Submitting your website to web directories is one of the most popular ways of web advertising. It's one effective way to get permanent links. With a bunch of good back links, you can better position yourself in terms of page rank (PR). And a high PR would definitely mean more traffic, more visitors and more sales!

Just like in any business, for your website to be a success, you need some amount of effort to promote your site. Most often than not, plain effort is not enough. You need to shell out a couple of bucks too for advertising.

If you are decided to submit your site to web directories, the next crucial thing for you to do is to decide which web directories you want to submit. There are literally hundreds (if not thousands) of web directories that you can choose from. You may be faced with a tougher decision than you think.

Generally, there are two kinds of web directories: free and paid. Here's a quick overview of each of them.

Free Web Directories

In the online world, there's one word that everybody loves - FREE. A free web directory, as the phrase implies, doesn't require you to pay a single cent for you to submit your website. Some directory sites may request for a reciprocal link or a back link. This means you have to put the directory site's URL or link anywhere in your own website.

The problem with some free web directories is that most of them are not properly maintained. This is probably the reason why most websites approved of any kind of web sites or even spam sites because they lack proper monitoring.

Paid Web Directories

If you want to position yourself into quality web directories, then you might as well invest on it a little. Paid links can go anywhere from $10 to as much as $299 per year. To date, Yahoo by far has the most popular (and most expensive) web directory on the web. Most paid directories now offer permanent one-way links from $3 to $50. Featured links always show at the top of the listings giving your site more exposure, but are a little dearer compared to regular links.

If you have a quality website, it is only but right to submit to quality web directories. Submitting to free web directories may give you a free listing but if that site has only two or three visitors in a day, then what's the use? Also, if your site is linked from free directories with pages full of spam-site links, search engines may penalize your ranking or fully ban your site from their index in the worst case.

Submitting your site to web directories is worth the money. Web directories that offer paid submission usually do their best to increase the page rank and traffic of their own directory site. Submissions are closely scrutinized and thus, spam-sites or made for ads websites are automatically discarded, resulting in refined listings. This way you are assured of a good exposure and linking from clean pages. Consequently, if the web directory has more traffic, then that means more chances of hits for your website.

Article Copyright: Agnivo Roy, Web Directory Network (http://www.agnivo.com/web-directory-network/)

You are free to publish this article in its entirety, whether online or offline, only if this copyright notice and live link backs are retained.