Simon Lissa

I really wanted to write something valuable now that I have some time to give back but am a little stumped to what I have to offer, I dont really have any revolutionary link building strategies, or huge link lists to give, all I do is rinse and repeat the fundamentals that I learned from reading books and getting involved in forums (thanks guys).

I may have the largest list of hand built web 2.0 properties any of us have ever seen but I also have the highest income of anyone I know and serp result I never dreamed I could get.

Anyhow giving back… I am sure many of you would agree that one of the most common mistakes link builders make is getting caught up in confusion, the latest toys and simply not getting shit done. If you really want to make a living online you gotta get shit done.

I was forever confused about what I should be exploring and learning in the link building world, like many I got so caught up in trying new stuff I never got anyhting done at all, much of what I was doing was overlapping and just a total mess, jumping from one thing to the next. I think what got me caught up more than anything was simply that I never had a clear direction on where I was trying to get to, no clear target in sight, which often left me feeling overwhelmed, confused and worst of all I felt like I was going backwards. I would be working on 4-5 link building apps or services a day and then the next day I would be working on 4-5 different ones… sound familiar? for your sake I hope not.

Now days is a totally different story, I have a mental organisation of what I’m learning, where it applies and how far along I am in mastering that particular area. I have cancelled near 80% of my paid subscriptions yet I am getting exponentially better results than I was before because I am constantly doing something to move closer to my objectives.

I think that one of the things that really got me going in a new direction was simply creating an excel spread sheet that separated all the different types of links and outlined how to target them. this gave me a clear mental picture of everything link building. This enabled me to then build a monthly plan for each of my sites on what needed to be done to beat my competitors.

So anyway that’s what I have to share, as un-sexy and un-complicated as it is, it made a big difference to me and hopefully it will have some use for some of you. (There is a key for the acronyms at the bottom of the page).

Looking at your link building efforts in this way also helps you to ensure you are always getting good link variation which is imperative in avoiding a penalty.

I though I would share it here both for your benefit but also in a hope that some may contribute to it, I dont think I would have thought of every link type and platform, in fact I think that after I built this spreadsheet, I got the clarity that I needed and just started working, I never had time to go back and mess around with a spreadsheets any more so it is probably fairly incomplete.

Key:

Though i am aware that a lot of people, some in quite authoritative positions write off directory submissions as a way to promote a website, my experience with using them has been very different, I think what I like most about the strategy of submitting to directories is that because so many authoritative people have written them off as a waste of time, no one is doing it, there is so much opportunity and space to just let loose, there are other advantages to that also but I will talk about them later.

So I am a big fan of directory submissions, especially when it comes to client work. Mostly because of the mass IP, Domain referral and platform variation they provide and lastly they help enormously with google places listings if your including a physical address.

Additionally I think directory submissions even mass directory submissions fly strait under the google penalty radar simply because legitimate business and inexperienced webmaster put a lot of effort into getting lots of these when they first come to the scene because it is a natural flow on from traditional media mentality “get in all the local papers and directories” and lastly, in my experience people are not exploiting directory listings to the extent of other platforms, sure most people hit them once or twice to get a few hundred listings but no one is utilising large amount of resources over a long period of time hitting directories, meaning that it is less likley for google to go after someone doing it and the poeple who own directories are not spending all their time and money trying to keep spammers out making it relativly easy to get them. Many online directory sites dont even have captcha’s!

As long as you take into account a couple precautionary measures like hitting your local domain extension properties first (e.g. .com.au for Australia or .co.uk for the UK) variate your description text a lot, dont hit 10k in one fell swoop and variate the directory platforms your targeting you’ll be flying like a stealth bomber, dropping bomb’s like Hiroshima.

I have been playing around with Sliq Submitter a lot over the last couple months, it comes pre loaded with around 2k directories but you will only get reported success in about 1400.

Its got a couple negatives:
One it does not allow you to spin your descriptions, this makes variating your listings descriptions a HUGE time consuming task
Secondly as far as I can tell it is only compatible with one directory platform PHPLD or PHP Link Directory (the foot print is “Powered by: php Link Directory”)
And lastly it does not check if the links are actually approved and so it does not give you any reports that give you the actual location of the listings, it reports how many success but how many of those actually are I have no idea (wait they do have a . I did try it on a new domain and it does get quite a few indexed.

On the positive side its a very strait forward and simple tool to use, a total idiot could work it out and it is very intuitive in the way that it selects categories. Also works with captcha sniper but thats not a big deal when your only hitting 2k properties. it does have a new feature where it will go out and check the directories it has posted to for your link but its very slow and tediouse.

Anyway using hrefer (you could use scrape box also) I scraped some properties based on about 12 directory platforms (footprints below) and was able to generate a list of over 3k local directories (.com.au domains only, let me know if you want the list) with little to no effort but Sliq only accepted 7 of these

This forces me to find an alternate solution, possibly GSA submitter or one of the other 50 directory submissions software’s out there then again it may be easier to use Xrumer mods or training Zenno poster (or even scrapebox again if that’s your fancy). What is going to be difficult is mimicking the category selection algorithm that apps like Sliq do so well.

Ultimately I would like to hit many more directory platforms, and I know is not that difficult. I think this is a great way to get local links and diversity which are both super important now days, especially when working with the big G.

I will be sure to report back soon when I found the solution.

Has anyone successfully used something like Xrumer or Zenno poster to do directory submissions? if so I look forward to hearing about how you did it.

Directory Footprints:
“Powered by: php Link Directory”
“powered by PHPLD”
“Powered by WSN Links”
“powered by PHP Weby”
“Powered by cpLinks”
“Powered by cpDynaLinks”
“powered by BosDirectory”
“Powered by Link manager LinkMan”
“Powered by Gossamer Links”
“Powered by K-Links”
“Powered by In-Link”
“Powered by eSyndiCat Directory Software”
“Powered by: qlWebDS Pro”
“Powered by Directory software by LBS”
“powered by phpMyDirectory.com”
“Powered by HubDir PHP directory script”
“powered by BizDirectory”
“Powered by Free Directory Submissions”
“Powered by the original Free Article Directory”