It’s common knowledge that the more links you have pointing to your website, the more “popular” search engines will see your site as, thus the better your chances of getting higher search results.
Often at times when starting a new website, its almost impossible to get others to link to you unless you’re giving something away for free or offering a product or service that’s simply amazing.
This is where submitting to web directories can come in handy.
You might ask why web directories?
Web directories are seen as an important and honest form of quality links by existing search engines, so naturally getting listed in a web directory can help to dramatically boost your ranking in all major search engines. There are quite a few web directories online, so it’s usually an easier task to get your site listed in these directories than asking other webmasters to link to your site.
Once your site is included in a web directory, it’s usually there to stay. These days search engines not only take into account the quality of the link to your site and the number of links to your site, but also the age of each particular link. Since most directories rarely delete their listings, you can be sure that the age of your link will increase over time.
Submitting to directories
When submitting to various web directories, carefully chosen page titles and link text will help your search engine traffic immensely. If you’ve read any of my previous search engine optimization articles, you’ll already know that using keywords in your back links helps your search engine results for that particular set of keywords. It’s important to remember this now and try and include your keywords again when submitting to the directories. Free directories are common online, however, since they are free, they tend to be neglected so getting your site included is often a difficult task. I prefer to focus on only a few free ones, and pay particular attention to the quality paid directories that offer good value for money.
I rate a quality web directory as one with a decent Google page rank (4 and above is good) for its home page, as well as a decent page rank for all of its internal pages and categories.
Selecting the right category to submit to is almost as important as selecting the right directories. Some categories will have higher rankings than others, whilst some will have a lot more listings. Trying to find a good ratio between high ranking and low competition is the aim of the game.
My favorite
Here I’ve listed my favorite web directory that I submit our web sites to. It has helped immensely with our search engine rankings.
Mexabet Web Directory
A comprehensive human-edited web directory.
It is a search engine-friendly free directory with a promising future.
Conclusion
Submitting to directories can have dramatic effects on search engine results positioning, if combined with other search engine optimization strategies and careful Meta keyword selection.
There’s obviously a lot more web directories than I have mentioned in this article, so it really does pay to look around the web for information and see what you can find.
It is important to note that using niche/country specific directories can help improve your search rank also. I.e. for China using a Chinese specific directory like Uncover China (www.uncoverchina.com)
