4 Dead Simple Ways to Find Relevant and Submission Worthy Directories

Before you can actually begin submitting your business website to different directories, you first need to identify the directories that are right for your business.

Although vetting these directories and determining whether or not they can provide any value to your website is a different animal entirely (and I’ll teach you how to do that in just a minute), to get started with this strategy, you’ll want to make a “hit list” of 50-100 potential directories where you can submit your site.

Here are a few easy ways to build your “hit list” and get started.

Finding Relevant Niche Directories with Advanced Search Strings

Tools Required: Google

The first strategy that you’re going to use is leveraging Google’s advanced search string operators to identify niche relevant directories.

This allows you to cut through the fluff and find only the most relevant directories to your specific niche.

Here are a few different advanced search parameters you can use to get started:

• “industry” inurl:directory
• “industry” inurl:links
• “industry” intitle:directory
• intitle:industry inurl:directory
• related:industry inurl:directory

For example, if you run an SEO agency and you wanted to begin building directory backlinks, you could do something like this…

Search: “seo agency” inurl:directory

You’ll likely need to play around with these search parameters a little bit so that you can optimize your searches and find the most relevant directories, but the above search strings should be more than enough to get you started.

Finding Relevant Local Directories with Advanced Search Strings

Tools Required: Google

For those of you running a local brick and mortar business or agency, landing backlinks in local directories can provide a massive advantage over your competition and help drive new traffic and customers that you’d otherwise miss.

To execute this strategy, you’ll be using, more or less, the same search parameters above, albeit catered to your local area (this is especially powerful if your business has multiple websites and locations)

• “city” inurl:directory
• “city” inurl:businesses
• “city” intitle:directory
• “city industry” intitle:directory
• “city directory” intitle:industry

I’d recommend starting with the search string “city directory” intitle:industry in order to make sure that the directories you’re presented with are as relevant to your niche as possible.

For example, if you were running an SEO agency in Denver, Colorado, you could use something like:

“denver directory” intitle:seo

You can also swap the city with the state, to get more relevant opportunities.

Reverse Engineering Your Competitor’s Backlinks

Tools Required: Linko and Ahrefs (or Majestic, Moz, and most other backlink finding tools)

We’ve all heard the old adage, “Don’t reinvent the wheel”.
And this is just as true in the realm of directory link building as it is anywhere else.

Sure, you could spend a few 60 hour work weeks combing through Google using advanced search operators and trying to find all of the best directories where you can submit your website.

And at some point, you probably should.

However, a much simpler and much more effective way to begin executing your new strategy is to reverse engineer your competitors’ backlinks to figure out which directories they are using to build backlinks.

All told, this strategy should only take you a couple of hours and will likely leave you with 20-30 high quality directories where you can easily submit your business.

Here’s how you’re going to do it.

*Note: Before you begin, you’ll want to identify 10-25 competitors with good backlink profiles and domain authority (you can use Moz Link Explorer to find their DA). Check who ranks on page 1 for your target keywords to build the list.You’re going to rinse and repeat the following process with each competitor until you’ve identified a sufficient number of directories to target*

To get started, login to your Linkio profile and head over to the dashboard.

From here, navigate to the upper right hand corner and click “Add Brand”

From here, you’re going to type in the name of your competitor and the copy/paste the URL of their homepage.

In this example, I’m reverse engineering competitors for my SEO agency OutreachMama and decided to target one of the biggest SEO agencies on the planet, Portent.

Click “Add Brand” and then click “View”. You’ll now see the “Brand” page where you will click “Add Pages and Generate Roadmap”.

From here, you’ll be presented with a popup where you’ll be asked to paste the home page URL of your competitor’s website along with the primary keywords that you believe they are targeting.

Try to focus on keywords that you see your competitors using in their titles, headlines, and SEO metadata to ensure that you get the most accurate results.

Click “Save” and Linkio’s magic elves will get to work reverse engineering all of your competitor’s backlinks and presenting you with a list of the most relevant links your competitors have built.

Please note that, depending on the size of your competitor’s site and the amount of time they’ve been in business, this process could take a few minutes to complete.

From here, you’ll be able to see all of the links your competitors have built along with the anchor text, Google index status, and anchor type.

From here, click “Export to CSV”.

When the excel document opens click “Select All” > “Data” > “Filter” and then go to column “I”(include) and select “Yes”.

Then go to column C (anchor type) and click “Sort From A-Z”.

Now, simply start going through the document looking for any branded, website.com, or naked url backlinks from directories or other easy backlink sources.

Rinse and repeat this process with as many competitors as you want until you have a solid list of directories where you can submit your company.

All told, this process will probably take you about 2-3 hours and will allow you to target in on the best directory link building opportunities like an SEO sniper ensuring that you don’t waste your time with low quality or low relevancy websites.

Finding “Mini Directories” on Niche Relevant Websites

Tools Required: Google

While this technically might not qualify as “traditional” directory link building, I’ve found a great deal of backlink success by identifying niche relevant websites with a massive “Best of” article or “recommended resources” page that effectively function as “mini directories”.

For example, if you run a Facebook advertising agency, inputting the search query: “Best Facebook Advertising Agencies” will bring up several top ranked articles detailing the best agencies in the business.

Although it’s unlikely that you’ll be able to secure a spot on one of the first lists right out of the gate (especially if you’re in the startup phase of your business), you can target the 2nd to 10th page of the SERPs to find lists where you might be able to get your business included.

This strategy is much more challenging than conventional directory link building since you’ll need to provide testimonials and case studies and actually interact with the owner of the website.

However…

If you can have your website or company featured on only 2-3 of these articles/resource pages it can provide a powerful “top off” for your SEO juice.

The easiest way that I’ve found to successfully execute this strategy is to review the content on the 2-10th page of the Google SERPs and then go through each list searching for companies that are no longer in business (but still listed in the article).

Once you’ve found one, simply reach out to the webmaster with something like the following:

Hey Name,

My name is ____ and I run the company ___ one of the top [insert industry] companies in the world.

I absolutely love what you’ve been doing on [website name] and found your [piece of content you’ve read] particularly insightful.

I also noticed that in your article on the top [niche businesses] xyz company is no longer in business. I just thought I would let you know so that you could remove them from the list and make sure it’s up to date 🙂

Best
Name

P.s. I’d love to be featured in the aforementioned article and attached a few case studies below to show you the caliber of work my business produces. If it’s no good, please feel free to say no. Have a great week(end) 🙂

And that’s it.

It won’t work every time and it’s a much more laborious strategy than traditional directory link building, but it’s even more powerful from an SEO standpoint and can lead to explosive growth in your website’s ranking.