Directories for SEO Success - Directory Submission Guidelines

Getting your website listed on certain web directories is great for building visitor numbers.

Yahoo was a massive early success as a web directory. The difference between a directory and a search engine is largely the way that websites get entered into their indexes. A search engine runs programs to actively seek data from the world wide web. A directory has human beings entering information to a passive database.

Adding your site to a This is UK Business - United Kingdom Business Directory like this or Find the Needle can be a good idea if you want to get relevant backlinks. However if they are too broad or automatically accept any old spam a link can do more harm than good.

There are direct benefits to be had from submitting a website to relevant web directories. Firstly it saves you from also submitting to search engines, because search engines will find your link on the directory and index your site from that, but in addition a link on a Directory increases your 'link popularity'. Link popularity is a method search engines use to decide which websites are more important and should therefore appear nearer the top of their results. The Search engines consider each link on another website (such as those on a directory) that point to your site as kind of vote for you. Your link popularity improves as you get more links form more and more sites.

Of course not all sites are of equal quality and not all links are either. A link for DMOZ or Yahoo rates far more highly than one from a newly created directory that has no particular popularity. Then again a link on a topic related directory can be a real benefit to you if the topic in question closely matches the subject of your website.

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