Directory Submissions vs. Link Building

Directory Submission and Link Building are two closely related terms in the Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) world. Link Building is the process of creating good number of quality back links to improve the visibility of a site. And Directory Submission is the most popular link building method that many of the SEOs recommend.

The quality of a link determines its value. A good quality link comes from a relevant webpage. The better, if the linking text is some relevant keyword. In addition, the popularity of the linking site adds to the link value. Link building through directory submission is an effective method to gain such high quality inbound links for your site.

Let us now see the significance of link building and directory submission in Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).

Link Building

Link Building is an off-page SEO technique to improve the visibility of a web page. It is the process that contributes a website few good number of back links. The process of link building is extremely tedious, but the effects are tremendous.

It requires thorough research on the web to filter out the link positions (places) that gives the maximum link value for your site. This could be a web directory, article directory or another website in the same niche.

Directory Submission

Directory submission is an easy way to gain a quality back link. In this, you submit the links to an online directory to the relevant category (or a sub category if it exists). You get a one-way link once the site owner approves the submission.

The quality of the link is high as it comes from a relevant web page. In addition, the ability to use relevant anchor text while linking adds more to the value of a single back link.

Directory Submission vs. Link Building

Let us now compare link building and directory submission:

Link Quality – Link Building focuses on diversifying your incoming links. The links come from relevant web pages and so the quality of links is relatively high. But, you need to ensure that the linking web pages are SEO friendly, otherwise there is no link value even if it is listed in a popular web page.

Directories are web pages that list related web sites. The relevance of the linking page and a relevant linking text makes the directory links of good quality. Submitting to niche directories is even more beneficial as the relevancy is higher than general directories.

Easiness - The link building process is very tough. Here you have to communicate to the web master if he is interested in sharing the link and also you have to track the process.

On the other hand in directory submission, you just need to submit the URL and wait for the web master’s approval. It is an easy method that gives immense number of good quality back links in least time.

Speed – Link building processes are extremely slow. Filtering out relevant web pages (that could possibly link you) requires a lot of time.

Directory submission is easy for all kind of sites due to categorization of topics. Getting a link from a relevant category in a web directory is faster than from a relevant web page on the web.

Link Approval Rate – Not every webmaster may be keen in sharing a link. So out of the hundred tries you may get only 10 links through link building.

Where as, the success rate in directory submission is comparatively high. The directory submission experts can easily guarantee an approval rate as high as 70%. They know what works and how to appeal to directory editors. Of course that does not meant you can get high approval rate for a low quality website.

Tracking – In link building, the links reside in different web pages of various sites. Hence tracking the links may not be easy.

But for directory submission you can easily follow up the link approval. Just by managing a list of the directories, you can easily track the rate of link population.

Cost Involved – Some link building methods (example- paid links and manual link building) require you to buy links that can be really expensive.

Directory submissions on other hand is the most affordable link building method.

Stable Links – Reciprocal linking is a popular link building method. But there is no assurance that they will keep the link for the agreed time period.

For directory submission the links stay forever once your site is listed. It is an easy method of getting long lasting one-way links.

Pre-requisites – Link building often requires good labor. For example, article submission requires you need to have a bunch of high quality articles.

Directory submission is the only link building method that can be done with just the URL and a little know how of the topic.

Indexing – There is no guarantee in link building that a few links can speed up the indexing of your site. It is assured only if the linking sites are highly popular and are already indexed.

Directories are the starting point for the search bots to start crawling. Being listed in SEO friendly directories ensures that your web site is indexed in short time.

Directory submission is surely the easiest of all link-building methods and the effects are remarkable. There is no doubt, why SEO folks still treat submitting links to directories as the first step in web promotion of a website.