Free Directory Submission Software Reviews

I've been test driving a couple of free directory submission software programs. Now normally I tend to take the 'quality over quantity' approach to directory submissions and do a small number manually.

However I have so much link building work on the go at the moment, including some sites with pretty much 0 backlinks, that I thought I'd try out a few programs, ideally free. I also thought about using a directory submission service in India, but don't quite have the time to wait (or the budget) for some of these projects.

The first one I tried was http://www.fastdirectorysubmitter.com/ which offers a free download for a trial. Fast Directory Submitter includes 2000+ free web directories. In the free mode the program allows you submit the site to 150 directories only.

The download was smooth enough and then the interface seemed fairly simple to use, to set up a campaign first although there was quite a lack of explanation. However as soon as I set her rolling, the whole program crashed - not very encouraging.

Then I tried a free download of http://www.sliqsubmitter.com, which again offers a free version that submits to just 100 directories, but you can upgrade to a monthly program to get the full list.

I really liked the interface on this, really simple with lots of rollover help comments and suggestions making it a good proposition for use by temps and freelancers who might do work for me. The submission seemed to go well, although you do have to remain involved to handle the category selection and recaptcha completions for submissions, and it is quite slow. You feel a bit like you are watching a machine in a factory after a while!

I also checked out http://directorysubmitter.imwishlist.com/ but I'm afraid the US style never ending sales landing page kind of put me off, and I don't think it is genuinely free to try (just a free download of the software).

Trying out PeerPower B2B Social Networking

I've been invited by an old contact, Julie Anderson at http://www.rapinteriors.com to try out what looks to be a new b2b social networking site, http://www.peerpower.com. So far it has quite nice functionality but most members seem to be based in India. I will wait to see if the weblink on my profile page gets detected by Google Webmaster.

How Twitter Followings Illustrate Link Popularity on Google

I've been setting up some new Twitter accounts for clients like Premium Sofas and Zen Cart Web Design, and working to get them more followers. In the process it occurred to me that the relative value of different Twitter accounts based on the Followers/Following quite resembles the theory of link popularity which Google uses to assess popularity of a website.

For example on Twitter, a lot of Followers make a user look good, just like a lot of backlinks to a site look good. But look deeper and if you have more Followers than people you follow, you look even better. More sites linking to your website than you link to, also looks good (which is one of the reasons I don't tend to focus huge amounts of effort on self cancelling reciprocal links).

But then I thought about how your new Twitter account can gain kudos just by having a very popular Twitter user follow you. I mean, imagine the impact of say Stephen Fry following you, based just on the number of people who follow him (nearly 1.5 million followers at time of writing). This immediate surge in publicity is kind of like the extra brownie points Google gives your site when you get a link from a really credible and authorative website, that in turn has a lot of links which point to it.

This is why whenever clients send me a cold link request they've received and ask what I think, I always check the Page Rank of the site offering to trade links first. If it's not popular, there's little point.

In the future I wouldn't be surprised if Twitter replicates some kind of version of Page Rank (if they don't already) based on the difference between your Followers/Following, and the number of Followers your Followers have got.

Creating yet another mixed Twitter account

This is getting to be something of a habit - I've just been working on creating another new Twitter account for a client, in this case www.zencartwebdesign.co.uk who sell Zen Cart e-commerce add ons, hosting, installs etc.

I firstly created their new Twitter account at http://twitter.com/zencartwebsites then I found some third party RSS feeds from Zen Cart forums and sites. I plugged these into my account at http://twitterfeed.com which aggregates them and pushes the feeds to the Twitter account.

Then I went through the client's website and pulled out 30 odd products and articles, and wrote a tweet about each one, with a link of course. Then it was off to my account at https://www.socialoomph.com where I pasted each tweet in, pre sent to publish one a day for the next month (I noticed that if you pay to upgrade to the Pro, you can create a reservoir of tweets and have it publish one a day randomly).

So now we have a nice new Twitter account publishing numerous tweets daily all on its own, with each tweet  packed full of keywords so they'll appear in searches on twitter!

Now I just need to submit to some twitter directories and start following some e-commerce twitterers to get the ball rolling.

Playing with Plugged.it

I've been playing around with a new social networking site called www.plugged.it (you can see my profile at www.plugged.it/joshwhiten).

I quite like the premise, in that its for all of us people looking to plug things online - products, businesses, websites etc. I'm still trying to get to grips with the best ways of doing this though. I've added a link to my own site in my profile, but I really need to find how to get client sites mentioned. I've started by doing a blog post on a new client, www.zencartwebdesigns.co.uk.

Will wait to see if the links appear on Google's radar, by using the Google Webmaster links report.

There ARE real people at DMOZ!

I just received an email from an editor at DMOZ, the open source directory project. A listing on DMOZ is widely accepted as helping improve your rankings in Google natural search results. The email says;

"Thanks for suggesting that we list http://www.youressex.net within our directory. Sadly, it's not possible for us to evaluate the site without a logon and so it's been declined. If you suggest it again, please include logon details in the description like this [User, PW] They won't be published."


This must be the first time I've ever had any human contact with DMOZ let alone such a prompt review - I submitted the site on24/03/10 so that' approximately 1 month. The last site I got accepted took over 6 months! Plus of course some useful feedback about actually letting them got into the site, which is a little odd as they have accepted sister sites without asking for this. Must just be the views of different human editors.

Useful Free Link Analysis Tools

Here are a few useful free link analysis tools and backlink checkers....

Why Don't all Backlinks show up in a link: Search on Google?

Here's a nagging little issue that's been bugging me for ages, and recently came to a head when a client asked me why they had so few backlinks showing up when they use the link colon command?