Directory Promotion

Directories and search engines together will always bring in more visitors than any other method of promotion. There are some things to consider when submitting your website, by not taking some important factors into consideration first can hinder your submission efforts dramatically.

The first thing to start with is your your websites description, just write a short description to start with that includes your targeted keywords and is enticing enough for a visitor to want to click on your listing above all the others in the directory. Every directory will have its own recommended length of description for your websites listing so as you start to submit your site you can modify your description length as needed for the directory that you are submitting too. Make sure that you save these different length descriptions for easy access. Creating Variations of your descriptions is also a good idea, different worded descriptions will help in utilizing a larger set of targeted keywords to your website.

Many of these directories will also ask for popular keywords that describe your website, and contact information for your website. When dealing with submission guide lines it is always best to include as much information as they will allow, this is because many of these keyword lists and descriptions will be used to cross reference when users are looking for a matching keyword, topic or theme that is matching your website.

Submitting to Directories

A popular way to get backlinks to your site is to submit your website to category or topic related directories, it is also a good idea to submit your website to any regional directories in your area. It is not a good idea to submit to any directory located on the Internet though, some search engines will recognize links coming from 'bad neighborhoods' and may penalize you for it.

Two of the most important directories to get your website listed in are the Yahoo directory and the Dmoz.org Directory both of these directories feed a multitude of search engines meaning your site will be listed in any search engine that uses these for directories for their search results.

I'm sure when researching what directory listings will benefit your website the most, you will come across promotional companies that for a small fee will automatically submit your website to thousands of directories out there. This is a bad idea, manual submissions will ensure that your website has the best chance of being accepted into the directory and many directories consider automatic submissions to be spam and will automatically blacklist the website that is being auto submitted to ever being listed on their directory again.

Search Engines

Along with directory submissions your should also consider submitting your website to several of the popular search engines (MSN, Google,Yahoo, Ask Jeeves, etc.) along with the two directories I mentioned above many smaller search engines will feed of the results of bigger search engines, so as you get more listings up you site will start to spread across an array of directories and search engines and will soon exposed enough to be found almost anywhere that you are searching on the Internet.

Paid Listings

In my experience It is not worth it to get a paid listing in a directory, so far I have designed many successful sites that get lots of traffic without ever having to pay a directory for my listing. There are two exceptions to this and one is for an off-line directory which is the Yellow Pages. Getting listed in the Yellow Pages is a must for any bricks and mortar business.

The other directory is the yahoo directory which the last time I check charged for featured business listings, although I have never tried these roomer is that they do work for some companies out there and may be worth looking into if your company has a bit of a marketing budget that they want to burn.