As most of you know, directories are a well organized collection of websites/blogs/forums that make it easier for users to find websites related to different content. Each link on a directory includes a short description of the website. Some directories also like to include traffic details and PageRank.Submitting your websites and blogs to directories is a good way to get some backlinks and is recommended by many. Some also consider it a reasonable way to increase traffic. But is this really true? And if it is then is it actually worth the trouble? Should webmasters submit their websites to all the directories?
There are generally three types of directories: Free, Paid and Both. Free directories accept all links for free. Some directories may not ask you for money but may require you to add a reciprocal link to their directory on your website. Paid directories require you to pay to get your link approved. There are also other directories that are a combination of Free and Paid directories. They accept links for free as well as for money. You can pay to have your link listed as a featured link and thus gain more exposure.
Ideally, directories are supposed to provide you with useful backlinks and act as a relevant source of traffic but you rarely see that happen. Webmasters usually consider two factors before submitting their site to a directory: PageRank and Traffic. Does the directory have a high Pagerank and does it get a lot of traffic? Having a link on a directory with high PageRank and traffic can help improve your website's PageRank and can help you get traffic to your site.
However, it is not as simple as that and usually webmasters end up getting very less link juice (PageRank benefit) and traffic from directories. What are the reasons?
- PageRank - Eventhough some directories may have high PageRank for their homepage, their innerpages, where your link will be placed, rarely have any PageRank. Thus, your website's PageRank does not get much boost.
- Traffic - Ideally, whenever someone needs to find a website, they should go to directories and surf through the different categories. But who does that now? We have search engines to digg up websites for us without wasting any time. Thus, it is highly possible that your site won't get much traffic from directories because not many people visit them to look for websites.
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Some Useful Links:
Google in your language - Google Blog
You are not spam - Blogger Buzz
Search quality, continued - Google Blog
More Transparency in Customized Search Results - Google Blog
A picture isn't always worth a thousand words - Inside Adsense
Submission to directories is still the easiest way of getting one way free links. Anytime you can go online submit on few directories. Although a single directory submission would not bear much value, unless its related, doing bunch of submissions over the time will pay off. Just my opinion.
On the other side of the directory issue is this question: would a directory be a good thing to turn your website into if you want to make money with it?
You made a good article.
good way to get PR to submit Directory, Blogs, forum....
I agree with the methods in getting a higher PR, also one can also try Social Bookmarking as well. This method helps a lot when it comes to generating higher PageRank to our site.