While I was in the real estate industry doing SEO my manager gave me a list of directories that my clients site’s should be submitted to. The list contained a various number of real estate related directories and withouth knowing it I had submitted some of these clients sites into a deeper whole then they started in.

The problem was three tiered.

1.) I did not have enough experience in SEO to understand why the list I was given was wrong.
2.) I put trust into an SEO I did not know.
3.) We submitted our sites to way to many directories at one time.

Now the first rule when looking into “linking” is going to be relevancy. Although a directory submission is a link I would consider the relevancy of a directory not as important then other areas like trust rank or age of domain. The pitfall for some of this companies clients was that we where putting up a link to their site on a directory that falls into one or all of these catagories.

1) Low PageRank
2) Low TrustRank
3) Low Domain Name Age
4) Poor url structure
5) Poor Page Indexing
6) Poor Page Caching

Some but not all of the sites on my managers list contained sites that had just been created, had dynamic url’s for poor indexing, no deep linking to help internal pages get PageRank and be indexed etc. thus causing our clients to have their SEO budget depleted and see very low ROI.

The real estate company I worked for clearly did not understand what to look for in a PFI program. Once I did a little bit of research and some testing on my personal sites I noticed a huge difference in search ranking when I mixed up my directory submissions with some older more trust worthy directories along with some relevant well trusted directories.

When doing directory submissions it is important to look at the this checklist.

1) Evaluate TrustRank based on TrustRank Factors
2) Is the page you are submitting your site to cached
3) Is the page you are submitting your site to indexed
4) Check the backlinks to the directory to make sure you don’t see casino, porno or little to know backlinks
5) Check to see how many pages are indexed to make sure you see many pages indexed and NOT just the home page
6) Submit one site to 3-5 directories per month by hand
7) How old is the site you are submitting to Is there a catagory “relevant” to your sites keyword theme
9) How expensive is the cost of the link vs the quality of the link
10) Do they offer featured links and are they static

Now that you know what to look for you need to know what tools to use. You have Search Status firefox plugin which will allow you to highlight nofollow links, check pages indexed, check pages cached, check backlinks, PageRank and Alexa rating and more. Also you have the Way Back Machine, Aviva Strongest Directories List, Strongest Direcvtories List. If your niche is real estate try submitting to top real estate directories but also include sites like dmoz, botw.org and etc. Make sure you mix it up. Another must read is going to be a recent post over at search engine journal by Loren Baker. Loren did a post on link buying and did a quick overview on some popular directories that are worth submitting to. Really smart guy worth listening to and I read his blog all the time. Also Aaron Walls put out a good video on directory submissions.

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