4 reasons to avoid directory submission services

By: Julie Pelletier

History

Early times

Directories have existed since the very beginning of the web as a way to allow people to easily locate businesses and services they were looking for. This structure existed before search engines themselves and wasn't new when the web was born.

Directories were already present on the web's predecessor: gopher. So the switch to the WWW standard wasn't that hard, even at the time, especially since everyone able to publish a document online at the time had more than sufficient technical knowledge to do it.

When WWW became known to the general public

As soon as it became obvious there was a trend for the general public to use the WWW, many developpers started to focus on ways to make the information easily accessible to non-technical users. This resulted in dozens of search engines that were relatively inefficient, but still allowed to search for information online.

Search engine evolution

Because of the vast amount of sites to index, even at the early beginning of the web, most search engines relied on directories to try and organize the sites they listed. The big ones, still known today, developped their own directory and encouraged every website owner to submit their site to it.

After a while, though, the directory owners started noticing an acute quality drop in the submissions they received. Submissions were increasing exponentially while quality was clearly going downwards, which is why they started looking for more advanced ways of evaluating the sites directly.

Even though directories were still more than useful for new sites to get known to their search engines, new algorithms were put in place to rate the sites listed. Of those, keyword analysis, link counts and link relevance became the basis of search engines as we know them today.

Through time, search engine giants developped ways to make money with their technology, which allowed them to purchase and develop huge systems that could allow them to spider most of the web reasonably.

Are directories still useful today?

Although most end users won't even look at directories today, they still have their place for web site owners to get their site known. The main reason for this is the way search engines rank a site.

A directory will not only provide a link to the website, but it will also be relevant to the category it's located in. These will consequently have a positive impact on the search engines' rankings for those keywords.

If directory submissions are still good for SEO, then why shouldn't we use submission services?

As search engines improved their ranking algorithms, they noticed that some website owners used different tactics to get unjustified rankings, which brings us to the hearth of the subject.

Here are the 4 reasons why submission services shouldn't be used:

• 1 - Repetitive content: Since the description submitted to all directories is the same, search engines will detect this and it will lower the link's relevance.


• 2 - Unnatural linking: Because of spammers, search engines were improved to detect those and to penalize them when they got flagged. For this reason, multiple simultaneous submissions, even different in content, will have a negative impact.


• 3 - No guarantee that your site will be listed: As you know, placing your name on a list is in no way a guarantee that it will ever be considered. People who submit your site to directories can in no way guarantee how the third party will react.


• 4 - Category relevance: In order to automate or simplify the task, automatic submissions are sent to more general categories, so keyword relevance between the category and your site will be diminished.

Conclusion

Based on what we covered, advertising in directories is good, but care and time should be taken to make each submission a quality one. Try to vary in the presentation and make sure to place submit your link in the most appropriate category.

If you want to get a quick quality link, you can submit your site to our new directory: Juzaz Directory. We promise a quick response to your submission on our human edited SEO directory

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