Submitting to less well known directories

What are the benefits and pitfalls?

[duhboy]

Hello all,
I am wondering what benefits there are to listing my site in small lesser known directories.
Aside from little bits of traffic to the site, are there other benefits?
Are there pitfalls?
Thanks for your time, Duhboy.

[korkus2000]

I think they are great sources of traffic. A listing can also improve your link popularity. As long as it is not FFA I really don't see a down side.

[paynt]

Hell duhboy, and welcome to Webmaster World.

I recommend submitting to the second level directories, especially those themed for your industry. You receive traffic, and this can be manipulated if you extend your strategies to include other options beyond the standard link. Link placement is very important and for a maximum effect should be seriously considered.

With second level directories I look at how the link is placed and presented, what’s the traffic like and how is the PageRank?

Given the PR of the directory site you can receive benefits from that and if the anchor text in the links utilizes your primary keywords you can receive the ‘authority’ from that. You can take it a step further and be Linking Outside the Box [webmasterworld.com]

[rogerd]

No downside at all, duhboy, as long as you steer clear of link farms masquerading as industry directories. If a site seems to be nothing but links, and covers a wide range of topics as opposed to more useful, focused group, be a bit more cautious. You can check the PR of the places you submit to, but being in one or two PR0 directories won't hurt your site.

[Quadrille]

There is a downside, but you can avoid it.

Many small directories seem to exist merely to harvest email addresses for spam purposes; if you submit to individual directories, you can get around that quite easily, and there are significant benefits, especially in certain ranking systems and most specialist areas.

If, however, you are doing something quite different, that requires your email address, and they happen to offer "Free submission to 37482 search engines" - close your browser and head for the hills :)

[rogerd]

Excellent point, Quadrille. It's a good idea to have a secondary e-mail address for these listings. Some directories may grab the address themselves and spam it. Other directories may be honest enough themselves, but put the address in the company listing where it can be harvested by bots.

[ettore]

I agree. Local directories and themed vortals are a great source of traffic. After having weeded out FFA linkfarms and dubious free submission sites, picking up the few good ones related or targeted to the geographic and/or business area will send you targeted traffic.

While it's true that submitting to 4599390 SEs it's a waste of time, no-benefit, many-pitfalls action, this doesn't mean that the hundreds (thousands) of second/third/fourth level SEs out there are just all useless. It always depends on what's your site about and what's your target audience, and taking the time to make an appropriate selection after having hit submit to the big players is worth its while.

To be on the safe side, I always use throwaway email addresses in these cases, and get rid of them when the amount of spam make them useless.

[paynt]

Great points ettore,

A question folks may want to ask themselves is what makes a good second level portal/vortal/hub/directory?

We could help each other with our tip to what makes a great second level.

Things I like:

Static linking, first class themed directory structure, PR of 6 or better depending on the competitiveness of the theme (keyword), content, freshness, contact and communication, loading time, keyword rank, amount of linking on each page, type of linking, java script/flash?, opportunity for Linking Outside the Box [webmasterworld.com] and amount of advertising both on site and email.

Everyone here can add to this list.

Another question is then how to find the good ones.

I am constantly building on lists I keep for every keyword I work on. I can then utilize them for my clients in developing a themed linking campaign. Pull from the keyword groups that best suit.

This takes research and there have been many helpful tips shared already in the forums for finding these. I don’t have the time to run a site search so if anyone does and wants to contribute those tips. Remember, like searching – keyword add url – or – keyword submit site – keyword directory – keyword hub, really the list goes on and on. Look in the ODP and Yahoo directories for their listings of themed directories.

Special tip: save your lists. You’ll be surprised how they overlap with other projects.

[webman]

To help answer your question, I've realized that most directories are there for some other reason than to list your site for free. They either want an email address, link popularity or flat out money! Use the advice others have given and use an unimportant email address when you submit. A link can never hurt your popularity with the major SEs and they can never force you to pay, so assuming you get listed and they have a PR, you should only get benefits from listings in these directories.