To Blog Directory or Not to Blog Directory

To Blog Directory or Not to Blog Directory

That is the question.

And the answer?

Yes.

But, before you sign up for every blog directory out there, read on.

There’s a certain kind of blog directory that seems to work and then another kind of blog directory that doesn’t. By work, I mean drive traffic to your site.

I’ve been researching reviews of blog directories and what I found is that some people (especially marketing agency reps) love blog directories while other people (especially digital marketers) hate them.

Marketing agencies love them because the right blog directories drive legitimate traffic.

Digital marketers hate them because they’re not particularly effective at SEO (search engine optimization). A lot of digital marketers only care about SEO traffic.

But traffic is traffic, right? Well wrong.

Search engines like Google don’t consider most blog directories as legitimate sources of traffic, so you don’t get credit for your links on those directories despite the traffic they generate. And, while some blog directories have good SEO rankings on higher level pages, deeper pages often don’t have a good ranking. And if your blog ends up on one of those low ranked pages, well…

You definitely want to grow your organic search traffic using proper SEO techniques (like with quality content, guest blog contributions, and social media) but while you’re doing that, you can draw traffic from blog directories. Traffic means people, people lead to subscribers, and subscribers lead to repeat visitors and a community of followers, which in turn drives organic traffic. So….

By the way, while the consensus seems to be that blog directories don’t work well for SEO, some reputable sources online say that blog directories work GREAT for SEO. Opinions are apparently mixed.

Personally, I prefer a multi-channel marketing approach that includes SEO, but also other channels like blog directories (but only the right kind of blog directories).

So what are the wrong kinds of blog directories?

The kind that aren’t curated, that aren’t managed on a daily basis by real people, and that push the wrong kind of traffic to your site.

For example, Dreamers is a writing site. We don’t want people interested in puppies. (Well, unless they also like writing; puppies plus writing is okay).

Unfortunately, there are hundreds of the wrong kinds of blog directories. Also, most of the time, these blog directories don’t drive ANY traffic to your site, let alone the wrong kind, so what’s the point?

Three years ago, I built my dad a blog site so he could post his weekly print column online.

My dad is a columnist for a small community newspaper, and as the newspaper wasn’t posting his articles online, we asked if we could and they agreed. After setting up his site, I found a list of 147 blog directories. I spent hours getting him listed on these blog directories (it takes sooo much time to fill out 147 online forms!) and then waited for the traffic to role in. It did not.

What I actually saw was a spattering of traffic here and there from 3 or 4 of the blog directories, and nothing, nadda, zilch, from the other 140+ I’d registered for. But, from that original list, one blog directory stood out. Blogarama. Every now and then, Blogarama would send my dad’s site (www.findinghopeness.com) a spike of traffic.

Fast forward a few years and here I am, trying to build traffic and followers for my own website (this one, of course). I remembered my earlier success with Blogarama and decided to see if I could figure out why it was different.

So, what’s different about Blogarama?

Well, apparently, it’s curated, it’s managed by actual people who manually approve new members instead of just automatically adding anyone who signs up, and it segments its audience so that you get the right traffic sent to your site.

I signed up, but instead of signing up for the free account like I did with my dad, I signed up for their premium plan. And did the traffic role in? Yes! Thanks to Blogarama, our web traffic rocks!

Are there more blog directories like Blogarama?

So far, I’ve found a small number that seem to be similar but results are still pending. Here’s the list of blog directories I’m testing out.

I’ll update this post as soon I have results to share. Happy blogging!

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*This article was originally published on March 27, 2018.