March 20th, 2010 by Nick

SEO is surrounded by myths and common misconceptions. For example, some SEO practitioners feel like they are waging a campaign against the search engines, desperate to sneak in as many keywords as they can, perhaps by way of hidden text. In reality, whilst Google has a problem with hidden text, it most certainly doesn’t have a problem with SEO! And therefore all your search engine optimization activities should be done in tandem not only with the search engine, but with the internet as a whole – never take advantage!

The benefits of ethical SEO content creation are well expounded elsewhere, and should be the foundation stone of any serious SEO strategy. Link building strategies, on the other hand, you might assume requires a “gloves off” and dare I say it borderline unethical approach to optimization, this, however, is certainly not the case, and in order to be successful, link building must be matter of quality and relevance.

Nowhere is this clearer than in regards to directory submissions. Essentially directory submissions are some of the most popular pages on the web, and are therefore one of the most fertile beds for SEO link building. For many SEO practitioners, therefore, directory submissions sites represent the sangréal of potential backlinking and they feel obliged to submit as many articles as they can possibly muster; this, of course is a grave mistake and the most popular submissions sites are inundated with thousands of submissions, many of them keyword stuffed, which is why they have evolved a clear set of rules and guidelines.

Quality over Quantity

Especially in terms of SEO, a writer is often tempted to write as much as possible with a view to masking any SEO intention is a dense cascade of wordliness, this however, can have a negative effect on the overall quality of a piece; remember, it is much better that your piece contains a couple of obviously repeated keywords, than waffles on for so long that it becomes unreadable.

Also, with the best directory submission pages (and therefore the most difficult to get into) your piece will be read by a human editor, who will be looking to see not necessarily if your piece is well SEO’d, but whether it offers some unique and informative content. A good SEO company can help you find the right and most worthwhile directories for your website.

Topic

On a similar note, it is a feature of directory submission page that they are organized by topic; it is therefore advisable that your piece is focused on a single, perhaps even niche, area; this way not only is you piece more likely to be found in its right place, but it is more likely to be accepted to begin with.

Don’t Forget to Optimize

Of course quality isn’t the only concern when submitting to a directory, and there are a few great search engine optimisation techniques you can use to increase your hits and effectiveness, e.g:

Try inserting a keyword phrase after your company name at the end of an article.

Deep link: i.e. don’t always link to your front page, but link to a relevant subpage on your site – search engines like this!

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