As Link Analyst “kind of” expert myself I have committed all the possible crimes when it comes to launching link building campaigns. At the beginning, the trial and error approach is mandatory, and without previous guidance is easy to make mistakes. I have noticed certain common errors that may be the result of some misconceptions. In this article, I will only address directories submission, which is the cheapest way to acquire one-way-links, but it has to be mentioned that this is only one strong strategy. Thus, I am going to give you a little bit of guidance on how to spot directories that are “SEO friendly” and rule out the rest.

Though, if you do bump into a bad directory, it is a good idea to include it in your database or spreadsheet anyway, so you can remember that it wasn’t appropriate next time you find a list of possible directories. Ok, without further ado the small link building guide:

  • The main thing for a directory to being search engine friendly is NOT having redirects. In other words, make sure they are providing us with a direct link to the site. For instance:

    • Redirects won’t count as a backlink in search engines; after all, the directory is not actually linking to YOUR site. To check a directory to see if it’s using redirect links, simply place your mouse over a few listings. If the status bar in your browser shows a url pertaining to the directory (like ex. 2 above), then the link is a redirect, and being listed is worthless.

  • Nofollow tags tell search engine spiders to ignore your link. In order to check that :

    • 1) On the web page in which your link will be placed click right mouse button go to View Source and look for meta name=”robots” content=”noindex,nofollow”. f it says noindex or nofollow, then don’t bother submitting.

    2) Check a few links for the anchor tag contains rel=”nofollow”. If present, the link will not be helpful in terms of SEO.

  • Follow the submission rules. This is an obvious one, but sometimes, if you are doing link building for a long period of time, the attention span decreases. If the rules say no deep links(links that point to a page different than the main site) or not commercial sites, don’t submit if it is not applicable to the particular client site. It is a waste of time.

  • Check that pages are cached by google. Search the page in which you think the link will be placed.

  • Pick the most suitable category. The deeper, the better. The more links towards sites related to your niche (for instance for seoresouces.co.uk, seo blogs) that are around your link the more relevant the link will be for search engines

  • PageRank. In the ideal world all the pages that contains our links should have some PageRank, although if the page is cached is susceptible of submission anyway.

    • So that’s all folks. Don’t forget that directory submission is only one of the seo resources in your tool belt to improve the link popularity of your site. In other articles we will cover reciprocal linking, blogs management, link baiting and other linking strategies.

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    Author: Oscar Carreras
    Occupation: SEO Manager
    Twitter: @oscarcarreras