Submitting To BOTW Directory May Help Your Search Engine Rankings

Posted by Wesley LeFebvre on December 3, 2009

Many people ask me whether submitting their site to the Best Of The Web (BOTW.org) Internet directory is worth the money. Well that answer depends on a number of factors. However, if you want to know whether getting listed there has a positive impact on your search engine rankings, then yes, from my experience it does seem to positively affect a website’s search engine rankings.

BOTW is one of the Internet’s oldest and most respected web directories. It is a human-edited directory which Google appears to recognize as a source for helping identify good websites. Most sub-directories show PageRank in the Google toolbar, their links are followed, and they use realistic anchor text rules.

It is unlikely you will get very many visitors from this directory, or any other directory for that matter. So if that is your only goal, then paying to have your website listed there may not be as worthwhile. However it is one Internet’s best general directories.

How much will getting a BOTW.org listing help my search engine ranking? Well that depends on several factors. If you are a small website with minimal competitors currently sitting on page 6 of Google for your primary search terms, then getting listed here could potentially take you up a few pages in the search engine results.

However, if you are in a very competitive industry trying to move up from position 5 on the first page of Google, then getting listed here alone will likely have little affect. But, I’d still consider it still depending on your overall SEO and link-building strategy.

If you plan on submitting any listings to BOTW, then you might want to sign up for their affiliate program so you can get a 25% recurring commission for any listing you submit or listings submitted through your links. That’s what I have done. This is especially helpful since they just increased their annual pricing by $50; now $149.95/yr.

You can submit your blog to their blog directory for $75/yr. Up until recently they allowed you to do so for free too, and you only paid for an expedited, guaranteed review. I submitted this blog awhile back, but never expected they would list it without paying, but I thought it was worth a try anyway.

They also now have a free local directory, but you’ll have to pay $29.95/mo if you want your listing to include a link back to your website.

Lastly, if you want to test them out, currently you can sponsor a relevant category for free for 60 days. It is simple to sign up, so if you’re thinking about paying for a listing, maybe you’ll want to first give it a try.