Directory submission is still an important part of SEO in 2022. Backlinks (links to your website from other sites) show Google and other search engines that your website is worth referring to, and act as a kind of vote for your website. Directory submission is one way to do this, amongst other off-page SEO techniques. We’ve created a HUGE list of 100 Free Directory Submission Sites to boost your website SEO.
What is Directory Submission?
Directory submission is the process of adding business details to online directories. Well known online local directories in the UK include Yell, Yelp and FreeIndex. These business details typically include contact information, business description, services offered, images, social media links and opening hours.
Why do I need to submit my website to directories?
From a user’s perspective, when looking for your business online, it needs to be clearly visible so customers and potential customers can make contact easily. Directory listing sites are one way to do this. The additional information such as reviews and photos, help to show users that your business is established and genuine.
The other angle is SEO and search engines. Each directory listing will link to your website, generating a backlink. Google and other search engines use these to firstly find and crawl your website pages, but they also act as a kind of referral, helping to boost the authority of your website and in time increase organic search rankings.
Things to know about Directory Submission
It’s important when building links that submissions are done manually with high quality websites or directories. Bulk submission of backlinks can harm your rankings as they will undoubtedly draw links from low quality, spammy websites.
In recent years, Google has gotten good at establishing poor quality, irrelevant or bulk submitted backlinks. Its algorithms are clever enough to know which links to take into account, and which to disregard completely. Most bulk link buying services will simply place your chosen anchor text randomly within spun / scraped content. Needless to say, it won\’t make sense and will probably harm your website ranking.
As part of our SEO Packages, we offer a business directory submission service. We use this list to submit our client’s sites to relevant directories, using a mixture of ‘do-follow’ and ‘no-follow’ links, to make a natural backlink profile. This is used to compliment other types of backlinks, which come from relevant, unique content on high authority websites.
Our Free Directory Submission Sites List for SEO
Here’s our list of 100+ Free Local Directory Submission Sites list. We rank them using Ahrefs DR (domain rating) metric. This is a score given to domains based on the backlink profile as a whole. Another frequently used metric is DA or Domain Authority (Moz). Remember this list of directories are measured using the DR metric, not DA.
If you have any quality directories you use, please feel free to add them in the comments, and we’ll add them to our directory submission list.
100+ Free Directory Submission Sites List
So there it is, our list of 100 free, local directory submission sites. Make sure when your are listing your business to fill out as much information as possible, including social media links, contact details and a good quality business description. Create a listing for a potential customer looking to use your business, not for a search engine.
While some of these directories offer instant approval, many will require manual verification and approval. This ensures the directories show genuine businesses and not spammy links submitted in bulk, which makes for a better quality directory overall.
Should I Build other Backlinks?
Absolutely. Directory submission sites are a starting point for link building. It’s a good starting point, if quality and established directories like the ones listed above are used. But, from here we need to look at quality links from authoritative sources, ideally within your industry. Look at guest blogging / guests posts as a great means of increasing your authority with search engines. Links within content (anchor text) generally carry more weight with search engines.
Links within editorial content or blog posts carry more weight with search engines than just using business directories. They show users that the site is worth referring to as a reference for the article and topic being covered.
If you have any questions relating to our free directory list, creating backlinks for SEO or any other SEO query, please get in touch.
