With Yahoo and DMOZ in the forefront these directories used human editors to catalog the web – a daunting task. Website owners and Internet marketers would submit their websites to these directories. Included in the submission would be a little information about the site and the category under which the site should be ‘filed' or indexed.

Obviously the waiting lists to get into these directories could be very, very long. Yahoo tried solving this by charging to have your website submission reviewed by an editor. This policy, while workable, left out a lot of the little guys who could not afford $299 just to have their site looked at with no guarantee of inclusion. DMOZ (also known as the Open Directory Project) never charged for submission and still doesn't. Although nobody I have ever heard of uses DMOZ to actually search the web they are still around because a) they lease their database to other directories and search engines and b) by now they have such a long-standing reputation that being listed in DMOZ and Yahoo for that matter can do a great deal for your search engine rankings.

As the Internet kept growing a quicker way was needed to find and index the thousands upon thousands of websites sprouting up all over the world. Search engines such as “Archie” were already being developed. These search engines use software programs called “spiders' or “crawlers” to go through the Internet following from link to link finding and indexing web pages. This is why linking is such a vital tool in search engine optimization.

Even with search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Ask getting most of the search traffic directories still serve vital functions.

You may have noticed when searching for certain things on one of the major search engines you will see directories on the first page of the results. This is often the case with a search for something local or regional. It can also come up if you are looking for a specific professional such as a doctor or lawyer.

The directories that come up as a result of a user search are an additional method of organizing the fantastic amount of information on the web.

These directories are important to both visitors and website owners and as a website owner you will want to have your website listed in as many directories as possible.

Being in directories offers two important benefits to you as a website owner.

You will get traffic and visitors from the directories themselves.

The links you get can prove vital to your search engine rankings.

Search engines find websites based on links from other sites. The more sites that link to yours the better chance each page of your website has to be found and ranked well by the search engines. This is why it's important to get listed in as many SEO friendly directories as you can. It can help both traffic and rankings.