Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Getting Listed on Search Engines Part III - Directories

There are a number of ways to get listed in a search engine. Quite possibly the slowest is direct site submission. Links in and links out are very important to search engines. One popular way to provide links in to your website is by getting listed in a directory.

A web directory is defined as a directory on the World Wide Web that specializes in linking to other web sites and categorizing those links. Pages are generally categorized based upon their the whole web site rather than one page or a set of keywords. Inclusion on directories is usually limited to one or two categories. Once submitted to a directory the directory editors will evaluate your site and approve or deny you.

Most Popular Directory

The dmoz Open Directory Project is the largest, most comprehensive human-edited directory. Many search engines use listings in the Open Directory Project, some of these search engines are: AOL Search, Netscape, Google, Lycos and Hotbot. According to their website there are hundreds of other search engines that use them.

Most importantly the Open Directory Project is 100% free, no charge to submit a site or use the data from their directory. Upon submission pages are reviewed by volunteers and determined whether or not they are applicable for listing.

Open Directory Project at dmoz.org

Other Directories
There are other directory services than dmoz the Open Directory Project.

Business.com is the leading directory focusing on business products and business services and has over 65,000 categories.

Yahoo! Directory is operated by Yahoo! and can increase the likelihood that your site will eventually show in their search engine results pages. For more information on submission visit their Directory Help Page.

The Librarians' Internet Index is maintained and organized by librarians into 14 main topics and nearly 300 related topics.

How Directories Help Listings

Getting your web site listed on good directories is one of the best way to get quality inbound links that are highly respect by search engines. Submissions to some directories are reviewed and approved by human editors and organized into categories and sub categories. Page listed in categories on directories have high quality and relevance and search engines take this into effect.


Questions, comments and criticism are always welcome, search engine optimization and web development are life long learning adventures.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

DMOZ used to be special. It isnt anymore. It wasnt designed for what the net has become.

Anthony Baker said...

The idea behind submission to a directory is not for people to find you but for search engines to find you. It provides a means for google to get to your page. "Getting your web site listed on good directories is one of the best way to get quality inbound links that are highly respect by search engines. "