Why Submit to Directories
- Drive targeted traffic
- Build link popularity
Directory Submission Tips
- Firstly, read the directory’s submission guidelines
- Include your keywords in the title, but the site name should come at the beginning of the title. For example, for this site, I will use the title: Seo Hungry – Seo Tips. I also like to rotate titles and descriptions, so after submitting to say ten directories, I will use the title Seo Hungry – Seo Techniques.
- In the site description tab, write a short description of your site. Include some keywords, but make sure that the description is accurate. Don’t write things like ‘the best site in the world’ etc in the description. Also, make sure it is readable!
- Most directories have a keyword tab. In this, just list the 4-5 most important keywords. Don’t repeat keywords.
- Choose the right category – this is probably the most important. You should choose the most specific category to your site. For example, this site can go into the webmaster category, but if there was a seo category, I would choose that category, as it is more specific. If two categories suit your site equally, then choose the one which has less links in it, or the one with higher pr.
- Make sure that you titles, descriptions etc sound genuine and not spammy, and that they are free from spelling errors.
- Rather than automatic submissions to tons of low quality directories, do manual or semi-automatic submissions to the top directories. Submitting to 100 quality directories is better than submitting to 1000 low quality spammed directories.
- Submit to niche directories. They drive decent traffic, and give you relevant backlinks, which are more valuable in link juice terms.
- I generally only submit to directories which do not require reciprocal links. I don’t think it is worth it submitting to a directory requiring a reciprocal link, as the value of the link you give to it is probably more than the link juice you are getting from the directory!
- Always use a valid email when submitting to directories, as some directories send a confirmation mail, before adding your site.
- Keep track of your submissions. I keep an excel file, with a list of the directories I have submitted to, and whether or not my site has been added to the directory. This saves you time, as you avoid submitting to the same directory again and again.
And now, the most important tip:
Use RoboForm
It has a free version, and is extremely easy to use. It makes the process of directory submission a lot easier.
- Simply download it, create a new identity and click on setup form filling.
- Now look at a normal directory submit page.
As you can see, you need to fill in Title, Name, Email, URL, Description, and Category.
- For the first three, go to the person tab, and fill them in. For the title field, you will need to click on unlisted, after which you will be allowed to enter a custom value.
- Now go to the custom tab. And set it up, as shown below.
Additionally, create a field called reciprocal link, and leave the field value blank.
- Now click on save and close. Your form-filler is now set up, and your identity has been created.
- Now, just go to the submit page, and click on your identity name, and it will fill it up for you.
Thats about all the tips I have. If you do have any tips on directory submissions you would like to share, feel free to do so via the comments section. Soon, I will be posting the list of directories I submit to.
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The Basic Process:
- Register for accounts on relevant dofollow forums which allow links in the signature.
- Add links to your site in the signature.
- Post in the forum threads. Each post results in backlinks to your site.
The Forum Posting Process in Detail:
- Find Relevant Forums. Do this by either:
- Using Google. Use one of the following search phrases:
- “your niche keyword” + forum
- “your niche keyword” inurl:forum
- vbulletin your niche keyword
- phpbb your niche keyword
- inurl:showthread.php your niche keyword
- inurl:viewtopic your niche keyword
- “your niche keyword” and then click on show options>forums
- Browsing through Bigboards, a forum directory.
- Using Google. Use one of the following search phrases:
- Check to make sure that the forum allows dofollow links in signatures - Do this by going to a thread, and checking whether the signature links are dofollow using easyComment. For a guide on using easyComment, read this post. In case your are doing forum posting for traffic, this step doesn’t matter. In that case, look for large forums, which are very active.
- Join the forum and Fill in your profile – Add an avatar, a short bio and add links to your site in the signature.
- Stay involved in the forum – Make a couple of posts a week. Each post earns you backlinks to your site, and should result in some traffic to the links when visitors click on them.
Use of Forum Posting
- Forum Posting does help with seo, but it doesn’t bring about too drastic results. This is because most forums have serious SEO issues such as, ugly URLs, duplicate content, too many outgoing links, etc.
- Forum Posting is great for driving targeted traffic to your site.
Forum Posting Tips:
- Be Human! Make relevant replies to threads. Share your opinions.
- Follow the rules of the forum.
- Dont Spam. Make insightful posts, as 10 quality posts are better than 100’s of one-liners. The quality posts will receive attention, and will result in more click-throughs. Also, the one-liners could get deleted and could result in you being labeled as a spammer and banned.
- Read and reply to the sticky threads. They generally have high pr, and they are viewed frequently, so the chances of traffic increase.
- Be polite, grammatically correct, and try to solve others doubts. This helps increase your reputation in the forum and helps you get branded as a “guru”, which should result in more click-throughs to your site.
- Make sure you signature link’s anchor text is rich in keywords, and is compelling, so that people want to click on them. Also, if possible style them, so that they stand out.
- Another good way to get links and traffic is, if you have written an article relevant to a forums topic, to start a new thread in the forum, with a summary of your article, and then saying: “to read the complete article visit here.”
Also, you can look for dofollow forum lists to make your job easier. Check this, this and this. I don’t know how accurate they are, though I will try compiling a list in the future.
Thats about it. I hope you found this post helpful. Please feel free to ask any questions and share your input via the comments. If you found this post helpful, please share it through your favorite social networking sites.
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- Directory submission - Quite simple, just submit your website to free and paid, general and niche directories.
- Social Bookmarking – Simply bookmark your articles and site in various social bookmarking sites. I tend to just stick to the top ten – fifteen bookmarking sites.
- Build A Network Of Websites And Interlink Them – Be careful to host them on different ips, and keep the interlinking random, rather than following a fixed pattern, so that search engines don’t realize that you are trying to manipulate the results. A network of sites linked together is also known as a linkwheel.
- Article Marketing – Write keyword rich articles, and submit them to article directories, including links to your site in the author bio.
- Build a theme / template for used scripts - Build a wordpress theme or the like, and include a link to your site in the footer. If you don’t know how to do this, you can just buy footer links in themes. These themes are released to the public generally for free, and each time someone uses them on their site, you get a link to your site.
- Post on forums that allow you tho have a signature – You can also choose your desired anchor text, and since these links are visible in every post you make on the forum, you should be able to build a large number of links quickly.
Covered in detail in Building Links from Forums - Leave Comments On Blogs -Find relevant dofollow blogs and comment on them. These will get you backlinks related to your niche, with your desired anchor text.
Covered in Building Backlinks from Blogs. - Write Good Testimonials – By writing and submitting testimonials to websites that you have previously purchased products or services from, you can get high-quality links to your site.
- Buy Links – If buying links, buy links from high pr related sites. Also make sure to include your keywords in the anchor text.
- Link Exchange - Exchange links with similar sites, and sites having high pr. Make your the anchor text contains your keywords. Building reciprocal links isn’t the best method, so keep this to a minimum.
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]]>As you all know or might have heard, Google and other search engines give .edu links more weight, as .edu sites belong to educational institutions which and thus are generally authoritative and trusted sites.
How to get .edu links?
Most educational sites allow and even encourage students and professors to blog, usually giving them a sub domain on the universities website. These blogs are the basis of building one way backlinks from .edu websites. All you need to do is, find these blogs, and comment on them, thus earning a .edu back link.
How to find these Blogs:
Here is the process of finding these blogs.
- Go to www.google.com
- Type in the following in your search bar
site:.edu inurl:blog
This tells google to return all .edu sites, which have the term blog in their url. Basically, this returns all blogs whose domain extension is .edu. As you can see, there are about 1,200,000 results. You will want to trim the fat.The problem with some of these blogs are that you are not allowed to post a comment, and incase of some blogs, comments are closed, or you need to be registered to post a comment. We will want to remove all such blogs. How do we do this? Well, adding “post a comment”, will remove all those blogs where you are not allowed to post a comment. then adding a parameter: minus and “comments closed” will remove all those blogs where comments are closed, then adding another parameter: a minus and “you must be logged in” will remove all those blogs where comments can only be made by registered users. Your search query should look something like this :
site:.edu inurl:blog “post a comment” -”comments closed” -”you must be logged in”
This will tell Google to return all blogs on .edu sites that you can post comments on. As you can see, this has narrowed it down to 180,000 results. - If you want even targeted results, just append you niche to the end of the search query, in double quotes. For example, if my niche is seo, the query will look like this:
site:.edu inurl:blog “post a comment” -”comments closed” -”you must be logged in” “seo”
This result will give you targeted .edu blogs. In this example, appending the keyword has given 265 results.All you need to do is comment on them, and you will earn a backlink.
Other Tips:
- Post relevant comments, which add to the value of the post. Unrelated comments will be moderated out.
- Do not spam on these blogs.
- I know that most of these links are nofollow and do not help, but if you go through a couple of pages, I am sure you will find at least a couple of websites which are dofollow and pass link juice.
That is about it. Now go on, and build some .edu backlinks. If you liked this post, please bookmark it at your favorite sites. You might want to subscribe to my blog as well.
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]]>Basic process:
- Setting up the tools of the trade
- Find high PR blog posts on relevant blogs
- Comment on Blog Posts
Step 1: Setting up the Tools of the Trade
Download these plugins for Firefox, which will make your life way easier:
- SEO Quake : This is used to find Relevant high PR blog post pages.
- easyComment : This is used to make your job of commenting easier.
- NoDofollow : This is used to check if the page is dofollow or not.
Once this is done, you need to set your preferences for easyComment. To do this, right click on easyComment (found in the bottom right of your browser) and select Preferences and fill the form(shown below). Now you are good to go.
Step 2: Finding Relevant Do Follow Blogs(Using Google)
I will be posting many more methods for finding Dofollow Blogs, here is one method for now.
- Go to www.google.com
- Enter any one of the following into your search bar
- “powered by wordpress” “your niche” “leave a comment”
- “Remember my personal information” “your niche” “Notify me of follow-up comments”
Example: “powered by wordpress” “seo” “leave a comment”
For more results, experiment a bit, typing your niche after and before of the two phrases.
Example: “your niche” “powered by wordpress” “leave a comment” or “powered by wordpress” “leave a comment” “your niche”
- Click on the sort PR button to sort the results according to Pagerank.
- Now visit the pages. Before commenting, check whether they are dofollow or nofollow. To do this, simply right click on the page and click on noDofollow. This makes all the dofollow links turn bluish and the nofollow ones turn red. Now check the comments already on the page and see if the name is colored red or gray. If red, leave the page as the links are nofollow. If grey, the links are dofollow.
Step 3: Commenting on the Blog Posts
- Once you find a dofollow blog, All you need to do is comment on it, putting your website link in the website part of the form, and your anchor text in your “name”.
- If you do not want your comments to be deleted, Read the blog post and Post relevant, insightful comments pertaining to the topic.
- Do Not Spam! Comments like “nice post” etc which are obviously made to get backlinks, will definitely be deleted.
- You can use easyComment to fill the Name, Email, Website form for you, saving you some precious seconds by just left-clicking on the easyComment button on the bottom right of Firefox, but do not use it to fill the comment form. For that read the post and post an appropriate comment, either adding some valuable information or maybe asking a query or something of that sort.
Hope you enjoyed this post. If you did, please link to this post, and bookmark it at your favorite social bookmarking sites. Feel free to leave a comment.
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