Originally published 20/3/10, last updated 27/11/10
Link building is essential to your website’s success.
Getting links to a website is hard work. Getting links to a B2B site is even harder. We therefore need to cover a wide range of basic sources of links to help the site along the way.
CSS galleries are one of them. Each website submitted to a gallery is manually reviewed, which means that their listings are a bit stronger than those of directories.
So to get started, here is a list of over 90 CSS galleries that were active in the past month.
Oldies, the galleries that started it all
Not as established, but already outstanding
- CSS Design Yorkshire
- CSS Clip
- CSS Creme
- CSS Elite
- CSS Impress
- CSS Showcase
- Design Fridge
- Design Shack
- Design Snack
- Moluv
Fresh blood, galleries showing great potential
- Ad Design Link
- Beautiful2
- Best CSS Design
- Best CSS Gallery
- Best CSS Vault
- Blazing Web Gallery
- Boxed CSS
- Colorgorize
- Crazy Leaf Design
- CSS 2.0
- CSS Bag
- CSS Blaze
- CSS Breeze
- CSS Brigit
- CSS Cake
- CSS Collections
- CSS Count
- CSS Cutie
- CSS Daddy
- CSS Dance
- CSS Deluxe
- CSS Dose
- CSS Dsgn
- CSS Envy
- CSS Flavor
- CSS Fresh Blend
- CSS Gallery
- CSS Gallery Pro
- CSS Garden
- CSS Heaven
- CSS Heroes
- CSS Leak
- CSS Line
- CSS Loggia
- CSS Luxury
- CSS Mayo
- CSS Mix
- CSS Orgy
- CSS Perk
- CSS Ray
- CSS Showcase
- CSS Showcases
- CSS Smooth Operator
- CSS Star
- CSS Style
- CSS Transmit
- CSS Vote
- Design Awards Gallery
- Design Bombs
- Designer Source
- Divine CSS
- Dzinemart
- FantastiCSS
- Fave Design
- Folio Focus
- Folio Stars
- Gallery Buzz
- Link Creme
- Mabucplus
- Nice Stylesheet
- RGB Garden
- Selected Webdesign
- Site Inspire
- Style Boost
- Style Vault
- Submit CSS
- Swell CSS
- The CSS Awards
- The Web Based
- Very Inspirational
- W3C Gallery
- Web Design Ire
- We Love CSS
How to use this list
Manual vs. automated submissions: I would always recommend doing manual submissions to galleries and directories, but it is not always practical because very time-consuming. There are websites that can do all the work for you for a small fee, and a search for “css gallery submission” in your favourite search engine should unearth a few, but make sure you take into account the next point.
Frequency of submission: I tend to manually submit sites to 8-15 galleries a week, especially if the site is new or has recently been redesigned. For more established sites the frequency will depend on the history of the site and the past rate of adoption of inbound link. Slower for “dormant” websites, faster for very active sites.
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Twitter: karlfoxley
March 20, 2010 at 8:38 pm
You’ve certainly put some time into creating this list. I’ve added it to our list of traffic generation articles that we are collecting over at our site. We want to create a useful resource of articles that can become a great reference post for new and experience site owners and Internet marketers.
Regards,
Karl
I agree, you put some work into this list. Thank you for sharing it. Frankly I never thought about this approach, so thank you again. Good blog.
Hi Karl,
Thank you for stopping by and for the link. I will try to keep the list up to date (every quarter) by adding new and removing the galleries that no longer update their listing, as I find one of the biggest issue with those types of lists is that they quickly become deprecated.
Mate, seriously. Thanks a ton for this list. I’m getting a new design and i was thinking about how to find some CSS galleries and i can easily say that this list saved my a**.
Bookmark’d and thanks! :)
You are most welcome. I’ve updated the list today, but I need to find a couple of new galleries as the total is now below 90 :)
this will keep me busy for a least 2 days…
thanks for sharing it. this collection is not readily available if you did not consolidate it.
Wonderful list! I am a beginner web designer and I’m always looking for inspiration and new coding techniques. Thanks a lot for the article!
This is a great list, thanks for creating it and sharing! The only thing to keep in mind when submitting to galleries is that they usually accept only original design, not sites built with templates.
Very true. Being realistic can also save you quite some time, only submit a descent design completed, not half-way there.
Awesome collection, very handy to have these all in one place as was aware there were plenty of these out there.
Cheers, I will try to keep the list up to date every couple of months
Love the list, Leo – I never gave this link building strategy much thought in the past, but I certainly see its validity.
Ana
It’s a “get the ball rolling” kind of stage, especially useful for business sites on keyword rich domains. Glad to see you here Ana, thanks for stopping by.
Many thanks for this list! I watched some galleries from your selection and they are really great and provide dofollow links. I wonder, if this method of link-building has any cons, I mean, can it be applied for any kind of site, e.g. a corporate one? Because I have never heard about the use of such galleries for B2B sites… It’s kind of a very fresh idea for me)
Hi Susan, it’s particularly useful if you have a keyword rich domain. Whether your website is corporate or not, the only cons I would see are:
- it can be quite time consuming: leaving valuable blog comments is a lot faster;
- you can’t pick the keywords (has to be domain / website name);
- not all sites get listed: gallery owners are more and more picky about the sites they let through, they do have to look GREAT. (which is probably adding to the value of those links).
Hi Leo,
Wow, you’ve been busy. What a GREAT post and we appreciate you taking the time to create this list for us. I do have one question for you.. I know that when submitting your site to directories they say to only submit your site once. Would this be the case for CSS Galleries as well? May sound like a silly question but I’d rather ask then not.
Thanks Leo, really great post my friend.
Adrienne
Adrienne also wrote Dress Up Your Facebook Profile Photos
Hi Adrienne, yes definitely (most of the galleries actually say so): if your entry does not get published, do not re-submit it unless it underwent a major redesign.
Twitter: karlfoxley
February 17, 2011 at 7:17 pm
Hey Leo and Adrienne,
I would like to add that sometimes it can be worthwhile sending an email to verify that your site was received by the CSS gallery site that you have submitted to. Some (if not most) submission forms have spam filtering built-in and some submitted sites may get filtered due to their name having certain keywords that have a high incidence of spam (make money sites, affiliate marketing sites, SEO service sites etc.).
I only send an email a good while after my sites have not shown up in their listings. By doing it this way you are also not abusing the ‘only submit your site once’ rule. This does require a little bit of extra leg work but it can often net you a link that you may of otherwise thought was not approved, when in actual fact the site owner just had not received it.
I hope that helps.
Karl
Karl Foxley also wrote Elegant Themes Release Their First WordPress Plugin- Anticipate
That’s solid advice Karl, thanks for sharing it
[... off to email 90 CSS galleries about a site I submitted a couple of months ago (NOT this one) ...]
Hello. This is the first time I read on CSS galleries as source of backlinks. I am looking at the many links o the post to know more on this technique.
Tony @ SuccessBlogger also wrote Building Your List Is The Key
Wow this is outstanding – I’ve never heard of this method of link building before. Is it an issue if my site does not use an original design? Also, could I upload other designs and have them link to my site, or does it have to be the design I currently use for my site?
Thanks in advance,
Ben Jackson
Ben Jackson@ link building strategies also wrote Image SEO – Optimizing Your Images
*bookmarks page*
My 2nd quarter plan is a big design revamp so this will definitely be using this list then.
@Tony,@ Ben, @Don, this works really well if you have a keyword or two in your domain name as these sites usually are quite restrictive – and rightly so – when it comes to anchor text. CSS galleries are the “new” directory listings that people where chasing 5-6 years ago.
@Ben – CMS themes bought – be it WordPress, Joomla or anything else of the sort will not get through. CSS galleries want unique and great looking designs, that’s why I believe they offer “more value” that online directories who accept anybody. I had a couple of sites gain more links by being features on designers’ blogs so there are some possible beneficial ripple effects worth considering when creating a “masterpiece”. Having said that, using CSS galleries to build link is only 6th or 7th in my list of avenues to pursue because it’s time consuming and getting listed is almost totally unpredictable.