Icerocket Archives | B2B Marketing Blog

Over time, the top source of traffic for most blogs is search. The two keys to search success are great content and links. Assuming you’ve already got great content, there are many places to get links (e.g. social networking profiles, social bookmarking sites, other bloggers). But two great sources are blog directories and RSS syndication sites. Not only do they provide valuable links, they can also supply direct traffic and help build your RSS subscriber list.

To give credit where it’s due, both the TopRank Online Marketing Blog and Robin Good have provided nice lists in the past, but as changes in the blog directory world can be challenging to keep pace with, both now include dead links and directories that have significantly changed their policies (e.g. charging for inclusion).

Update April 2013: Several of the sites below (now de-linked) are no longer active. Thanks to Arvid Linde for providing an updated list of active RSS and blog directories.

So, having recently completed a submission campaign for a client, here is an updated list of blog directories and RSS syndication sites that remain active and free. The list excludes sites that were, ahem, inappropriate for most blogs, had non-operational submission forms, appeared inactive, required a fee, or had a Google Pagerank of zero.

Preparation: What You’ll Need First

Before you get started with blog directory and RSS submission, here is a list of assets you’ll need to have ready in order to make your submission work productive. Create a plain text file, using Notepad or a similar tool, with the following information compiled:

Blog name/title (e.g., Webbiquity B2B Marketing Blog)

Blog URL (e.g., https://webbiquity.com)

Feed URL (e.g., http://feeds.feedburner.com/Webbiquity)

Meta description: (usually no more than 200 characters, e.g., “Webbiquity is the fusion of SEO, search marketing, social media, reputation management, content marketing and social PR to make you or your company omnipresent on the web for your unique search phrase.”)

Alternative short description (up to 255 characters, to take advantage of the slightly higher character limit offered by many directories, and to mix things up just a bit)

Keywords (6-8 core keyword phrases for your blog, e.g., “b2b marketing blog, SEO, search engine marketing, social media, SEM, online reputation management, content marketing, social PR”)

Long description (up to 500 characters)

About the author (up to 255 characters about you)

A user name, password and email address you’ll be using for the submissions. It’s simplest to use a common name and password across all of the sites, but if you’re concerned about security, use variations. Just keep a list in case you need to go back and edit details (e.g. change your email address) in the future.