Link and Anchor diversity – Submission Sites List in 2016
SEO has changed a lot in few years. Getting quality and relevant backlinks is as hard as finding a good job after college – it just seems impossible. I will write more on how to get relevant quality backlinks but in this post we will get through some facts about other backlinks that do not work for ranking websites but are awesome for getting good link and anchor diversity.
Is posting to web directories dead? Of course not, but it just doesn’t work as it use to. In the past, SEO was not so hard, the main goal was to get as much links as possible, it did not matter what kind of DA, PA and other metrics website had. But everything changes, and now relevancy, quality, authority and other metrics matter.
Links from those kind of sites are still valuable and can be a good source for Tier 2 linking if you are familiar with tier linking technique. So why you should submit your money site to directories, bookmarking, web 2.0 and other submission sites? Anchor and link diversity. It is simple as that, you need to have different links and anchor texts and you can not afford to use high relevant link with anchor text like “click here” or “website” or something similar. It is better to use keyword you want to rank as an anchor.
Using sites like web directories and social bookmarking you can achieve to diversify your link profile and it’s more important that you think. Just ask yourself, is it natural to receive only links with your main keywords or only from Drupal/Joomla sites? No, as there are many bloggers, sites that link to other authoritative sites with general anchor texts like “here”, “click here” etc… and are using different platforms.
How a normal distribution of anchor text for a website normally looks like? Something like this:
- 32% – mixture of other anchor texts
- 30% – website name
- 15% – www.websitename.com
- 15% – websitename.com
- 5% – http://www.websitename.com
- 3% – here
Let see some examples of websites anchor text distribution. The first site that I have checked find Ahrefs.com backlink checking tool is well-known site with DIY articles and have more than 80 million backlinks – Instructables.com
Anchor Phrases for Instructables.com site
As you can see from this image most popular and used anchor phrases are website name and general phrases like “here” and site link. Instructables website is ranking really well for keywords with lots of searches per month and has numerous first page ranking.
The second example that I want to show is a retail store that is online for 10+ years and is selling wooden toys. I have found this webstore using Google as they rank on first page for a keyword “wooden toys”. As you see in the image below anchor phrases are almost the same as for the site in the first example – the main anchors are website name and site link. This site is not as huge and has only 800+ backlinks from 180+ referring domains. It is a great example of link and anchor diversity.
Anchor Phrases for FineWoodenToys.com
Examples are showing that sites with natural anchor phrases are ranking on first page for keywords that are not showing in anchors very often. Submitting to directories and other submission sites can help you to achieve that kind of anchor distribution.
Manual or Automated? Now comes the decision about submitting using SEO tools like SENuke or take a manual and more unique approach. I would go with manual, as it will get you more quality and also you can be more unique with your description, titles and keywords you use. Of course it will take you more time but If you are a beginner and you are not using SEO tools on daily basis than learning curve will take longer than manual submission to 100+ sites. The decision is yours to make.
I would also like to add that SEO Tools that are great are not cheap and you will also need proxies and other payable add ons to achieve good unique submissions .
You can find lists of submission sites all over the internet, but I can help as you can use all of my lists that I have created and are up to date:
Infographic Submission Sites
If you are familiar with Photoshop or can spend $5 for a Fiverr gig than submitting an Infographic is a great way to start your backlinking strategy. The list contains 76 sites that allow your to submit Infographic and have also high PageRank.
I bet that you are registered at least on 10+ forums, but did you enter your website url in your profile? It’s easy and fast to create a forum profile, in this list you will find more than 200+ forums with different content and PageRank higher than 3. Alexa Rank is also a good metric about forum quality and traffic.
Good old web directories. This type of links was popular even before Google showed up. Just because it’s old, does that make it cool? Well I do not know for other things but submitting to web directories will never die even now when this links are not carrying any significant weight. But as mentioned It’s great for randomizing your anchor phrases. The list contains 100+ web directories that allow free submission and have high PageRank.
Another list of sites that have high PageRank, are popular and allow to add your link in profile or content. Tumblr, FriendFeed, MySpace and more sites like this you will find in list that include more than 290 Web 2.0 sites. Sort by PageRank or Alexa Rank. A great way to get different link types and use brand anchor texts.
Ages ago social bookmarking sites like Digg were a major change in the SEO game. For few months you could rank a site using just links from social bookmarking sites. Nowadays this is not possible, but you can still get some links to mix up your anchor phrases.
This kind of links are very different from all sites that I have described above. If you write good content you can get a quality relevant link. In case that you can put together content that is unique and provide some value you should go for it. Do not be disappointed if approve ratio will be low as quality of the link can be higher.
Do you still use this platforms for getting links? Do you use SEO Tools or do all by hand? I would love to read about your success or failures with web directories, bookmarking sites, web 2.0 sites, profile creation sites and infographic sites!
