Who uses the Yellow Pages Nowadays?
In the old days, businesses would place ads in the newspapers and the Yellow Pages knowing that a small fraction of people would see their ads and take action. The key to this model working was to get as many sets of eyeballs on their ads as possible. Nowadays, with online marketing, we know that we can convert better than traditional marketing, however, the challenge is getting people to look at our sites. Simply having a website isn’t going to drive traffic. You must produce quality content consistently and establish credible links to your site in order to move up the search rankings and be more visible to your potential customers. One great way of establishing credible links is through an online directory submission.
Online directories are the equivalent to the yellow pages except online directories don’t charge you outrageous prices and people actually use these ads. Directories are websites where you can request a paid, reciprocal, or even a free link to your website, and these websites are then displayed by category, and it is this categorization that makes these online directories quality (oh, and free) backlinks for your site. The following are tips on how to improve your SEO with an online directory submission plan:
Online Directory Submission Tips | Comply with all guidelines
You don’t want to be kicked off a link generating directory, so the first and most basic online directory submission tip is to follow the guidelines. Since you’re receiving a quality link with in the category of your choice with the keyword(s) and text of your choice, the least you can do is comply with the sites’ rules and regulations.
Online Directory Submission Tips | Interior (or deep) link when possible
We started out with the part about complying with all guidelines because while a deep link can be beneficial, it can also violate some terms and conditions of some directories. Getting a link to an interior page that is properly linked will greatly help improve your search ranking results.
Online Directory Submission Tips | Unique e-mail for directories
This next one of our online directory submission tips is solely for convenience. When submitting an e-mail address for these online directories, create a generic e-mail solely for these directories. Your spam intake will be greatly reduced.
Online Directory Submission Tips | Choose your category wisely
Be wise and be patient are two of my online directory submission tips that you must heed for best success, because submitting this same info to 40 different sites can become tedious. Unfortunately, one of the first area that people lose patience on is the category, and the category selection is probably the most important part of this process. Picking the right category and being as specific as possible in that category is the biggest difference between this strategy being a success or a failure.
Online Directory Submission Tip | Title tips
Keep your title short, sweet, and to the point. The longer the title, the less impact on SEO. Online directory submission tip number two on this subject is to vary the title and text from online director to online directory, as this variance helps with SEO. While these fickle search engines encourage getting more links than your competition, they get suspicious when the titles and texts are all the same.
Online Directory Submission Tip | Summary
The above online directory submission tips can take a long time and be a bit tedious, but if you spread out the project over 30 days, it’s really quite simple. By spending 5-10 minutes a day submitting to 1-2 online directories at a time, you can add an additional 500-750 free backlinks per year. By simply following the above online directory submission tips, you can get over 500 free advertisements for your website!