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RSS - Blog Directories Provide an Edge
By Kimberly Bock | April 2, 2008
I’m going to refer you to RSS / Blog directories to submit your website URLs to. Some of them are at cost, though most of those listed are free.
Rss / Blog Directory Advantages
Submitting your RSS feeds and blog URLs to as many sources as is possible will optimize your sites visibility. Obviously this is equal to promotion / advertising that is either free or at low cost advantage.
Some of the directories will ask that you provide a reciprocal link to them in exchange for your listing. This may include not only providing them with a simple link, but also choice anchor text (text link) of terms they are also trying to rank well for.
Example:
Upon requesting a reciprocal link from you, I may ask not only for you to link to:
http://learningseobasics.com/rss-blogdirectoriesprovideanedge
but I would ask you to use:
<a href=”http://learningseobasics.com/rss-blogdirectoriesprovideanedge> RSS - Blog Directories Provide an Edge</a>
This would provide the keyword phrase ‘RSS blog directories’ or ‘blog directories’ with some weight in the search engines and hopefully help me to rank for those terms.
Both you and the directories and you will fair well for the reciprocal. Think of how many people they have used for their campaign?! That’s a lot of SE love.
A reciprocal link from a reputable directory is something favored by the search engines. This may ultimately improve your ranking as well as your traffic.
There is debate in the SEO realm about reciprocals. Of course, your site will lose brownie points with search engines if you are reciprocating links with bad neighborhoods, link farms, and otherwise unsavory sources. So be mindful.
Building slowly is better than building around potentially harmful environments that will, in essence, make you lose face where it counts the most.
To view these lists visit:
“RSS - Blog Directories” by Lee Odden of TopRank Online Marketing Blog.
“55 Active RSS Directories to Help Promote Your Feeds!” by Mark Fulton of DotSauce.
Extra:
I had already decided to post about RSS and blog directories when I noticed a Sphinn post submitted by Kalena Jordan entitled “Guy Kawasaki chooses Sphinn Stars for Latest Venture“.
I visited the post and found that one of Guy’s companies, Nononina, has just launched Alltop. Alltop is a blog directory of various categories on the web. Alltops META description tag says “All the top headlines from popular topics around the web.”
(If you are unaware of who Guy Kawasaki is, you can check him out here. Quite an extensive and reputable history)
Anyway, long story short, I requested to be added to Alltops listing and voila! he replied with a ‘yes’ and a link to collect my Alltop badge which I’ll be placing next to TopRanks badge in my sidebar. 
It’s good to be loved.
Check out Alltop and tell me what ya think of it. It’s new but it already has a great assortment of blogs in many categories. Should be a hit.
Until later, have fun learning SEO!
Topics: Search Marketing |
April 4th, 2008 at 10:51 pm
Hi Kimberly,
We’re just about to go live with a new, and hopefully, improved site that will include several new RSS feeds. We’re busy building links but as a newbie to SEO I’m confused about directory submissions. I’m assuming because they get a mention here that the 55 directories that Mark from DotSauce recommends are reputable. While researching link building I came across an interesting interview on SEO in general but here’s was Jim Boykin says about directories in particular in an interview with hobo-web.co.uk
“Hobo - What’s your take on directories these days. Do you personally rate any?
Jim - 98.5% are worthless crap, and if you’re on 50% of the “top 50? directories you’ve just flagged your site as an SEO’d site.”
How do we know that I’m not doing more harm than good by submitting to directories in general ?
April 7th, 2008 at 5:24 am
Why should a reciprocal link form a blog-directory be a good thing (from a SEs perspective)? Most blogs listed there will be of some quality but most of them will probably not very useful or informative and in the end it is just another get-your-free-link directory (and thus rather useless).d
Malte Landwehr’s last blog post..Die 142 beliebtesten Twitter Clients
April 7th, 2008 at 6:12 am
Gerry: I’d like to think that any time Lee Odden provides information, it is because of its usefulness. He has been a fine source of credible education and a multitude of other notable and credible sources support his knowledge.
No, I would never simply assume that any one of the listed directories are reputable without first doing some common sense research.
One of the things that Bill Slawski had shared with me is that it is wise to first note whether or not the site looks as if it is designed for search engines as opposed to people. Does it look as if it is targeting advertisers instead of searchers? etc etc..
Maybe even doing a good ole’ Google search to see if the directory in question has received complaints would be wise, etc..
To both: Submitting to a directory is never a worthless cause.
Visibility, and yes even a little ole link is welcomed. Links are important to rank..You submit. People find you. You receive links and traffic too? Uh..maybe I’m missing something, but I think Jim may have exaggerated the percentage…just a tad.