Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and Free Directories

As Christmas Eve is this Saturday, my usual update day, I might not get anything new posted to my Free Directories reviews over the weekend.

I do want to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and Prosperous New Year (or insert the holiday of your choice). Here's a funny politically correct, CYA, Merry Winter Holiday post over at threadwatch. To those that have helped me this past year (and before), thank you very much!!

I also want to take a moment to thank all my regular visitors and all the new ones too. It's been a great first year for this site. The fact that you are reading this post shows that Free Directory Listings do work to boost your site's visibility.

No, they won't get you to #1 for every keyword phrase, but they have worked pretty well for me:

• #1 & #2 in Yahoo! out of 82.9 million pages for Free Directory Listings
• #1 in MSN out of 5.5 million pages for Free Directory Listings
• #22 & #28 in Yahoo! out of 63.9 million pages for Free Directories
• #10 in Yahoo! out of 193 million pages for Free Listing
• #1 in Google out of 12.3 million pages for Coordinated Website Development (and coordinated isn't even on the page)
• #72 in Google out of 36.9 million page for Free Directory Listings Google doesn't seem to like the free directories as much as the others ;-( (my site is just now starting to rank in Google (aging delay?? Sandbox??), but I am moving up!! ;-)

(note: all rankings are as of the day I wrote this)

I do have some other pretty good rankings and it all started with links from free directories. Now, to be completely honest, I did get some other decent "off topic" links from some client sites and then Robin's article. "Blogs with a Purpose" gave me a huge boost, but I was doing OK before that article.

It also goes to show that if you create good content that is useful to others, people will notice (after you get some initial visibility - hence the free directories), and then they will link to your content!! ;-)

It is getting harder to use Free Listings to gain rankings, but they are useful in the beginning and some are good in the long run. As an added bonus, some of these directories actually send a small bit of traffic.

Have a wonderful holiday and get back to work on your submissions next week.

As always, I like to hear from you, so please comment below, email me by clicking on my name below or via my contact form.

martin