Backlinks Generation for Free: 70+ Directories for Site Submission

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Written by Martin Wensley

(Reading time: 4 - 7 minutes)

What are Backlinks?

What exactly are backlinks? Search engines track the quantity and quality of sites a page receives incoming links from. Based on the quality of those sites linking to the page one wants to boost the rank that links from outside coming in adds a little more authority to the site.

Now, I know that submitting your site’s URL to directories may have been all the rage back then, in the year 2000, but today it doesn’t have the same influence it once carried. Which is to say, you should never link from one of these directories straight to your website. If you think this sounds counter-intuitive, please read on.

Table Of Contents

Backlinks Building (↬Money Mound)

Submitting a link to directories is one of the layers of a tiered backlinks approach and they should be leveraged.

On a generic-tiered link approach, you have to build four tiers of backlinks.

backlinks pyramid

The page you want to give more authority must be linked from outside only by the highest quality backlinks you have elsewhere outside of your site. For instance, guest blog posts in authority sites.

In turn, you must link from directories to the articles in authority sites. Finally, you must have accounts in social bookmarking sites and link to the directories entries from the social bookmarking sites.

You see, it’s a pyramid, and directories aren’t at the bottom of it, they are more valuable than automated links and social bookmarks.

You shouldn't build such a link pyramid (also known as PBN, Private Backlink Network) without thinking it out. A way of doing it wrong would be using spun articles for the submissions to article directories on tier 3.

Also, you mustn't try this technique too hard, otherwise, Google may notice it and penalize your site.

Have your Micro-copy Handy

backlinks with meta tags

Since you’re not linking from the directories straight to your site, but to authority sites, you’ll be creating backlinks from the directories to social media profiles or similar authority sites that let you have a profile, page, or mini-site as a sub-domain.

Note that other authority sites on tier 2, like guest blog posts, or revenue sharing sites don’t count because it doesn’t make sense to link to them, because they are loose articles, not profiles like the ones you can have on LinkedIn, Hubpages, and similar sites.

I made this clarification to note that the micro-copy you need is micro-copy based on your profiles and pages on the authority sites, not the data in your own site’s pages.

A lot of the directories on this list have very similar software to submit to your site. The only part that may slow you down is when you need to pick up the genre, theme, topic, or niche of your site.

To do that these sites use a pop-up menu that has a tree layout. You must search your niche in the tree and you can’t automate the search.

Other than that, the process is straightforward. There are forms with fields you have to complete.

Some of the data you have to enter you will enter it faster if you have it prepared beforehand on a plain text file and just cut and paste the data.

Meta Title

You need a title for the submission, this must be the title of the page on the authority site you want to link to or something like [your name]@[the authority site’s name].

Example of a meta title: MartinWensley@Pinterest

Meta Description

A description of what your page is about, using the keywords that you used in the page or profile you’re linking to.

Meta Tags

Same as above.

You must Reciprocate with Backlinks

backlinks reciprocation

Most of these sites have a mechanism through which you show them that you value the service they provide you through reciprocity. What does this mean?

It means, if you reciprocate, they may give you a booster, like for instance, waiting less time for your backlinks disguised as a directory submission to be reviewed and published.

Others have compulsory reciprocation. In these, if you don’t put the reciprocation backlinks, you simply don’t get listed.

You must create a page on your site, that has a link back to the directory. Generally, they’ll give you the HTML code of the backlinks or a button, otherwise, you must create it yourself.

Beware of submitting your site before adding the reciprocate link, because some of these submission forms check if you added the link when you hit the submit button.

General Directories for your Backlinks Tactics

These directories allow you to submit a link for free.

worldweb-directory.com

info-listings.com

informationcrawler.com

linkpedia.net

livepopular.com

marketingwebdirectory.com

informationcrawler.com

usawebsitesdirectory.com

alistdirectory.com

1abc.org

Paid Directories

You have to pay to have your site featured by these directories.

synergy-directory.com

Directories that also Accept Articles

These are free and very similar to the general directories, with the difference that you can submit an article to these sites.

If you decide to submit articles to any of these sites, one word of advice. Most of them have an editor where you cut and paste your article, so have that in mind before putting too many frills in your content before submitting, because you may not be able to keep them when you copy and paste the content.

submissionwebdirectory.com

ananar.com

freetoprankdirectory.com

prolinkdirectory.com

sitepromotiondirectory.com

addfreewebdirectory.com

promotebusinessdirectory.com

allstatesusadirectory.com

highrankdirectory.com

Outro

To quickly generate a backlink, you might be tempted to submit your main website URL, or pages from the site, to these directories but that is not how their use for SEO is indicated. Don’t do it, just create a tiered back-linking strategy the right way, and link to second-tier sites only, then have the second-tier super-nodes link to your main site.

For what’s worth, I’ll tell you what linking hundreds of websites to a blog directly did for me: absolutely nothing. A valuable, evergreen article on a reputable site, like Hubpages, linking directly to your website becomes a valuable backlink. In fact, a single backlink like that may achieve more than one hundred direct backlinks from one of these sites. Linking from any of these directories directly to your site will not work.

Sourced Media Credits

Miriam Espacio
SEO
Jack Moreh
Cambodia4kids.org Beth Kanter
GDJ

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