Submitting your site to web directories for SEO purposes is a tried and true way to increase your link popularity and ranking in the search engines. There are, however, some pitfalls to avoid.

Here are some tips that will prevent you from “spinning your wheels”, as it were, in the directory submission game.

First of all, do not fall for offers to “submit your web site to 10 thousand web directories for only $24.95!”. The submissions are usually done using software, and the majority of them will be rejected by the directory owners for being in the wrong category, not following the guidelines, etc. Even if they happen to actually hand-submit (yeah, right) the directories are always completely useless from an SEO standpoint.

Unless you happen upon a brand new one, they are almost always saturated (meaning they have too many pages of listings that the search engines will never crawl deep enough to find).

In most cases the directories will only be around for a short period of time. They usually stick around just long enough for the owner to get tired of rummaging through the submissions before realizing that there is very little profit from it, then letting the domain expire.

Besides the above reasons, the search engines do not favor these directories at all, and even if they somehow manage to find your link among the numbers it will not count for much.

Now that you know what to avoid, here are some tips for finding quality directories. First, we will talk about the “elite” directories that everyone knows about- The Yahoo! Directory, The Open Directory Project (Dmoz.org) and Best Of The Web (BOTW.org). These directories are well known, and the search engines love them for sure. These are the three directories any serious webmaster needs to have a listing in.

The only one of the three above mentioned that is not a “pay-per-inclusion” directory is the Open Directory Project. The problem with the ODP, however, is it’s lack of reliability. It is run by volunteers who receive no compensation for the work they do. Therefore, many of the thousands of categories have no volunteers, and because of the lack of compensation many of the volunteers often neglect the project or are just plain lackadaisical about it altogether. Needless to say, getting a listing in the ODP is a crap shoot. But it is definitely worth a try, as many of the search engines put a measure of trust in sites listed in the ODP.

The Yahoo! Directory is another one that grabs Google’s attention for sure, some believe more so than the ODP. A listing in the Yahoo! directory is quite expensive, however. At the time of this writing it will set you back $300 yearly. But if you are serious about your site, it is worth the investment.

Last but not least, we have the Best Of The Web directory. This is an old directory (started in 1994) with lots of high quality inbound links, and is a favorite of many SEO enthusiasts. At the time of this writing, there is a one-time review and inclusion fee of $240. Another great investment.

Now that we are familiar with some of the top general web directories, let’s talk about finding other great directories. There are plenty of lists out there, just Google “list of directories”. But before spending any money for inclusion fees, here are some things to look for.

First of all, the age of the directory should be looked into. You can usually obtain this information by finding out when the domain was first registered. The older the better in this case.

Next, make sure the directory has plenty of quality inbound links from other authority sites, because some of this “link juice” will be passed on to your site. Lastly, make sure the directory is “SEO friendly”.

If the link to your site utilizes a tracking URL, the link may not be counted by the engines. Also, watch out for saturated directories and ones that use the “nofollow” attribute.

These same principals apply to niche directories. Niche directories are great because they are on-topic, and there are a lot of authority niche directories out there. To find these directories within your web sites niche, Google your keywords and put “directory” after it.

If you are optimizing your new web site (or page from your already established web site) for a keyword that is in high demand, you are likely to experience Google’s “Sandbox”. The sandbox is Google’s way of keeping new web sites and pages from ranking for competitive keywords. This “seasoning” period, as it were, is Google’s way of making sure you are serious about your web site before it is promoted to a higher position. So how long do new sites have to stay in the sandbox? Anywhere from 6 to 12 months, and sometimes even longer than this!

How do I know that my site is in the sandbox? There are many different techniques and signals, and every SEO enthusiast will give you a new one. But the easiest way to know is this- If you have a web site that is optimized for a competitive keyword, and your listing is either non-existing for the keyword or is somewhere on page 10 or so in the results, your site is most likely in the sandbox.

Is there any way to get out early? There is one way to shorten your stay- inbound links to your site from authority sites, and the more the better. In a perfect world, inbound links from these kinds of sites would come naturally. But in the real world, most webmasters do not have web sites that authority sites naturally link to. So your “average Joe” webmaster needs a shortcut. This shortcut comes from well established web directories. Some of these directories are free, but in most cases these free directories take a very long time to get a listing in. The only reliable directories are almost always pay-per-inclusion. The amount you pay can be anywhere from $40-$240 or more, and some directories require a yearly inclusion fee.

How do I identify authority directories? There are too many web directories out there to count. Some are worth having your listing in, some are not worth the money paid for the domain they are on. There are two things that determine if a directory is worthwhile- age, and inbound link quality. Older, more established directories are trusted by the search engines and are preferred over new directories. The quality of a directories inbound links can also tell you if it is any good. If it’s links are coming from authority sites, Google likely gives the directory more clout. In turn, some of this is passed on to the sites listed in it.

How fast? How quickly you exit the sandbox depends on the quality and quantity of these links. There is no known formula, but a site can easily get out of the sandbox in as little as 3 months, sometimes less with just a few inbound authority links.

The short answer is NO.

There are many webmasters who spend a lot of time managing duplicate content, either within their site or from external sources. The fact of the matter is, the issue of duplicate content is often overly emphasized by some over-zealous webmasters. According to Google (and also in my personal experience), having duplicate content does not normally have negative effects on your site’s presence in the Google index. In fact, regarding content theft, Google goes on to say “we look at various signals to determine which site is the original one, which usually works very well. This also means that you shouldn’t be very concerned about seeing negative effects on your site’s presence on Google if you notice someone scraping your content”.

That being said, let’s examine some possible issues with duplicate content. Let’s take, for instance, article writing and the submission of these articles to article sites for SEO purposes. Let’s say you write an article, put the article on your web site, and then submit it to various article directories or web sites. Quite obviously you would rather have the page on your site rank above the article directories you submitted that same article to. And in most cases, this is what happens. The reason your page will normally rank ahead of the others, is that the others contain a link from that article to your site. Directly quoted, “In cases when you are syndicating your content but also want to make sure your site is identified as the original source, it’s useful to ask your syndication partners to include a link back to your original content”. This link tells Google that the content originated from your web site. So according to Google, they know the original source of content even if it has been “scrapped” or stolen. But content purposely submitted to other sites (or as Google refers to them, “syndication partners”) can also be identified as yours if a link back to your site is included along with the content.

Well, the idea behind article submission is to obtain a link back to your web site from another web site, usually from a page that contains keywords related to your web sites theme. But what if the site applies the “nofollow” attribute to your link, which some shady article submission sites do? If this is the case, the article site could actually rank higher than you for the same content. So be sure you do not submit your articles to article directories that do not allow your link to be followed. Even in this case, Google will usually find the original source of the content.

What about onsite duplicate content? The same applies. Google does not penalize you, the duplicate content is simply filtered from the search results. So don’t worry too much about duplicate content, and focus on building quality content for your site, and of course building quality inbound links.