Search Engine Optimization

Build your backlinks with little effort:

Submitting to some of the more popular directories is a great way to boost the popularity of your website, increase your traffic, and build your Google PageRank with relatively little effort.

Especially since some of these directories such as The Open Direcory Project feed other directories on many sites, over time giving you many backlinks across hundreds of sites.

There are two main reasons why webmasters would want to submit to Directories:

• Many links to your site will increase your PageRank and therefore your Google ranking
  
  
• Incoming traffic comes from users who are looking for your kind of service
  
  

Obviously links from any site will boost your Google PageRank not only those from Directories. But there are some major differences between the two:

• Getting included in some of the major direcories like The Open Directory Project, that feed other sites can produce hundreds of links to your website with just one submission
  
  
• Some Directories have become more of an "authority" to some people. Getting listed in them shows people that your site is good enough to be included.
  
  
• It is a lot easier to get yourself listed in a directory aimed at a specific subject rather then someone else's site.
  
  
• Directories are designed ONLY to be directories and nothing else.
  
  

So, what actually is a Directory?

A lot of users don't know the difference between a Search Engine and a Directory, and really care either. In reality, most sites that started as a Directory, often have become Search Engines too. A lot of Search Engines (such as Google) also use the list of sites from Directories in their search results. To a lot of users, all this looks the same. But for webmasters, knowing the difference can help you promote your website effectively.

In reality the only difference between the two is how people find sites. Directories use a catagorized site where you can find the catagory of web pages you want, where Search Engines use a single page in which to search from. A good way to show this, is if the Internet was a library, Directories would be a Catalogue of the books, but Search Engines would be an Index of them.

I'm sold. So how do I submit my website?

All Directories are different. Some will charge webmasters where others offer submissions for free. For this part of the article we will demonstrate how to submit to The Open Directory Project which is always a good place to start because:

• It's free
• It feeds lots of other sites including Google
• It's probably the largest and most comprehensive Directory on the Internet
• Most other Directories have a very similar system for submissions

1. Visit the Open Directory Project homepage at http://dmoz.org.
   
   
2. Move through the catagorys to find the most suitable one for your site.
   
   
3. Once you have found the right catagory for your site, click the "suggest URL" link at the top of the page.
   
   
4. Fill in the form with your site's details following the guidelines for that catagory strictly.
   
   
5. Submit the form and wait.
   
   

As with almost all Directories, DMOZ will not accept all sites that are submitted to them. However if you site is relevant to that catagory and meets the guidelines for it, you stand a higher chance of getting in.

Finally. Remember all submissions are checked by humans not computers, therefore you should not expect your site to be included in a Directory straight away (it has been known for some big catagorys to take months to include new submissions). But when you do get in to a Directory, you will start to see its benefits quickly.