David: Created this thread in case anyone wants to discuss the
Largest SEO Company in India
(a quick note: we prefer actual discussion in community threads, so please avoid short replies lik “Ah, Snap. That’s Awesome!”) 

boblord666:

I will put my hand up and say that I have used an Asian Directory Submission Service for submitting to free directories. The service offered was submissions to 1000 directories with a number of different Titles and descriptions (I think it was about 5 of each) rotating between submissions and the job was done done in less than a week. The exact result has been lost in the mist of time but it was around about 20% approval rate, and all submitted to the correct category based on my follow up scrutiny. I was more than happy with this service and it cost $20.00 with me confirming the emails. So basically I outsourced a job which would have taken me weeks for the same result as if I had done the job myself. 

There is the issue that I did not have control of the quality of the directories and maybe some of them I would not have submitted to myself.

Based on the huge growth of the company described in the article, there are a lots of me out there. I do receive invitations by the person who did the job to become his “friend” on many social networking sites as well as invitations to join him in a “Chat”.

I do pick and choose paid directories myself of course.

So, having directories myself, I have to wonder how the free directories can survive. I mean I don’t personally make much with paid directories but within lies hope.

If a great many of these free submissions are being done by outsourced personnel, these submitters are highly unlikely to click on sponsored ads, adsense ads, take up special offers etc. Approval of bulk submissions must be time consuming and frustrating for no return to directory owners and it’s something I just can’t get my head around. I do understand that a directory should possibly be free when starting up to attract submissions.

May have got a bit off track there sorry.

David:

You make some great points. Annada told me that they do still submit to some paid directories even now, but he did indicate they do fewer now than a couple of years ago. I think you just have to keep playing with your business model. For example, one thing I suggested (in the pagerank sculpting article) with free directories that might be worth trying is linking to the detail page from the category page for free links (no direct link on the category page), and then letting premium links get the category listing as well. This will help you categories retain better pagerank too. 

Additionally, directories just need to do a better job of making a site that is worthwhile, and attracts real traffic. Those sites will then have more value for advertisers as well. We’re doing a lot in the next version of phpLD to make it more possible to have an interactive site, as well as offer more options and configurations so you can tweak your sales funnels.

Shyflower: I thoroughly enjoyed the article about Annada as well as the one about Prash and the one about Bertamus’s site, Socialrific. I look forward to reading more success stories from phpLD users.

VSDan: Very, very risky. Google will seriously ding PR if they see too many backlinks in a given time. Last year, I experimented with my site (monster-submit.com) by using such a service. Took a few weeks. A few weeks after that, PR dropped immediately from 5 to 2 (literally overnight), and disappeared from Google search results. Did eventually inch back to 4, but never fully recovered. My site is more skewed in demographics and target audience, and relies heavily on word-of-mouth and selective advertising, so sales did not suffer. Nevertheless, be cautious in using any shotgun approaches. A niche / content-rich directory promoted carefully and thoughtfully will usually do well without this sort of marketing saturation strategy.

David: Yes, I understand your concern, and I can’t speak for the customers that have used their services, but I am somewhat in awe of the growth they achieved in just a few short years. It really is amazing.

CerealJoe: Yeah right. I will not reply such thing. How can we rest assured that the SEO company is reliable over the other company?

David: If they didn’t produce results, it would have been difficult to grow over the years. That’s my take anyway.