Common Guidelines For Directory Submission

There is no doubt that search engine optimization (SEO) is very important to the overall success that you have with your website. Unfortunately, however, there are many people out there who spend lots of time and money submitting their websites in hopes of improving their search engine rankings.

One of the internet marketing strategies which is known to be very effective is directory submission. In fact, directory submission has replaced the search engine submission process in recent times due to its known effectiveness. Learn more about some of the main benefits that directory submission has to offer you, in order to help you determine whether or not this internet marketing strategy is the right choice for you.

One of the main benefits that directory submission has to offer is the fact that your website will be more likely to be seen. Although anyone can find anything looking through a search engine, unless you have a very high search engine ranking, chances are that your website will not be found. Directories, on the other hand, almost always have some sort of purpose or theme. When people are looking for Saint Bernard-related websites, they may decide to refer to a Saint Bernard directory. If you have submitted your website to a directory, the people who are interested in this subject will be more likely to see it.

Through the use of directory submission techniques, you will also be more likely to get the higher search engine ranking that any internet marketer is interested in. This especially is true if you are submitting your website to a very reputable directory, rather than to a lesser known one. One of the biggest decisions that you will probably need to make when you decide that you want to try out directory submission as an internet marketing strategy is whether you should use paid directories or free directories. It is important to weight the benefits of each option before making your choice. Although free directories are a great option if you are on a low marketing budget, you might not get the results which are looking for. An website directory that you will need to pay for is often a lot more beneficial in increasing the amount of internet traffic that your website sees, as well as your overall search engine ranking. Overall, it is important to realize that your search engine ranking can be increased through the use of directory submission.

You might want to think about using directory submission as internet marketing strategy if you want to ensure that anyone can easily find your website with a specific topic in mind, if you want to increase the internet traffic that your website gets or if you want to increase your search engine ranking. If you have only ever used search engine submission, chances are that directory submission is something that you may want to give a try. Since this internet marketing strategy is known to be very effective, you will be likely to get the results that you are hoping for.

Unlike Search Engines, the process of review of directory submission is carried out manually, by “Experts”. They also have stringent rules and guidelines for listing your site. You may ask why; but these rules are there to ensure good directory submission and effective review procedures. It helps the editor to evaluate a site and decide whether to accept or reject it. All these combined results in a great deal of scrutiny being carried out before your site gets listed on directories.

But you can easily make your submissions an instant success with most of the directories. All you need to do is pay a little attention to the details you provide for Directory Submission. Your little efforts will be richly rewarded.

Here are few Golden rules you should always follow before beginning Directory Submission.

Before You Begin Directory Submission

Before you begin directory submission, make you have taken note of the following:

• Do not submit a mirror page; most directories don’t accept mirror pages.
• Do not submit any “Under construction” pages.
• Always submit the top-level domain of your site.
For example: The correct URL to submit for my site is www.submit2please.com. Do not add index.html or any sub domains.
• Check all your links. Broken links are a sign poor site management which may not go down well with the directories.

Chose the most appropriate Category for your site

Web directories are sorted by topic and editors frequently take great pride in ensuring that everything stays well categorized. So, put up your website in the right category. The search engines look at the various links that are on the page on which you are listed. This can lead to better rankings.

Tip: To find appropriate categories for a site, you can go to Dmoz.org and type in the product/service keyword. You can also search for your rival site and check out the category under which they are submitted.

Pay attention to the description and use of key words

The most common restriction forced by directories is on the size of your description and keywords. The trick is to come up with such a description for your site that can conveniently fit into 100, 150, 200, and 250 characters length. Do all this before you get down to the real job of directory submission. The reason for keeping four lengths of description is that you never know which one will be accepted in which directory. Remember that you may not be able to pen down everything about your site, so write what is unique and relevant. Avoid using a sales pitch and/or promotional language. Try and be informative and friendly.

Here are few more points you should always bear in mind while writing a description for directory submission:

• Do not repeat your title or site URL in the description.
• Do not use all caps; use mixed case.
• Use complete sentences.
• Do not say the word site or website, as in “this site offers”
• Do not use any hype like “the best” or “excellent.”
• Fit your main keyword phrases in but do not repeat them.

Once you have taken care of all these, you have over come the most difficult part of directory submission. The same should be followed for keywords. When it comes to directory submission, all you need to do is to pick up the most appropriate one and hit enter.

Tip: This is what I call an ideal description for my site Submit2Please.com, “We submit Web Sites, Articles, Blogs, Press Releases, Scripts and RSS Feeds to Search Engine Friendly Directories. The directory submission is carried out manually by trained in-house directory submission experts.”

Site Title

Pay attention to your site title. You should ideally not use any URL and key words in it, until and unless they are absolutely necessary to describe your site. Remember, be precise and straight forward!

Tip: You should identify at least 3-4 titles for your site and rotate them during Directory Submission. In this way you can get the maximum optimization benefit for your site through Directory Submission.

All the above mentioned “Golden Rules” stand good for most directories on the internet including Dmoz.org. Thus, by exercise necessary caution before directory submission, you can save a lot of precious time and energy. With the right advice and steps, directory submission may be the most significant thing you will ever do for your website.

With all the web promotion tools that are available to you, why should you use directory submission? For starters, directory submission increases your money making chances so it’s worth considering.

So you have article submission, link exchanges, traffic exchanges, and whatnots to drive traffic to your site and make more money. But do you have directory submission? You’ve probably heard about directory submission. As the term implies, directory submission pertain to the process of submitting your website to a directory. It is just like having your number listed in the phone book.

A web directory is a site that contains links to different websites, which are classified according to various categories and subcategories. For effective directory submission, you need to submit your site to the most specific subcategory available.

There are two ways to do directory submission. One is through manual submissions and the other is with the use of directory submission software. Manual submissions take a lot of time and effort. And effort, mind you, that can go to complete waste when the directory turns down your site for one reason or another. Before a website is accepted into a directory, it is evaluated based on its content and the category and subcategory in which it has been submitted. The directory will also review if the site’s description fits the category and subcategory in question perfectly. But of course, you also need to do your own evaluation before you submit your website. To avoid directory submission hassles and mistakes, it is better to use directory submission software instead. Your directory submission software is already equipped with a list of partner directories where your site will be listed in. All you have to do is fill out a form that asks for information about your site, so the software can determine its proper directory placement. The best thing about using your directory submission software is that it can distribute links to your site efficiently and with no effort on your part.

With the help of directory submission software, directory submission are very easy to do. So why not use this tool to generate more website traffic? It’s a small price to pay to get a lot of benefits, anyway. If you are not aware of it, well, now you know that search engines rely heavily upon directories. So by submitting your site to a directory, you are increasing your page ranking. The directories, moreover, help widen your online visibility by spreading out links to your site. This will then help generate more traffic. Given how easy and practically effortless the process of directory submission is, there’s not much reason left not to jump in the bandwagon and submit your website to a directory now.

Plain and simple; a lot!

Reciprocal linking has been so abused by webmasters and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) experts (term used loosely when it comes to reciprocal linking) that the larger search engines have begun the process of disregarding reciprocal links as irrelevant.

Does that mean you will be penalized for having some? No, you won't be penalized (unless they lead to 'bad neighborhoods') but you will also not gain anything from having them either.

What has brought this downfall of reciprocal linking? Automation and spam sites but mostly automation. Automation allowed for membership sites to be created where trading can happen at the click of a button and your site is updated automatically with the new link page including the new link. Automation also allowed for finding link partners to send generic emails to in the hopes that they would take the bait and link back to you in return for your link to them.

Now, I like automation when done in a responsible and sensible way. But much of the reciprocal linking automation was about getting as many links as possible as fast as possible. Obviously, unless you are YouTube or MySpace, this is very unnatural and has been easy for the search engines to include in their algorithms.

Many webmasters threw all senses out the window in their quest for reciprocal links. They would go after anyone and everyone rather than finding related and quality partners to share links. Some even would say that they did it for the traffic, except that most of the sites that they traded links with didn't have any traffic and they were trading links to get higher search engine placement to get more traffic.

Another fatal flaw of reciprocal linking is the unscrupulous webmaster who buries your link on a page that will never be visited by a human visitor and probably not a search engine bot either. Most webmasters were not taking the time to actually see if the page their link was placed on could be found by the visitors to the parent site and therefore didn't get any search engine benefit or any natural traffic benefit. However, because you were a honest webmaster the link from your site did pass page rank and visitors to the other site and therefore the unscrupulous benefited greatly from laziness.

Now, most recently, there have been the 3-way reciprocal linking requests. This is still a reciprocal request and is still very easy for a search engine to identify. In fact, you would need to have hundreds if not thousands of web sites that you were rotating your 3rd site links through for 3-way linking to be difficult to detect. When webmasters explain it they make it sound like it is better than regular reciprocal linking but the reality is that it is more spammy than reciprocal linking because you are intentionally doing it to achieve better search engine placements.

So, my recommendation is to stay away from all reciprocal linking (at least in the traditional sense).

Well, what's left you may ask? The answer really goes back to more traditional marketing methods for creating traffic to a campaign. In the web world, our campaign is usually to gain more traffic and if we get higher search engine placement to get that traffic then it is a bonus.

All of the following, create long lasting 1-way backlinks that may come from highly respected authority sites and therefore carry more value in the search engine algorithms.

To start with, there is the tried and true method of submitting your site to 'hand-edited' web directories. Although not all of them are hand-edited a vast majority are. Which also means that the free web directories have a back log that may be a couple of days to a couple of months. Even still, it is worth submitting to as many directories as you can. Don't expect much traffic from this method but that's ok because we are really looking for the 1-way backlink.

Next, would be article submissions/marketing. Write individual articles or create a series of articles and submit them to the major article repositories. Article marketing doesn't usually have an immediate effect on traffic but will build links over time as a well written article will be republished on many sites, blogs, and newsletters.

I usually recommend directory submissions and article marketing take place first because they take the longest to actually gain momentum. But once they do it can be an incredible experience.

Next come the more time consuming but more immediate techniques. They are signature usage, site development, social bookmarking and context linking.

Signature usage is really simple. It is the task of commenting on blogs or forums that are related to your sites general topic. The benefit is a self-placed backlink to your own site. These links can usually even be to pages on the interior of your web site not just the home page. One of the best techniques to generate traffic from your signature is to offer link followers a discount or unique benefit just for following that link.

Site development is simply the process of making your site attractive and friendly to visitors. Sometimes this is called Visitor Experience Optimization (VEO). VEO becomes more and more important as your site gains more and more visitors. Your goal is to have a site that keeps a visitor there as long as possible. It will also increase the likely hood that anonymous webmasters will place links on their site to your site without a request from you - a 1-way link.

Social bookmarking is one of those things that webmasters may do that will make them feel funny and seem like they aren't doing the right thing. It's really OK as long as it is done without complete automation and without the intent to spam the bookmarking sites. What you are really trying to do is submit a vote for your own sites' pages (don't submit every single page of your site) into the bookmarking sites. Hopefully someone else will see your submission and agree with your vote and so on and so on. This technique will not work with every web site but it is worth at least submitting your pages to a group of bookmarking sites with some hope...

Finally, for those reciprocal request that you will undoubtedly continue to receive, contextual linking is what you want. Even if it is a reciprocal link between sites, if it is embedded within the normal context of the other webmasters web site it will be more trusted than a standard reciprocal link. Basically it will appear more natural to the user and to the search engine bots. Obviously for it to make sense, any reciprocal linking should only be done between sites that are related in some way and please don't make every incoming link appear the same. Change the text of the link and the context of the paragraph or page the link comes from so that it once again appears natural.

Of course, even if you do all of these things perfectly, there is no guarantee that you will be on the first page of any search engine result pages. But you will at least have a chance and will outrank a vast majority of the competition sites in the coming years.

Unlike Search Engines, the process of review of directory submission is carried out manually, by "Experts". They also have stringent rules and guidelines for listing your site. You may ask why; but these rules are there to ensure good directory submission and effective review procedures. It helps the editor to evaluate a site and decide whether to accept or reject it. All these combined results in a great deal of scrutiny being carried out before your site gets listed on directories.

But you can easily make your submissions an instant success with most of the directories. All you need to do is pay a little attention to the details you provide for Directory Submission. Your little efforts will be richly rewarded.

Here are few Golden rules you should always follow before beginning Directory Submission.

Before You Begin Directory Submission

Before you begin directory submission, make you have taken note of the following:

• Do not submit a mirror page; most directories don't accept mirror pages.
• Do not submit any "Under construction" pages.
• Always submit the top-level domain of your site.
For example: The correct URL to submit for my site is www.submit2please.com. Do not add index.html or any sub domains.
• Check all your links. Broken links are a sign poor site management which may not go down well with the directories.

Chose the most appropriate Category for your site

Web directories are sorted by topic and editors frequently take great pride in ensuring that everything stays well categorized. So, put up your website in the right category. The search engines look at the various links that are on the page on which you are listed. This can lead to better rankings.

Tip: To find appropriate categories for a site, you can go to Dmoz.org and type in the product/service keyword. You can also search for your rival site and check out the category under which they are submitted.

Pay attention to the description and use of key words

The most common restriction forced by directories is on the size of your description and keywords. The trick is to come up with such a description for your site that can conveniently fit into 100, 150, 200, and 250 characters length. Do all this before you get down to the real job of directory submission. The reason for keeping four lengths of description is that you never know which one will be accepted in which directory. Remember that you may not be able to pen down everything about your site, so write what is unique and relevant. Avoid using a sales pitch and/or promotional language. Try and be informative and friendly.

Here are few more points you should always bear in mind while writing a description for directory submission:

• Do not repeat your title or site URL in the description.
• Do not use all caps; use mixed case.
• Use complete sentences.
• Do not say the word site or website, as in "this site offers"
• Do not use any hype like "the best" or "excellent."
• Fit your main keyword phrases in but do not repeat them.

Once you have taken care of all these, you have over come the most difficult part of directory submission. The same should be followed for keywords. When it comes to directory submission, all you need to do is to pick up the most appropriate one and hit enter.

Tip: This is what I call an ideal description for my site Submit2Please.com, "We submit Web Sites, Articles, Blogs, Press Releases, Scripts and RSS Feeds to Search Engine Friendly Directories. The directory submission is carried out manually by trained in-house directory submission experts."

Site Title

Pay attention to your site title. You should ideally not use any URL and key words in it, until and unless they are absolutely necessary to describe your site. Remember, be precise and straight forward!

Tip: You should identify at least 3-4 titles for your site and rotate them during Directory Submission. In this way you can get the maximum optimization benefit for your site through Directory Submission.

All the above mentioned "Golden Rules" stand good for most directories on the internet including Dmoz.org. Thus, by exercise necessary caution before directory submission, you can save a lot of precious time and energy. With the right advice and steps, directory submission may be the most significant thing you will ever do for your website.