Why are Directories Important?
By Aaron Wall
Usually you will not get much traffic from most directories. With so few people searching through directories today, a large portion of the traffic comes directly from people finding the directory entries within search engine results. The single biggest reason to list in directories is that they help search engines understand what your site is about and help improve your relevancy and position. Some search engines such as Google make it extremely rewarding for a webmaster to list their site in many different directories.
The Two Most Important Directories: ODP and Yahoo!
The Open Directory Project listings are entirely free, and for that reason they sometimes take months to acquire. Be patient, and do not resubmit your site for at least 6 weeks between submissions.
The Yahoo! Directory rivals the Open Directory as one of the largest human edited directories on the web. The Yahoo! directory has a recurring $299 [yearly] fee for commercial sites, but is still free for noncommercial sites.
Note: It takes a ton of effort to create a comprehensive directory of the web. This is why Yahoo! charges hundreds of dollars per year. This is why having over 50,000 editors is still not enough for the ODP.
Other General Directories
A couple other important directories and web guides are: About, the Virtual Library, GoGuides, JoeAnt, and Gimpsy. A few good newer directories are Wow Directory, BlueFind, Web Beacon, & Skaffe. Business.com charges $99 per year for listing, and is well worth that price for many people.
Topical or Niche Specific Directories
Many niche specific directories are focused on quality and provide static text links to your site. These directories not only improve your site's relevancy in search results but also drive a significant amount of prequalified traffic to your site. Many niche specific directories are works of love and provide free listings.
Recent Directory Problems
Some unscrupulous money hungry parties accept any site that pays them. They place the sites in semi-organized categories and call it a directory. Eventually these types of directories get delisted from Google and when they get banned you wasted your money.
Directories Created to Sell AdSense: AdSense and cheap link rentals have made it easy to create garbage directories to collect your money.
Duplicate directories: Sites such as emfind.com, pearlfind.com, moonfind.com, findeyes.com, beyondfind.com, and findww.com all look the exact same. I have had about 20 directories similar to spain-directory.com and splendes.com submitted to my site.
Summary
Since search algorithms are just programs without intelligence, they must rely upon the intelligence of humans to structure their search results. Human edited directories, for this reason, are important to be listed in.
Since directories are becoming such a profitable business model the number of directories will continue to steadily grow throughout the rest of the year.
If those directories are not spending money advertising or building their brand, or if you are unsure if a directory is sketchy, ask around before spending any money.
About the Author
Aaron Wall, author of The SEOBook The Most Comprehensive and Updated Search Engine Optimization ebook on the planet, You know your product better than SEOs do. Because you know your product better and know your industry better you can do a better job of promoting your sites than they would.
Other Search Engine Optimization Articles By Aaron Wall
1) The Tools for optimizing your site for the search engines : Don't even think of doing your own search engine positioning unless you have these software programs with you.
2) Choosing the correct keywords for your site : Tells you how you can choose the keywords for which you should optimize your site for the search engines.
3) The importance of having your own domain name : Tells you why you need to have your own domain name in order to get a high ranking in the search engines.
4) Creating Keyword Rich Pages : Tells you how you can create pages which are designed to rank highly in all the search engines.
5) Creating a robots.txt file : How you can create a robots.txt file in order to prevent your site from being penalized for spamming by the search engines.
6) Software to help you create a robots.txt file : Describes a software which will automate the task of creating a robots.txt file.
7) Improving the Link Popularity of your site : Link popularity is becoming an increasingly important factor in search engine placement. Find out the methods you can use to improve the link popularity of your site, and know which methods you should not use.
8) Submitting your site to the Open Directory : Discover how you should submit your site to the Open Directory in order to get a high ranking in many of the major search engines.
9) Becoming an Open Directory Project Editor : Can't get your site listed in the Open Directory, no matter how hard you try? Find out how you can become an editor of the Open Directory and get your site an optimum listing in it. Here's what one of the subscribers of our newsletter had to say about this article:
10) Frames and Search Engines : Find out how to get good rankings in the search engines if your site uses frames.
11) Page Cloaking - To Cloak or Not to Cloak : Find out what is page cloaking, how it is implemented, and whether or not you should actually use page cloaking.
12) Top 10 Search Engine Positioning Mistakes : The top mistakes that people make when they try to optimize their sites for the search engines. Avoid these mistakes to save yourself a lot of anguish and frustration in the long-run.
13) Glossary : Contains an explanation of commonly used terms in the world of search engine positioning
14) Improving Your Website Rankings : Only one site out of 100 gets substantial targeted traffic . . . and these successful sites are the ones that understand the importance of proper search engine optimization and search engine placement.
15) 5 Steps To Increase Your Google Page Rank : Google Page rank is based on back links. Back links are Links pointing to your website from another website. The more back links you have the higher your PR will be.
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