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"How You Can Avoid The Internet Marketing
Mistakes That
Are Costing Businesses £1000's"
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Are You Using Online Directories To Increase Your Traffic?
Does your marketing strategy include submitting your blog or website to the online directories? Because if it doesn't – it should. Submitting your site to the many online blog and website directories is a key method of generating traffic but an additional benefit is the high PR backlinks that you can get from some of these directories. Let's take a look at how online directories work.
What Is An Online Blog Directory?
An online blog directory is, in a way, a type of social network similar to social bookmarking sites except that you list your entire blog, not just a post or article. I'm sure you've heard of sites like Technorati and Boing Boing. These sites have a huge community of users who not only list their own blogs but search those sites when they're looking for blogs for their own purposes or to recommend to others. Typically you submit your blog URL and, in some cases, the feed URL as well. Then you select what category it should be listed in and provide a brief description.
It's important to note that not all online directories will immediately accept your blog for inclusion. And there's a very good reason for that. They're trying to protect their own rankings which is one of the key reasons it's so beneficial for you to claim your blog at these directory sites.
How Does An Online Directory Work?
The purpose of submitting your blog to these directories is first of all to gain exposure and increase your traffic. Most directories have some sort of internal rating system where the users can rate blogs and recommend them to the community. And of course, if your blog happens to receive a higher rating then the users in that community will visit and possibly recommend it – either on their own blogs or through other forms of social networking.
However, the larger benefit is in the value of the backlinks you'll receive when you submit to these directories. When you're generating backlinks for your blog there are backlinks – and then there are BACKLINKS.
The search engines not only look at how many backlinks you have coming into your blog but they also look at where those links are coming from. Links coming from higher PR sites carry much more authority and they bring that authority to your site. When the search engines see that a high ranking site is linking to yours they assume that you must be providing useful, valuable content, otherwise that higher ranking site wouldn't be linking to yours.
However, that same scenario can also be harmful to the higher ranking site. If they link to you and your site is of very poor quality then they can actually lose some of their respect and authority with the search engines. Think about it. You've taken a lot of time to create a blog that's full of top quality content and you're attracting a lot of visitors everyday. Would you want to take the chance of posting a link to a blog that has nothing to offer other than a lot of PLR content and banners in the sidebar? It might be OK to do this once or twice but if you did it on a regular basis your readers would quickly stop following your blog.
Which is why some online directories are so particular about the blogs that they'll accept. They've put a lot of effort into getting that page rank and they don't want to risk it by linking to just any blog who happens by. The people who visit those directories recognize that they're visiting a high quality site and they know they can trust the information they're going to find there. That trust is what earned them that high page rank and they're not going to risk either one – the page rank or the trust – by linking to poor quality blogs.
If you've ever hired anyone to do any type of submissions for you, then you've seen the effect that page rank has on your fees. If all you want is to generate a few hundred backlinks and you're not concerned about the quality you can generally find someone who'll perform this service for a very cheap price. But if you want quality backlinks that come from High PR sites, you're going to be paying extra. That's because they're higher quality links – they carry much more weight with the search engines and they'll move you up the index faster. But they're also harder to come by.
The same is true for online blog directories. There are lower quality directories who will accept any blog that's submitted and you can find thousands of them on the Internet. And by submitting to these lower PR directories you'll be guaranteed to generate thousands of backlinks. Which is all well and good because that's one thing the search engines look for – the number of backlinks you have coming into your site.
But you also want to make sure your blog is submitted – and accepted – by those high PR directories, too, so that the backlinks you develop from them will lend authority to your site and help increase your index rankings. And the best way to make sure your blog is accepted is to provide quality content.
In the world of online marketing everything always comes back to the quality of your content. If you want visitors to come to your blog then you need to provide quality information that answers they're questions. If you want the search engines to give you a place on their index then you have to provide quality information that's not already found somewhere else on the internet. And if you want someone to risk their reputation and link to you, and send their own visitors to YOUR blog, then you have to provide quality information. But you already knew all of that, so let's look at a couple of online directories that will get you traffic and high PR backlinks.
Technorati – One of the internet's top search engines for blogs, Technorati is a PR 8 directory that carries tremendous weight with the search engines, it's own users and just about anyone who surfs the net. Having your blog indexed by Technorati will allow it to be reviewed and linked to by other bloggers and s Technorati sees other blogs linking to yours you could potentially end up on the Top 100 Blogs list. It's not difficult at all to claim your blog here and you'll get the benefit of the PR 8 backlink.
Blog Catalog – Another important blog search engine, Blog Catalog carries a PR 7 ranking and is also very easy to submit to. Whenever you submit to any type of online directory always make sure to set up a profile with a link to your site, using keywords whenever possible in your description.
Boing Boing – Boing Boing is another PR 8 site with a little bit of a difference. Instead of submitting your whole blog you need to provide a link to the post you want to submit. They state clearly on their submission page that you shouldn't even consider using an automation tool to submit to their site. Which means they are only going to look at quality content. Which means...if they accept you you can expect huge amounts of traffic because this is one of the most trusted sites on the internet.
Blog Universe – Blog Universe is a newer directory – a PR3 – but all of their sites are manually reviewed by a human being. They will not accept spammy blogs or blogs whose sole purpose is to pollute cyberspace with countless Pay-Per-Click banners. A little tougher to get into, but well worth the effort.
Then next time you set out to do your link building don't forget to submit your blog to some of the online blog directories too. You can develop some very strong backlinks from some of these directory sites and the increase in traffic that you'll see will help, too.
Marketing tip? If you are marketing locally, make sure to have your local numbers, addresses, etc. displayed prominently in your ad.
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