Submitting your Web Site to Free Directories

Submitting your website to the various online directories isan important part of any Link Popularity campaign. Whilst your trafficfrom many directories may be minor or irrelevant, relevant incominglinks to your website will help in your overall search engine linkpopularity.
Other than Yahoo!, which is quite frankly beyond thereach of many smaller websites, paying for your directory submissioncan be a waste of money. You can get just as good a resultfromsubmitting to free directories, or those that are free with areciprocal link. If the directory is exceptionally good, the cost islow, and your directory ranking will be improved by paying a fee, do soif you wish. Personally, I wouldn't recommend you pay for what you canget free elsewhere.
To start with on your submission campaign, in myopinion it is better to submit to those directories that will allow youto easily modify your listing. That way, you can correct mistakes andget your campaign down pat before submitting to directories that don'tallow you to logon and modify your submission, thus saving yourselffrom wasting or reducing in value your efforts in those directories.

What Directories to Submit To
Thebest are Search Engine Friendly directories (those that actually haveyour site URL listed at some point, rather than outlinks that aresimply code). Some will ask for a reciprocal link, some will not. Onelist of non-reciprocal directories is atInfo.vilesilencer.com. Opinion atthe moment is suggesting that non-reciprocal or one-way links arebetter, although any relevant link is useful. Directories that encodetheir links are mostly useful for traffic if their Alexa Ranking ishigh enough. Directories that do not encode outgoing links will helpyour website's Search Engine Ranking.

Deep Linking
It can beworth linking to other pages on your site other than your main page.Before doing this, make sure that the directory you are submitting topermits you to both submit URLs other than your home page (some onlyallow top level submission), and for the same site to be submitted todifferent categories (not all directories permit what are essentiallymultiple submissions of the same website). This will work especially ifyou have online tools or directories (such as your links page) on yoursite that are useful and relevant to add to other directory categories.

Choose the Relevant Directory Category
Mostdirectories will have many categories you can submit your site to.Decide on the one that is most relevant, preferably a keyword that youare aiming for high search engine ranking in, and try to submit to thesame or similar category in every directory, at least for your mainpage (also see Deep Linking below). This will increase the ranking ofyour site relating to the keyword chosen.

Submit to Different Categories
Ifthe directory allows multiple submissions, and your website is relevantin several categories, submit to all the relevant categories you can.This will increase the number of incoming links to your website. Again,carefully check the terms of any directory before trying this to makesure it is permitted.

Write Title
Write the title for yourwebsite. Try to include a keyword you are aiming for ranking in in thetitle, but make the use of it appropriate, don't just bang a keyword infor the sake of it; you could get your site submission rejected.

Write Description
Describeyour website in a way that will attract visitors. The length of yourdescription will vary from directory to directory, but most will beunder 250 characters. Some will allow up to 1,000 characters, and inthose cases write the most comprehensive description of your site andits features that you can. It is a good idea to write severaldescriptions of different lengths, say from under 50 characters for abrief overview, to around 150 characters for a fuller description, upto 250 characters for a yet more comprehensive listing, and finally afull description as previously mentioned for over 250 characters. Keepyour listing pertinent to your website, insert keywords where relevantand appropriate, but do not just submit a keyword listing, as mostdirectories will reject your submission. Save all your descriptions ina text file, and just copy & paste into the descriptions boxes whenneeded rather than typing the same descriptions out again and again.

Choose Keywords
Again,as with the description mentioned above, the amount of keywords you canuse will vary from directory to directory. Some will not give theoption, some will allow you numbers of keywords, whilst others go bynumbers of characters. Make a list of all relevant keywords for yoursite, from most important to least, and basically keep adding keywordsuntil either you get to the bottom of your list (unlikely unless yourlist is really short) or you run out allowed characters/keywords. Checkwhat keywords your competitors are going for if you need inspiration.This can often be done by viewing the source of a web page and checkingthe META tags. Again, save your keywords to a text file.

Keep Track of Your Progress
Keepa careful record of what directories you have submitted to, and yourprogress. It is far too easy to totally lose track of what you aredoing, which does not help your linking campaign at all. The best wayis by using a spreadsheet, such as Excel, to keep track of yourcampaign. At a minimum, you need to keep track of the following:Directory URL, Directory Name, Date Submitted, User Login &Password for those directories that allow you to alter your details andResponse (accepted/declined). Other categories can include: DirectoryAlexa Ranking, Directory Page Rank (this will be for the home pageonly), Referral URL (if the directory will improve your ranking forreferring visitors) and any Notes. If you are using the deep linkingand multiple submissions strategies above, also keep track of whatother pages you have submitted to each directory. Make a seperate entryfor each URL submitted. For example, your spreadsheet columns could goas follows: Directory Name, Directory URL, URL Submitted, Referral URL,Login, Password, Alexa Ranking, Page Rank, Date Submitted, Response. Iwould advise keeping the list in alphabetical order, rather than ordersubmitted, as that way you can check more easily whether or not youhave submitted to a particular directory.

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