Directories are the foundation to your link building campaign. Part of our initial SEO audit is going through an extensive list of directories and seeing which ones the client has a listing on, which ones have incorrect information and which ones need to be created yet.
There’s five different types of directories. Let’s break down the different types:
Law Directories: These are your FindLaw, Justia, Avvos of the world. If you’re a second rate hack, you might stop there – but since you’re either a beast or we do your SEO for you, we have a list of 70+ law directories you can submit to. Most of them have free options, but most of them also have paid upgrade options.
General Directories: These are old school web directories. They have fallen out of favor with some SEO Gurus and but if done properly, the list we submit to costs under $2000 and gets you just under 50 quality backlinks. You need to be careful that you’re not going overboard and submitting to junk directories, but there’s just under 50 in our free list that are definitely worthy of your time, efforts and moolah.
Local Directories: These are your Yelp.com, Apple Maps, Map Quests of the world. They have a ton of authority and they increase your site’s authority in Google’s eyes. They also help a ton with Local SEO which is ranking in the Google Map Pack. Our submission list contains just under 70 of these.
Hyper Local Directories: If you’re in Podunk, Iowa these might be slim pickings but there should still be at least one or two of them out there. If you’re in a larger metropolitan area you’re in luck because there’s usually a ton of these and they can give you a ton of local authority. These aren’t included in our list because we only work with one client per metropolitan area. We build out these lists by looking at competitor backlinks and searching Google for neighborhood, city and state searches.
Phone Number Directories: Definitely the least powerful of these directory types, but nonetheless they’re free, they’re easy and they get you some extra NAP citations at the very least. Our list is far from exhaustive but for now we have a list of the 15 most authoritative phone number directories.
Between these five different directory types, you’re going to have 200+ directories to submit to. The most important thing about directory submissions for personal injury lawyers is fighting the urge the copy/paste everything and zip through them. This isn’t a sprint, it’s a marathon. You need to take your time to fill out each one with unique content and take the time to get to know each site so that you’re taking full advantage of the site’s features and unique sections.
If you’re just starting out and have more time than money, then throw on a podcast playlist and chip away at it spending 3-5 hours a day creating profiles. Each profile should take between 15 mins to an hour to complete.
If you’re balling outrageous already and just looking to improve your SEO, then do the first couple of them. Gather all of the info you need like pictures, descriptions, phone number, address, videos, etc etc and then show someone in your office how to do it. I suggest doing the first ones yourself because you need to know how to do it in order to teach someone else how. If you just throw it at them and tell them to figure it out they’re going to zoom through them and you’ll end up with a bunch of crappy profiles.
Click here for the full list of directories we submit our clients to!!
Here some important notes about the above file:
- The above file is updated on a regular basis. Just bookmark the link and check back regularly.
- If you’re not familiar with Google Sheets, in order to edit the above file you need to go to File -> Make a Copy. It’ll be copied to your drive and then you’ll have full permission to make edits.
- There’s four different sheets – General, Local, Law, Phone.
Notes for the general directories:
- The way I evaluate a directory is based on (a) it’s DR/UR which are Ahrefs domain metrics. (b) It’s quality of outgoing links, if the other sites in the category I’m submitting to aren’t relevant, I won’t submit. (c) I check the outbound links per page. If a directory lists 1000 sites on one page, I pass. If they list 50 per page and have 100 pages, I check to see if featured links are linked first. If there’s no way to get listed at the top, I won’t bother submitting.
- For the pricing, I’ve included the pricing of what I submit our clients for. Some directories might have multiple choices like Bronx, Silver, Gold etc If you want to follow exactly what I do, do it based on the price we have listed.
- The category I submit to for 99% of these is the general lawyer category, not the regional category. It’s okay to mix it up a bit, but out of the entire list I wouldn’t submit to more than a handful in the regional category. Stick to the legal category.
- Do not use keyword anchor texts for any of these. Always use a branded anchor text, either Firm Name or SiteName.com.
Notes for the local directories:
- There’s some paid upgrade options for these that I didn’t list or include in the notes. It varies wildly based on your budget on whether or not these are a good option. If you’re not sure which ones you should pay for upgrades on, let me know and I’d be happy to look over your situation and give you feedback.
- It’s extremely important that you go through and get to know each platform. Some of them are basic but a lot of them allow you to update your profile in different ways. The more it’s filled out and the more unique content it has, the better the chance that Google will index them. If you’re just copy/paste rushing through this list only a small fraction will get indexed and it’ll hardly help your rankings. Take. 👏 Your. 👏 Time. 👏
Notes for law directories:
- Pricing varies wildly on these. If they rank in the top 5 on Google for the keywords you’re targeting, it’s worth paying a lot of money. If they’re not ranking, then it can still be worth a $50-$100/month upgrade on the big sites like Avvo, Lawyers.com, etc because the more categories you’re listed in the more backlinks to your site you get. If it’s a smaller no-name site, then a couple hundred bucks a year can be worth it to stand out on the page and get a more prominent backlink. Don’t spend $1000+ a month on a 6 month contract on some site that doesn’t rank. Literally no one gets in a car accident and goes to FindLaw.com to find a lawyer. The traffic they have is from their rankings in Google, if they’re not ranking treat it like a backlink, not advertising.
- Fill out your profile as much as possible. Take advantage of all of the links, fields, pictures, videos etc that they let you add to your profile.
Notes for phone directories:
- Against all other advice on this page, do these as quickly as possible. They’re not going to make a big difference so just add your phone number, add your address, add your business name and move along.
Click here for the full list of directories we submit our clients to!!
If you have any questions let me know in the comments, I’d be happy to answer any questions you may have.