[kevin]

Do you get any work from free bussiness list? If so which ones work for you 

[shine services]

I have to say. I personaly havnt had any work from any of the various free listings i have online. I feel that when a potential customer looks for someone to clean anything they are not going to look at free listings.  They are unherd of by the general public ,tho  my ad in the uksmallbusinessdirectory put me on the first page on google so it cant be to bad

[Gilbert Sprous]

I have had enquiries from the free listings at yell.com but that is about it.  The rest of the free listings I use as links to boost up my google ratings.  I am in over 4000 free listed directories across the globe.

[Adam P]

free listings shouldn't be ignored but shouldn't be given too much time imo.

they're free so google wont give them much value any way for links, they are almost always nofollow links so a complete waste of time as they tell google and other search enginges, we don't give trust to this website so google wont give any additional trust either, and they often require link backs, which will get you penalised by google as google see it as nothing more then a false way to gain serps.

true links back to your website are far greater and worth a lot more time, google will see that people are really linking to you as you're good, so give that recommendation (link) great value, which is really what you should be spending your time on, if doing for serps.

checking my website logs, i have had almost 20 clicks in total from free directories since august and i assume almost all are the website owner clicking the link to make sure it's not spam/porn links etc.

[Gilbert Sprous]

I know you said that "dont ignore them" but the free links are so very important and the easiest SEO project that you will undertake with a semi automated directory submitter.  Google ranks links to your site in two ways, Quantity and Quality.  Quality being the relevance where the link is to your site.  Some of the directories that I submit to are page rank 5, 6, and 7 and my links are in the part of the directory that is devoted to either cleaning or business services.  I do submit to a lot of lower ranked pages too but more for the quantity which should be taken advantage of also.  To give an example, the only SEO I do is submitting to directories.  But if you check my free listings on google for my key words I do quite well (for a layman anyway).  If you type in "office cleaning mansfield" I am number 1.  If you type in "office cleaning nottingham" I am number 5 excluding the google maps.  Office cleaning Chesterfield I am number 3.  Office cleaning Derby is number 8 excluding the google maps (I just went to the first page of that keyword about 2 months ago).  The most important thing is that I am on the first page of the free listings for all my key words.  I am ahead of some of the major players and beat out yell.com for some of them.  And again all I do for SEO is submit to free directories in volume.  My total output for my website is 250 pounds, that includes design (done by me with front page for dummies lol), The cost of the server and the .co.uk url, and 14 dollars for a semiautomated directory submitter program and the SEO and I have personally sold over 100,000 in yearly turnover (I know, tunover is vanity) form leads from my site, and I know it is from the placement on the free searches and the reason for the placement is the free directories that I submit to.  I hope I have not went on to much of a rant but some type of SEO is imprtant to a page and the easiest has to be the semi automated directory submiters.

Cheers

Gilbert

[Adam P]

with a semi-auto submitter thats great as you can then concentrate on other important stuff. my point with the don't ignore but don't blah blah blah, was that to get submitted to 4000 free directories (at the time i thought manually) this would take a while and not worth the effort compared to what else could be done with the time. doing the less important things clearly works but if it's a choice of one of the other, my recommendation is to get proper links from decent directories.

you may be unaware but it could be by chance that you have 100 really good links and that those are the only ones giving you a better serp, but who would want to find out aye.

google say that quality links (with no nofollow, decent pagerank) from sites that is relevent (cleaning company linking to another cleaning company is relevant, cleaning company linking to a web hosting company isn't) is all that really counts.

hope this helps

[Gilbert Sprous]

I have no links to other cleaning companies what so ever, just directories and it has worked pretty well for me.  If I got lucky and hit the 100 pages you say count then it is because I submitted to all of them, also I have heard the "google says" quite a few times and no one has been able to reference it.  But if you go into google webmaster and go into the google forum, you will find that quantity holds weight also.  the directory submbitter that I use allows you to choose the page rank of directories if you wish and you can go 3 and up, 4 and up and so forth.  After I had recieved quite a few links (no non-follow links) I started just submitting to 3 and up, wanting to go for the quality and save about 30 minutes a week.  I started losing position after about a month or two so I went back and started submitting to all of them again (they update their directories about once a week) and I started going back up in the listings again, it was after I started submitting to all of them again that I gained the 1st page for office cleaning derby.  I am sure that you are happy with the way that you do your SEO but I know that mine works, there is no other SEO that I do so my listing can only be attributed to the directories.  I understand what you are saying about quality, but it is not the only thing that is looked at.  When you apply return on investment (including time) I just have not found another way to achieve the results.  You can say blah blah blah all you want but type in my key words and see the results, could they be better, probably but I dont think for less than 14 dollars.  Again I would challenge where people have heard that quantity holds little or no weight besides so and so so told me.  I personally read on google so I will believe what I believe.  I am sure you have your reasons for challenging me on this and I am sure you have it on good authority but I think my results speak for themselves.

Gilbert

[Adam P]

sorry if what i said has been mis-understood. when i said blah blah blah i was refering to what i initially said, the "don't ignore them but don't spend much time on them" bit, it was easier to say blah at end rather then see exactly what it was i said initially. sorry for the confusion.

of course we both have our own experiences which is what i meant by saying neither of us will want to try the others as it's not worth the risk in finding out that another method doesn't work.

i'm simply saying to others in my opinion don't wasting loads of time on free web directories, though it has been pointed out about automatic ones that'll do this for you so it's up to you. as you have said gilbert you have 4000 at you at the moment, but it's hard to know if 4000 has helped, as you could have onyl 1 hundred links from quality sites, and the rest doesn't count for anything. what does google care that 4000 links are pointing to your website? when there is no proper quality in check with those places, and you paid for a automatic system to do it as well as everyone else that submits their website to those directories?

on webmaster/google forums, quantity of course will hold weight, but the quantity should come from relevant websites, e.g. a website that tlkas about cleaning tips linking to your cleaning services website is good, a website talking about how to join the army linking to your cleaning services website isn't so good as it's not relevant.

i think we are going in circles here any way, i'm just trying to say in my opinion there is better alternatives to gaining a higher pagerank, that google will respect more.