Directory Submitter Software Tools: Can they harm your site?
So often I’ve read on SEO forums that using software to aid submitting your site to directories will either:-
- Cause the directory owners to ban you.
- Cause Google to ban you.
- Just plain kill your site.
I’ve never subscribed to these points of view for the simple fact that it would be too easy to kill a competitor site by submitting their site to a ton of directories using a directory submission tool. It just wouldn’t make sense.
As for a directory owner banning you because you used a piece of software to make the submission - well there’s simply no way for a directory to know that a tool is actually making the submission as opposed to a human typing into the fields on the submission page - in both cases the submission page will be loaded into a web browser and the fields completed in a client browser before the form is posted back to the server for handling.
Of course, using a directory submitter tool does have downsides. These downsides won’t harm your site but they might lessen the benefits of having your site listed in loads of directories. The downside of any submitter tool is the speed of submission and the temptation to submit to hundreds of directories with the same title and description every time. The best strategy for directory submission is to maximise the number of variations of title/ anchor text and description so that you get a good range of links with different anchor text. Try to use one variation per 25 to 50 directory submissions.
So what tools are available? Well there are a number of free tools. One of the best is SliQ Submitter.
SliQ Submitter Screenshot
SliQ Submitter lists over a thousand directories and also lets you store multiple variations of titles and descriptions. It tracks which directories you’ve submitted sites to and even lets you export a list of submitted sites to Excel. Personally, I like to use this tool to make 10 to 50 submissions a day over a number of weeks. This lets me keep complete control over the submission process and let me build a nice set of links over a 3 or 4 month period.
Download SliQ Submitter from here.