frowns upon this and the links, while high in quantity, will not be good quality links. Also avoid sites that claim they have robots to build your links for you – these are ways to hurt your website’s authority in search results. Overall, if someone tells you that they can cut the amount of time you spend in link building quickly and cut down your marketing with “too-good-to-be-true” offers, they are lying to you.
A Note on Inbound Links, or Back-links, To Your Website
Inbound links, or back-links, are incoming links to your website. It’s important to have other sites on the web point to your website, blog, social profiles, etc. Why? Because it adds to your search authority and allows search engines to see that others are giving you credit for being a good reference. Keep in mind, however, that there are inbound links that could hurt you: these could be links from “spammy” websites or sites that search engines deem “low authority.” Likewise, if you’ve signed up for link farms, where you pay a site to generate hundreds of inbound links to your site, you risk lowering your search authority because search engines see that these low quality sites are linking to you. Curious to see which sites are linking to you? Try Open Site Explorer from SEOMoz.
You want to link to sites that are related to yours and will provide an additional resource for your audience. For example, as the Construction Marketing Association, we link to the AMA and BMA because we know that those are other associations you may be interested in. It most certainly helps if you can get major authoritative sites like this to link back to you to generate reciprocal links, mentioned in our blog on Link Building Basics, yet this does take some more work. Often you will have to contact the organization or business and ask if they are willing to link to your site because you think your site would provide an additional source of information for their customers/audience.
Be sure to share this post with others who are interested in submitting their website, blog, or articles to submission sites and directories. Have you found an article submission site or web directory that you find very useful? Share your findings with us in the comment box below!
Excellent article on link building. It definitely isn’t what it used to be. And the advice on automatic link building services is spot on. Stay away from them!
Directory submissions are definitely important for online businesses. Many directories out there have a high Google PageRank, so getting these types of links will help solidify your rankings for major keywords and certainly help with search engine visibility. DMOZ is a great one because it is free, but it can take as long as 6 months for your site to get approved. However, DMOZ is big for SEO. Very helpful article 🙂
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