Marketing Your Site Via Website Directory Listings and Article Directory Submissions

I’ve been submitting my websites to directories since the early days of the web when Yahoo was nothing more than the world’s best directory. Over time, the value of being listed in directories has waxed and waned many times, but at least some value (no matter how small) has always existed. In its heyday, being listed in tons of directories meant getting tons of backlinks to your site, which was a pretty easy way to rank well in Google and other search engines. Those days are gone, unfortunately. It takes much more than directory submissions to rank well now, but that doesn’t mean that there’s no reason at all to submit to directories.

Don’t Miss Marketing Opportunities

Any chance you have of spreading the word about your site should be taken. Smart marketers never miss an opportunity and you shouldn’t either. You never know when one incredibly influential person might stumble over a link to your site, fall in love with your site, and suddenly send a flood of traffic to it by mentioning it on his or her blog or social media stream.

Of course, you do need to consider whether or not your time could be better spent doing something else, so if submitting your site to directories takes up so much time as to outweight the potential benefits, then you’re probably losing the benefits you’d hoped to gain.

Automate Processes, Not Content

So when people ask me if they should submit to directories, I always say yes, but I add a caveat: “Yes, submit to directories, but don’t spend too much time on the task. Automate as much of the process as possible to free up your time for other important marketing tasks.”

Some people cringe when they hear the word “automate”, as they immediately envision black hat spammers evilly autogenerating content in their sleep, polluting the web in the process. That’s definitely not what I’m talking about, so please don’t even go there in your minds. Processes should be automated where possible, not content.

The Tool I’ve Used For Over Four Years

So here’s how I’ve been automating the process of submitting to directories for over four years now. I use a tool called SubmitEaze that gives me the most flexibility I’ve found to reduce the time need to submit to directories. Every now and then I forget to use it, and when I remember again later (usually when an email arrives telling me about some new feature of the software), I kick myself for having put it aside for so long. (Hey, I’m human, and stuff gets lost in the daily flow just like it does for everyone).

I’ve actually reviewed SubmitEaze a few times in the past, beginning way back in January, 2006. You can read those reviews here, here, here and here. I haven’t reviewed it lately, however, and there’s been a ton of great new features since the last time I did, over two years ago. So, here’s an updated review of the product. (And no, this is not a paid review, nor were any of the ones I’ve done over the years).

Not Just Site Directories – Article Directories Too

The biggest new feature in the last two years has been the ability to not only submit to directories really easily, but to also submit articles to article directories as well. Article marketing is a step up in the marketing chain for several reasons.

1. You aren’t just giving a brief title and description of your site; you’re supplying an entire article about your site’s niche topic, with links back to your site in the author bio – and on top of that – you are authorizing anyone to use that content on their own sites, as long as they also include your bio (with links intact). This not only spreads the word to the article directories themselves, but potentially to many other individual sites who reuse the article as well.

2. Some article directories have a fair amount of influence in the search rankings, so you can potentially get fairly easy rankings for the articles. True, the ranking is a secondary effect, since the directory is ranking instead of your site, but the visitor still gets a chance to find your site, when they might not otherwise.

So to be able to use a tool that makes the task easier of submitting your site to directories – and in addition – makes it easier to submit articles to article directories – well, that’s just a bonus that is really valuable. To top it off, the articles submitted can be spun right within SubmitEaze to ensure that variations of the article are submitted, rather than the exact same content going out to each directory. Woot! I’ve used spinner software before, so it’s nice to not have to dig out a completely different tool to do something that the tool I’m in can do for me.

Other Features

Now, I don’t use every feature available to me. For instance, the tool can automatically set up and manage a reciprocal links directory to make adding recip links easy. But I haven’t traded reciprocal links in years, and I don’t plan to do so now, so I just skip any directories that require a reciprocal link. If asked to recommend doing recips or not, I usually say recommend against it, assuming the person is talking about this kind of generic reciprocal link. It’s just not useful to anyone, so it’s a waste of time and space on your site. But if you disagree with me (and that’s allowed [big grin]), then you’ll probably love the feature that lets you deal with it very easily.

A quick roundup of its major features:

• Submit to both website directories and article directories.
• Turbo Submission mode automates the process so you can submit to directories in super-fast time.
• Over 4,000 website directories and 1,000 article directories currently in the list that can all be sorted by Google PageRank, Alexa Traffic Rank, or number of incoming backlinks to the directory.
• Full range of general directories to choose from: Free, Reciprocal Link Required, and Payment Required.
• Ability to select just niche directory listings (i.e. directories which only list websites of one particular topic).
• Lets you set up rotating link title text and description text for each project. This is important for ensuring variation and targetting of different phrases.
• Link page maintenance so you can quickly create and upload reciprocal links to your website (if you disagree with me as mentioned above).
• Tag, categorize, and search your directories exactly how you want, and add your own notes to each.
• Free software and directory updates forever.
• Add your own custom directories to the list.
• Complete control over the auto-fill feature within SubmitEaze – you can even add your own custom fields. This can be hugely useful in some situations.
• Import / export between different computers.
• Create detailed submission reports.
• You can add a rating to each directoy so you can keep track of your favorites.
• And lots more

So, that’s my favorite tool for dealing with directory submissions. What’s yours?

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Disclosure: Affiliate links may be used within this post for products I recommend. They in no way affect my judgement of said products, nor do they affect the price of the product.

Tags: article marketing, directory submissions, spinner software, Web directories


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One Response to “Marketing Your Site Via Website Directory Listings and Article Directory Submissions”

1. Keith Davis (2 comments) says:

   Hi Donna
   Sounds like a great tool.
   I know the power of directories but the only one I’ve ever submitted any of my sites to is DMOZ.

   Process takes ages and you have to wait a lifetime before you show up in the listings.

   I’ll take a look at this tool.
   Keith Davis’s last post ..A helping hand…

   Reply