Free SEO Articles

Submitting to directories has always been an important technique for off site SEO.  However, over the last 18 months several measures seem to have been introduced to prompt renewed awareness when submitting to directories for offsite SEO purposes.

Back in the good old days, as little as 12 months ago, it was possible to compete on mid- to low-high competitive keywords/keyphrases by simply performing a sustained directory submission run of about 1200 directories using your particular keyword/keyphrase as the link anchor.  Within 1-2 weeks you’d be starting to show in the SERPs for your keyword, and usually within a further 2 weeks would see progress in the SERPs.

However, things have changed. Google have wised up to the idea.  It seems the above method still does have an effect, however not the resounding impact it once had, and the effects are temporal. Unless the directory in question has some clout (that is, shows signs of being ‘valued’ by Google by frequently updated cache data etc.) these links soon disappear off the radar.

These days, directory submissions seem to be more about quality than quantity. Gaining a link from a dozen quality directories over the space of 4-6 months seems to be a better time investment than 1200 links from relatively nondescript directories.

If you do wish to perform the former method of bulk submissions, then submitting at a sustained rate over a prolonged period seems to offer up the best results; for example, 50 directories per week for a year rather than 1500 over a two week period.

Although they still have their place in the SEO arsenal, as the paradigm of SE algorithms has shifted from quantity to quality of backlinks, link directories are now less relevant method of increasing SERPs.

There are a good many sites on the internet that can be used to get free links.  However, one group that is often overlooked is the traffic evaluation type sites.

Recently, I made a small survey of blogs in a particular niche to see who is linking back to them.  Although all sites had an array of inbound links from a broad range of sites, there was a common strand among them all.  They were all listed on a series of “site/traffic/worth evaluation sites” – see the list below.

In order to get the links you simply visit the site and type in your domain.

Here is a list of such sites:

http://www.statbrain.com/
http://www.cubestat.com/
http://www.aboutus.org/
http://www.sitedossier.com/
http://www.thepagerank.net/
http://www.siteadvisor.com/analysis/
http://www.websiteoutlook.com/
http://hindi.avadhwebs.com/
http://www.similarsites.com/
http://www.hotaweb.com/
http://www.sitelogr.com/
http://www.talkreviews.com/

If you can add to this list, then please post below.