The Directory Submission Experiment

One of the more common pieces of advice regarding SEO is to submit your site to relevant directories. I've never bothered before, as I've alwasy wondered how any of these sites could be of any value to actual people. Surely the search engines have learned to disregard them as noise? Or have they?

When I compiled my link building tips, I discovered a trend in the advice that seemed to come from the most reputable sources - people and quality matter. In the context of directories, that means directories that are screened and used by people. If such a beast exists, I'd like my websites to be in that directory.

With the help of this blog and RSS directory list  I was able to find 21 directories that didn't make my skin crawl (and another five that look interesting but were having technical problems). That says something when you consider that the list started with over 200. I thought it would be interesting to submit this blog to all of them and then see if I can analyze the quantity and quality of traffic from each (if there is any).

I tried to stick to sites that had higher quality graphic design, as that signals that they have an interest in pleasing real people rather than search engines. I wouldn't call many of them pretty, but at least they're not horrid. Human editing was a big plus for reasons I've gone over before. Also, if I'd heard of it, I added it to the list. But the main consideration for my selection was simple - could I find something useful on their site?

So here are my 26 candidates for submission:

Blogged
Blogotion
RSSHugger
MyBlog2u.com
RSS Micro
Blog Search
ItsMyNews
9Rules
Genwi
Mobispine
DayTimeNews
Photarium
Outpost Earth
Feedmailer
Tailrank
Octora
Globe of Blogs
Blog Explosion
BlogCatalog
5 Star Blogs
Blog Flux
Rojo
FeedMap
RSSFeeds.com
BlogPulse
Pub Sub

A handful of the sites either requested or required back links - there is nothing special about these directories except that they wanted links in exchange for their listings:

Blogotion - Quality blogs directory
MyBlog2u.com - Blog Directory
Photarium blog directory
Directory of Marketing Blogs

Next step: submitting to the sites