Why should you submit your website to directories? The short answer is to get visitors to your website because more visitors to your site would typically mean more business for you.



Good directories like Yahoo, DMOZ and Business.com send visitors to your site on their own. Many people use these directories to look for information. Then there are topic specific or region specific niche directories that have their own groups of users. If you want to target customers in Canada, for example, you could try to get your website listed in a Canada-specific directory. If you have a travel website, you could seek out travel-related directories.

Most of the proliferating numbers of directories do not bring significant numbers of visitors to your Web site. However, a listing in a good directory, under a classification that is relevant to your site's theme, would be a valuable factor that search engines use to assess your site.

Search engines use software "robots" to locate, bring back and index the millions of websites landing on the Web. These robots cannot exercise the kind of judgment humans do while assessing a website. So the engines look at human-edited directories to provide an indirect assessment of websites.

A large number of relevant directory listings (links) could help your site to move towards the top in search engine results. And if your website ultimately manages to reach the first or second (or even third) page of search results (for search words that are typically used to find your kind of businesses), it could indeed benefit your business significantly (provided you do have a good product and a good website).

Submitting Your Site to Directories

Unlike search engines, directories do not crawl the Web looking for new websites. That means you (or somebody else) would have to bring your website to the attention of directories. Submitting details of your Web site to the directories is the way to do this.

All directories call for certain standard details about the sites submitted to them. These include a short title, the URL of the site and a short description of your site in a limited number of words. Some directories might also ask for your email address and other details.

Directories also require that you submit your site to the most appropriate category. You drill down the directory structure (of each directory) and find the category that best fits your site. This is often a troublesome task as there might be more than one category where your site could be listed.

One final issue is the mode of submission. Sites can be submitted in an automated fashion to "thousands" of directories. Such automated submission is not likely to meet the specific guidelines of each directory. Directories also do not like automated submissions as the sites submitted would more than likely to be junk sites.

It is far better to submit your site by hand to each directory, complying with the guidelines of each. Your site is more likely to be accepted in that case.

Why Should You be Choosy in Selecting Directories?

Submitting your Web site to directories is a monotonous and time-consuming task. And after all the trouble, you might find that the directory takes its own time to review your site. They could also reject the site after this review on one ground or another.

More importantly, a listing in some of the directories could prove to be of no value. Some directories are just "link farms" indiscriminately including every site submitted. This eliminates the element of human review that provides value to a directory listing. Such directories do not bring any traffic (of visitors to your site). Search engines also would ignore such junk-filled sites and assign no value to a link from such a directory.

Next comes the issue of paying money for a directory listing. Some directories, notably Yahoo, require payment to review your site (with no guarantee that your site would be accepted after the review). Other sites would speed up the review of your site if you pay. In such cases, it becomes even more important to select the directories carefully.

How Do You Select Directories?

Below is a checklist that you could use to decide whether a particular directory is likely to be worth investing your time and/or money.

• Is the directory well organized? Does it have many classifications of real-world themes? Are there sub classifications under each classification to accommodate common needs?



• Is the directory easy to use? Are the classifications immediately clear? Is it easy to drill down to a category you are interested in? Could you move back and forth without getting lost?



• Does the directory seem well populated? Are there numerous listings under each category? Are there several empty categories?



• Do the listed sites appear good quality? Take a look at these under different categories. Or is the directory full of junk sites?



• What overall impression do you get considering the layout as well as the above aspects?



• What Google page rank is displayed for the site in the Google toolbar (if you have installed it in one of your browsers)? A page rank of at least 4/10 is what you should be looking for.



• If you are adept enough, you should also look at the traffic levels to the directory by going to Alexa website.



• Finally, look at the way the directory treats submissions. Do they seem to be in the directory business solely to make money from website owners? What is the backlog of websites pending review as indicated by the directory? Directories often indicate the time lag you have to expect before your site is taken up for review.

You should by now have a good idea of whether the directory is worth submitting to. You should also be able to decide whether it is worth paying money, and if so how much, to get listed in that directory.

New directories might not meet many of the desirable criteria above. However, if they seem well organized and filled with good quality websites, it might be worthwhile to submit to them. You get the advantage of quicker review and probably even a front-page listing.

Consider Outsourcing Directory Submission

By now, you would have an idea of all the bother involved in selecting directories and submitting your Web site to them. Manual submission by hand to each directory is an extremely monotonous job.

It is better to entrust the submission to a dependable specialist who would submit your site to selected directories.

A specialist would also know the directories out there and how good each one is.