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Friday, January 14, 2011

Is Directory Submission a Waste of Time?


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Blog-Directories Driving continuous flow of traffic to your blog is a wish that never seems to end. With the growing expansion of social media networks and creation of more advanced search engines, traditional methods of driving traffic to your blog is slowly loosing its importance. Indeed Blog directories that once flooded the blogosphere are loosing reputation considerably. Check your Google Analytics and discover it for yourselves that how much Traffic are these directories paying you in return for their reciprocal links and banners? I am sure the answer would not be a delightful one. So today we are going to remove all doubts regarding directory submission and will try to educate you all with something that may be worth trying.

 

Why Should You not Submit Your Blog to Blog Directories?

Following are some of my strong reasons against this tradition.

 

Reason #1

search_engine

When there is competition then quality service emerges by its own. Five years back Search engines were battling with one another to reach a status and today we finally have Google as an ever developing Search Engine that has turned out to be a multi million dollar company now. Before 2005 blog directories were trusted and often visited by all international traffic to find blogs of their interest and read the specific articles. But today what do you do when you have to find an answer to a problem? Of course you Google it. Who will in today’s hectic life would waste time navigating blog directories in order to read content of their interest.

Reason #2

Most Blog directories seem inactive and their service seem dead. Many exist today just by name with no active query service. You will have to wait for weeks in order to get something done. For instance I once submitted my blog to xyz.com (This anonymous directory has good PR and traffic but dead!) with my previous domain tnt-by-stc and when I changed to mybloggertricks. I requested them to kindly update my domain and months past but got no reply. I had to then remove my URL from the list.

Reason #3

Most of these directories share reciprocal links which means in order to submit your blog to them you will have to add their banner or link to your homepage. This surely benefits them but harms your search engine ranking. Its best when people link you. But when you link websites which are not in your niche, you simply flow your precious PR juice in waste!

Reason #4

Most Blog directories have no authority. Directories with PR<3 and with Alexa Rank> 100,000 itself have no proper traffic then how can it benefit you? Many of these directories have Alexa Rank in 132,000 which means they receive around 300-400 daily visitors.

Reason #5

Linking Directories and adding their banners on your homepages diverts your traffic and effects your PR. Ask yourself what impression do you get from blogs which have long list of ugly banners added on their sidebars? The first impression that you get is that “Man he is just a newbie!”

You blog needs a professional touch and your readers want a clean touch. Serve them with justice.

Do not be a Blind Blogger!

Blind Blogging

A good blogger is one who respects what others share but do not take things blindly. You should test what others are advising and examine if they really make some sense. Almost every tutorial on Blog Directories tell you that by submitting your Blog to one of them can boost your Traffic significantly. But your criteria of work should be such that you must always keep a good look at your Google Analytics and ensure if a particular Directory is bringing you some traffic. If they are bringing you one or five visitors a month then you must rethink your idea of submission and may give priority to what is more important.

Are All Directories not useful?

Well of course not. There are some directories where search engine robots love to crawl. They sometimes provide the biggest hits and do really contribute in building fair traffic. It can be accepted to some extent that well established Directories like DMOZ and Yahoo Directory do bless you with good PR and Traffic but then again the traffic even from these directories is temporary.

For newbie Bloggers Who wish to drive readers to their Blogs, I have shared below some Directories which can help you to some extent.

But again don’t add their widgets. Just add their code in your templates. Keep your template as clean as possible. Add only those widgets which the readers want and not those which makes your blog look like a Widgets Shop.

What is Alternative to Blog Directories?

search_engine_optimization

The answer is simple. Its all about better understanding the Search Engine crawling, indexing and ranking criteria more and more. In other words, do what Search robots love and stop what they hate. I may be sounding complicated here but my future posts on SEO will help you better understand how exactly are people getting several visitors a day by making use of their good optimization skills.

Optimizing your Blog is the easiest but the most significant thing when it comes to achieving your Online Goals. The only way to drive consistent and good traffic is to write what the current era demands and give more importance to Post titles, Post frequency and search engine likings. Simple but fact. I will write consecutive posts on SEO from today on wards. I will try my best to make this SEO term look more like eating chocolate for all of you. Things that will be required will be shared and those tips that never helped will surely be avoided.

That’s All!

Hope you may understand my point and may take mature steps in making your Blog a place where readers may find comfort. Do let me know about any interesting story that you may wish to share with all of us. Peace and blessings :)


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30 comments:

Comment Page :
Lucky Flaush on 10:58 PM, January 14, 2011 said... #

Damn! I have to remove all the links. Thanks for the tip! This is a confirmation of what I believed everytime, that this web directories are a waste of time.

Jeet Dholakia on 10:48 AM, January 15, 2011 said... #

Hello Mohammad
Great article and very useful because i also used to submit the blog to blog directories and ya i would like to ask you is "Blogtopsite" is good directory to submit or not?

samsexy98 on 10:58 AM, January 15, 2011 said... #

Excellent Excellent Excellent...

I can't believe that I removed those links without any hesitation after reading your article even though those links were not of blog directories...

I am eagerly waiting for your future SEO post so that I can optimize my site..

Thank you soooo verryy much....:)

sai on 1:45 PM, January 15, 2011 said... #

Dear Mohd,
This is very informative.Yes it was practiced a lot in last 3-4 years and was quite tiring and boring .Now google does it all.Thanks for bringing this info back with right explanation.Would look for next article.Thanks for your message yesterday .
Manisha

TAP on 6:29 PM, January 15, 2011 said... #

You are right about this Mohammed, i had tested many and as you said, they give us back just e few links. It has to be said that some of them are quite good, depends to the niche. I would also welcome when some PR3/4 >,who gets good traffic from PR0/1 gives some comments and traffic back in return to their fans and readers like they have received from them once, but this does not happen! It seems that many Bloggers with good PR have totally forgotten where they have been when they started to write a Blog, isn`t it true? Fair enough to mention this cause this looks quite selfish and egoistic, at least for me. Every Blog writer would be happy for some comments.
Thank you for this post

Beben on 7:56 PM, January 15, 2011 said... #

Announcemnet!!! hihihi...
nice tips my friend...keep posting \m/

Nrupen on 8:22 PM, January 15, 2011 said... #

Thanks for the tips man today i'll remove all those ugly banners.

Dav7 on 8:40 PM, January 15, 2011 said... #

these was something I was already thinking of doing.

great article, now I'm shore

Mohammad Mustafa Ahmedzai on 10:03 PM, January 15, 2011 said... #

I am glad that you all agreed and find it important to stop using things that are of no use anymore. I am sure this action will add a positive energy to your blogs. Best wishes to everyone.

@Sam
Appreciated that pal :> and don't you worry the posts will be published soon.

@Manisha
Always welcomed buddy :)

@TAP
I will agree with you. Fame and success should surely be shared rather showcased in prejudice. But I still know some good bloggers who still motivate and encourage their followers and friends with their work. After all there are blacks sheeps in every community. Bloggers enjoying comments and revenu without properly respecting the people who brought them to this stage can surely never make it in true terms. Best wishes with you dude.

Rahul Saigal said... #

Hello Mohd, firstly i must thank you for this blog...and it has really helped me in creating new ideas. I am a senior lecturer in college and for 4 months i am blogging in blogger platform. I also believe submission in directories is waste of time. Initially i did a lot of research and i did submitted my blog to 2-3 directories and thankfully i stopped continuing. I want to share some ideas too
- Post frequently and update with content which is not widely available. I generally share my articles in blog and i was surprised to see how google was actively crawling my blog.
- I believed, that if you want to make quality traffic, make a facebook page. I post frequently in facebook page and integrated with networked blogs
God bless you

anish on 12:20 AM, January 16, 2011 said... #
This comment has been removed by the author.
anish on 12:23 AM, January 16, 2011 said... #

Reason #3
even if we are linking to them we can add rel="external nofollow" to the links hence you will not loose any pr juice and google will not crawl the link.Am i correct.if not please reply

Mohammad Mustafa Ahmedzai on 4:31 AM, January 16, 2011 said... #

@Rahul

Its an honour to have a teacher amongst us bro. And The tips that you shared are indeed some of the most important steps in building up strong online hold. thanks for your precious views.

@Anish
They remove blogs from their listings if their links are tagged nofollow. They know it their job really well. :)

samsexy98 on 2:04 PM, January 16, 2011 said... #

I was wondering why blogger doesn't have something like WP which have a plug-in to SEO optimize the site..

Mohammad Mustafa Ahmedzai on 4:19 PM, January 16, 2011 said... #

@sam
Nothing is better than manual optimization. That wordpress is not very effective. It does what any person with basic knowledge can but it can't read your competitors mind.

Durga Dhungana on 4:56 PM, January 17, 2011 said... #

Thanks for the post. Yah i have always experienced the fact that the website directories always ask for backlinks and don't attempt to visit the site too.

I want to know clearly about SEO so please keep posting about these as soon as possible.

thanks

Amit MB on 7:48 PM, January 31, 2011 said... #

Thank you mohd. I find all your posts informative and interesting. But i was wondering that if i create a page of my favourite links, will that affect google bot crawling or my page rankings ?

Mohammad Mustafa Ahmedzai on 9:55 PM, January 31, 2011 said... #

@Durga

Most welcomed brother and thanks for acknowledging the fact.

@Amit

Thank you pal. Its a pleasure to help you people. Well yes it will effect your PR of that selected post badly but not the entire blog significantly. But if you add a rel="nofollow" tag to each link then it is completely safe. This is what we actually do when we have to add a long list of links.

samsexy98 on 10:22 PM, January 31, 2011 said... #

@Mohammad
Will it matter if the links are good like I have added your, Divya Sai and Abu Farhan's link on my blog..

Mohammad Mustafa Ahmedzai on 11:01 PM, January 31, 2011 said... #

@Sam

I any blog that you link to is beneficial for your site's rank if it comes under your niche i.e if that site shares a similar content as you do. since the blogs that you mentioned shares Blogger relates tutorials and you write on ebooks so there is no clear match. But I must say 2-3 links do surely not harm the optimization and especially if it links to PR>3 . So thats just ok and thanks in advance for adding mbt too. :)

samsexy98 on 2:51 PM, February 01, 2011 said... #

Hey why thanks in advance...???

I have added MBT and others when I started my blog (Around 2 months ago)..:)

Rohit Agarwal on 10:32 PM, February 02, 2011 said... #

Nice tips...

asif ali on 7:56 PM, June 11, 2011 said... #

god info for web master i like it and i try to follow up

sunshine on 10:57 PM, August 26, 2011 said... #

Update: MyBlogLog.com ceased to exist on May 24, 2011.

SpiritualPhilosopher on 9:06 PM, October 26, 2011 said... #

Very good post! I was fortunate enough not to fall for the link backs. I use the ones that require no link back. And I agree with you in that a page should look clean without being bombarded with too many adds and widgets. (smiles)

TONTON WAYANG ONLINE on 7:34 PM, December 18, 2011 said... #

thanks mohd. my blog having seo problem right now after the last google page rank recently. now im still looking the reason why and wanna solve that problem asap. any advice?

Newtricksandtips on 7:38 PM, January 01, 2012 said... #

Great post

TJ on 10:53 AM, January 27, 2012 said... #

nice post,i m now following this and had removed the directories banner from y blog(http://drivesinindia.blogspot.com)

Nickolei Angeles on 10:57 AM, May 10, 2012 said... #

Directory submission designed to help the site, so it has a good effects. Although as what you mentioned above, some directories don't have proper traffics, the advantage on this technique is that, you can gain back links that one of the crawlers consider too.
link building services

Stephen on 3:35 PM, May 11, 2012 said... #

Directory Submissions are still working today, they are not useless which is good for SEO. Though some directory sites are inactive but still they are working.

Seo Philippines

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Mohammad

 

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