Blogging Tips: Submit Your Blog to Directories

One great way to gain exposure for your blog and to increase its organic search engine ranking is to submit your blog to link directories. Thousands of link directories exist, but not all of them will be worth your time. Most directories are rarely updated or have poor PageRanks and reliability. And then there are the worst offenders: directories that use cheap tricks to quickly acquire high Pageranks in order to sell “reviewing” or “processing” fees for link submissions. Don’t pay for a listing in a web directory based on Pagerank alone. Read reviews and take your time to learn the history and age of the directory first.

Here are the top contenders that are reliable and guaranteed to be worth your time (or money):

ODP – Open Directory Project (dmoz.org) – The largest human-edited directory of the web and completely free, dmoz.org is notorious for rejecting most submissions and taking months to even accept links. Google gives them a thumbs up though. Many smaller directories or search engines also rely on them to supply the links. A little warning though: I had one of my website listed here but could never get them to change the URL once it moved.

Yahoo! Directory (dir.yahoo.com) – Commercial websites must pay an annually recurring fee. Other websites can be submitted for free, but Yahoo will ignore most free submissions. (Hey, they charge $300 a year for paid submission, why would they list for free?)

Best of the Web! (botw.org) – This is similar to Yahoo except the $300 you pay here won’t be recurring annually. (Thank goodness!) This is a better option for those who want to get into Yahoo directory, but can’t afford the annual fee. You can also submit your website for free, but the same rejection rate and waiting time applies.*

Unfortunately, most of the smaller web directories won’t do you any good in increasing Pagerank. Ever since Google updated their algorithm, they killed off most influence from link directories. If you want real results without forking out too much money, look to organic links, social media, etc.

*If you own a beauty-related blog, please feel free to submit it to BOTW Blog Directory > Health > Beauty Blog. I am the editor of that certain category and can ensure that your submission is promptly reviewed. I have no influence in the other categories, but I can add beauty blogs into the directory.