Manual directory submission is a method long in use for website promotion. Since the beginning of web directories, webmasters submitted their websites to achieve directory listing in their website promotion campaigns.

By having your website indexed in web directories listing, you'll have a one-way link to your site with the keyword-rich anchored text you've planned yourself. So, don't underestimate the power of directory listing.

Website Promotion: Directories vs Search Engines

Search engines are great sources for website promotion. Directories are great too if you submit websites to them manually, not using mass submission softwares. Unlike search engines, directories operate by humans, not softwares. When you submit your website for directory listing, a living person checks your website to decide if it's worth indexing.

As search engines crawl the entire web and spider directories more often than some other sites, a directory listing can help you a lot. Therefore, I recommend manual directory submission to every website, specially at the earliest stages of your websites' birth.

Why Manual Directory Submission?

There are several reasons for using manual directory submission method. Here are some:

• As many spammers have used mass submission softwares for mass directory submission, these website have realized and blocked it. So, your efforts will be useless if you use such bulk submission softwares or use such services that tell you'll be listed in hundreds or thousands of web directories in a short time.

• There's another reason against mass website submission to directories: Even if you play a trick on web directories, your inclusion in their listings will be quickly noticed by search engines. They soon will realize that someone has spammed that directory for directory listing and ... This is a black-hat technique (illegitimate). So, go for manual directory submission for securing your website promotion efforts, even though it takes more time.

• You can use various keywords and keyphrases in each submission if you use manual method. For instance, you submit your website with one keyword-rich title linking to your site's homepage in 10 web directories. Then, you use a different keyword-rich title linking to the same page of your site in the next 10 web directories. And you can continue for several directory listings.

• If your website is listed in directories, people will find you when they're searching directory categories for the information, service or product you offer on your site. This adds to your website visibility.

Website Promotion Tips for Manual Directory Submission

To achieve the best result from your website promotion campaign via directory submission, you should consider the following tips:

1. Make sure the web directory you use for submission is indexed by major search engines.

2. Read the guidelines of website submission before you start at each web directory to make sure you're at the right place taking right steps.

3. Submit to the best-known web directories on the net: Yahoo Directory and Open Directory. Note that Yahoo Directory is different from Yahoo Search Engine. Getting listed at these two help you boost your website's search engine ranking, indexation and link popularity.

4. Submit to your specialized web directories covering the websites of your own industry or field of knowledge.

5. Submit to your local web directory at your city, state, province or country's websites. Of course, if there are some specialized ones in your area, submit to them first.

6. Submit to the web directories in your website's language(s) as well as the international ones depending on the nature of your website.

7. Don't submit to the web directories that post your link with "nofollow" attribute or use "nofollow" in their meta robot of the pages unless the grat traffic it sends you is worth it.

8. If the web directory demands a reciprocal link, check if it's worth doing so, because there are lots of such directories.

As you've noticed above, for your website promotion, you couldn't take all those important measures automatically for directory listing. You need to begin some manual directory submission campaign for optimum result.

What about Directory Submission Softwares?

These days, some clever softwares are made that don't launch mass submissions to web directories at the speed of light! They simulate human submission and slow down their process to pretend they're humans. This has worked well like in some SEO softwares that send queries to search engines at human speed.

Although the sure way of website promotion via manual directory submission is explained above, I don't disagree with the usefulness of some of these directory submitting softwares.