Using Web Directories to Improve Your Search Rankings

It’s common knowledge that the more links you have pointing to your website, the more “popular” search engines will see your site as, thus the better your chances of getting higher search results.

Often at times when starting a new website, its almost impossible to get others to link to you unless you’re giving something away for free or offering a product or service that’s simply amazing.

This is where submitting to web directories can come in handy...

Web directories are seen as an important and honest form of quality links by existing search engines, so naturally getting listed in a web directory can help to dramatically boost your ranking in all major search engines.

There are quite a few web directories online, so it’s usually an easier task to get your site listed in these directories than asking other webmasters to link to your site.

Once your site is included in a web directory, it’s usually there to stay. These days search engines not only take into account the quality of the link to your site and the number of links to your site, but also the age of each particular link. Since most directories rarely delete their listings, you can be sure that the age of your link will increase over time.

When submitting to various web directories, carefully chosen page titles and link text will help your search engine traffic immensely. If you’ve read any of my previous search engine optimization articles, you’ll already know that using keywords in your back links helps your search engine results for that particular set of keywords. It’s important to remember this now and try and include your keywords again when submitting to the directories.

Free directories are common online, however, since they are free, they tend to be neglected so getting your site included is often a difficult task. I prefer to focus on only a few free ones, and pay particular attention to the quality paid directories that offer good value for money.

I rate a quality web directory as one with a decent Google page rank (4 and above is good) for its home page, as well as a decent page rank for all of its internal pages and categories.

Selecting the right category to submit to is almost as important as selecting the right directories. Some categories will have higher rankings than others, whilst some will have a lot more listings. Trying to find a good ratio between high ranking and low competition is the aim of the game.

Here I’ve listed my favorite web directories that I submit our web site to. They have helped immensely with our search engine rankings. I am in no way affiliated with any of these directories.

Best of the Web
http://www.botw.org
Decent directory with average page rank at affordable yearly prices.

Uncover The Net
www.uncoverthenet.com
Great page rank for this directory. Slightly higher fees than most others.

Business Seek
www.businessseek.biz
Lower level directory, but quite affordable for an average page rank.

01 Web Directory
www.01webdirectory.com
Decent web directory with page ranks floating around the 4-5 area. Reasonably priced.

Green Stalk
www.greenstalk.com
Nice free directory. Sites do get listed, but be patient.

Seven Seek
www.sevenseek.com
Page rank of 6, once only fees, what more can I say?

Yeandi
www.yeandi.com
Good directory, extremely competitively priced. Worth a look.

Seoma
www.seama.com
Same as Yeandi, very high quality for a very competitive price.

Linkopedia
www.linkopedia.com
Nice site, affordable pricing and decent page rank.

AroundTheWeb
www.aroundtheweb.com
Again, a decent web directory with good pricing and page ranking.

Submitting to these directories can have dramatic effects on your search results if combined with other search engine optimization strategies and careful keyword selection.

There’s obviously a lot more to web directories than I have mentioned in this article, so it really does pay to look around the web for information and see what you can find.