Website directory submission was essential part in earlier time to launch a new website. Directories like Yahoo, DMOZ, Bing, etc… are best directories and providing a way to list your website at specific place there. Website directories is a factor and it can be a ranking booster as far as search engine indexing is concern. But now a day the website directory submission is misunderstood for SEO, so it is important to know that what website directory is. If you website is about business or services then it should be included in website directories under business or in general web directories but with appropriate category.
Neighborhood in website directory
When Google crawl any directory it not just look for your site but it also look for websites listed near your link for neighborhoods. Those links are called your neighbor if those links are trusted then your website link can be a part of very good neighborhood. But in other way if your website having bad neighbors like domain not exists or for sell, misused, advertisements sites only, very poor rank, having poor content then it may be a case to think about and your website will be part of not a great neighborhood.
Good v/s bad website directory
There are good and bad web directories exists. But large number of directories now a days are having some common features like having pop-up ads, banned by Google, directories to spread spams, multiple directories based on same IP, not indexed well, not categorized well, etc…. These directories will not benefit in any mean to your website ranking and link building. One should avoid submission in these kind of directories as they are useless.
Good website directories can make sure that all the sites listed are having good content and useful. Actual human being evaluate the link instead of automatic approval. These type of website directories can give you benefit as all the websites surrounded to your site will be good and trusted by editors.
What experts says about website directory
Some important information shared by Matt Cutts On behalf of Google way too long ago and it still matters, to consider while submitting your site to a website directory:
– What is the quality of URLs in the directory? Suppose a site rejects 25% of submissions, but the URLs that are accepted/listed are still quite low-quality or spammy. That doesn’t speak well to the quality of the directory.
– Does the directory reject URLs or approve whatever URLs suggested?
– If there is a fee, what’s the purpose of the fee? For a high-quality directory, the fee is primarily for the time/effort for someone to do a genuine evaluation of a url.
So it is very important to try and submit your site on already trusted directories instead of directories exists for just advertisements only. You can create a list of directories which are very good and start submission for each of your website, every time your found a new and trusted one you can add it to the list. The list below can be a initial list for you.
- Bing
- Yahoo!
- Supermedia
- Foursquare
- Merchant Circle
- YellowPages.com
- Whitepages
- SuperPages
- Yelp
- Tractify
- CitySlick
- USYellowPages
- BizJournals.com
- Yellowbook
- CitySearch
- ThinkLocal
- Mapquest
- Local.com
- TeleAtlas
- Dex
- Biznik
The list is not complete by any mean and there are many more directories exists out there, if you have any suggestion then please drop a comment and I will add it to the list above.
