Lyndon Antcliff at Cornwall SEO asked me to give my thoughts on directories vs social media in terms of traffic and page rank. So here are my thoughts and a little how to use both directories and social media to increase traffic, gain PR and make money online (sorry, had to use some keywords!).

So what about directories?

I think directories are great. They are an easy link and you can pay directory submitters to manually submit a link to 300 directories for under $20. If only 10% give you a link, that is 30 links for $20. $.66 per permanent link is only beatable by the following.

What about social media marketing?

Social media marketing (SMM) (Digg, Del.icio.us, etc) is not only THE way to create links for 2007, but it is also the best bang for your buck. SMM is the undisputed champion where directories are on their way out like Oscar De La Hoya should be.

So which is “better”? SMM.

Which is necessary? Both.

Directories are almost free links and shouldn’t be ignored. Even if Google only recognizes 10 of your 300 submissions, that is still only $2 per permanent link, which should be considered awesome.

I don’t think I need to talk about the benefits of one SMM article. Just look at this. 3500+ incoming links, PR5, 153 comments/trackbacks and all because of one article.

If I had to choose one way of marketing, I would definitely choose SMM. But thankfully I don’t have to choose one way, so I choose both!