Web directories have been around since the beginning of the World Wide Web in the early 1990’s and are still recognised as an important channel for advertising businesses online. People often get web directories and search engines mixed up. The difference between a search engine like Google and web directories is that Google uses a web crawler script to automatically index websites to show up in SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages), while a web directory organises links under various categories and sub-categories.

How Can Submitting to Directories Help Your Website? Here are some tips:

Get indexed quicker in the Search Engines

When search engines crawl directory websites, any new entries within those directories also get crawled and indexed. Directories that are deemed authoritative by search engines like Google are crawled regularly, finding new website links to index which are then ranked to appear in the search results. If you are launching a new website, you should seriously consider submitting to website directories to speed up the process of getting indexed into Google.

Increase your Positions in Google

As many website owners should know, the more quality links to your website that you obtain, the more favourably Google will rank your website. Website Directories are a great source for one-way or reciprocal links. Well maintained directories will place your link in an appropriate category or sub-category, meaning that the directory’s human moderators agree that your website is about what your website claims to be about and is useful to human beings.

Drive Traffic to Your Website

Having a listing on a popular, high traffic website directory can also bring your website traffic. You can usually judge whether a web directory receives much traffic from looking at its Alexa rank. This can be found simply by going to www.alexa.com and entering the directory’s domain name into the search field. The lower the "Alexa rank" the more traffic the website gets. You can also get a "Country Rank" that indicates how much traffic its gets per country. If the Alexa rank is 100,000 or less, you can be confident that you should get some traffic form it.

How to Pick Good Directories from Bad Directories

Good website directories allow you to enter your preferred link title that best describes what your website is about. The link title, or anchor text can be very influential to Google regarding what search terms your site appears for in its search results.

Good website directories are human edited, meaning that links are not approved automatically. This means that a directory moderator will review your website before making the listing live and won’t approve your website if it does not meet the directories quality guidelines. A lot of website directories that may have been actively moderated and publish new links on a regular basis now lay pretty much dormant. One to tell this is if the directory shows statistics on the links within the directory. Many web directories show the number of links and the number of links waiting action. If the number of links awaiting approval is vastly larger than the total number of published links, it’s probably a waste of time submitting a listing.

Good website directories pass Google Page Rank through links to your website within its directory listings. There are directories out there that basically block their website from passing any of that link love through the links on their website. They do this either by using a tag in their links called a "nofollow attribute". If the link to your website contains this tag it is rendered almost useless to you.

Good directory websites do not accept links to rubbish websites like link farms, websites with nothing but affiliate or advertising links, or are otherwise not useful to real humans. A directory worth its SEO salt should also not allow links that redirect to another site.

Good directory websites require manual submission. Avoid automated directory submission software as there is a big chance that any directories that will accept an automated software driven submission is not going to do your website any favours.

Google, Paid Links and Directories

There is a lot of confusion about Google policy of penalising websites for buying links. This is aided by the fact that Google does not really have a clear policy on paid links. Should you avoid paying for links from website directories?

From what employees of Google have indicated, human edited website directories are generally ok with Google because there is editorial review. The directory is not considered to be selling the link, but the review and listing service.

Manual Directory Submission Services

Manually submitting a website to the online directories is a time consuming, seemingly pointless task. It’s important to be discerning about the directories that you submit to in order to make sure that it will help your website rather than waste your time. There are lots of manual directory submission services available these days that offer to do all the manual submission for you. A problem with a lot of these is that you need to be able to see the results. Also, it can take days, weeks or even months for many submissions to go live and the quality of the directories submitted to can vary.

If you don’t have time for manually submitting your website to the online directories and the benefits that your website can receive from it, talk to an SEO expert. They can either perform the service as part of an overall SEO strategy, or identify a quality web directory submission service provider to use.