Optimizing Your Site For Directories
By J. Alarcon
Posted Saturday, October 23, 2004
The major indexes like Yahoo!, Open Directory Project, About.com, Snap, LookSmart, and Go.com, are great traffic sources. But it can be difficult and time consuming to get listed. This report illustrates exactly how to properly submit your site for quicker results and better exposure.
Getting listed with "human reviewed" directories is very important because several of the major search engines use indexes like Open Directory Project to supplement their search results.
Recent statistics from WebSnapShot.com show the percentage of searches performed on each of the top 19 search engines and directories. Yahoo! is still number one at 25.4% and Google (the Yahoo! default engine) is at 5% and climbing fast.
An interesting point is that AOL, AltaVista, NetScape, and Lycos combined make up 40.5% of total search queries. These four engines are powered by Open Directory Project and, combined, control more traffic than Yahoo! alone.
Submitting to Human Reviewed Directories
When you submit your site to a directory such as Yahoo!, Open Directory Project, or even Infoseek Channels, your site is queued for review by a site editor. That means a human being actually visits your site and determines whether or not it should be included in their index.
Therefore, it's important to realize that most of the techniques you use to optimize pages for spider search engines will not work for directories.
How Editors Evaluate Your Site
Site editors will visit your site to verify that the category you selected is appropriate and that the title and description are accurate and relevant to the content of your site. In addition, each directory has its own criteria for evaluating sites.
Here's a few tips to help you evaluate your web site before you submit:
You should have your own domain name.
You should have secure ordering (if applicable).
Your site's name should match your domain name.
Display your company's contact information in plain view.
Include links to your company's privacy policy, return policy, guarantee, etc.
Make sure there are no bad links, broken images, or javascript errors.
Submission Recommendations
Each directory has its own rules and guide- lines for submitting. Read the submission instructions carefully to avoid being rejected or banned.
Look at your submission from the editor's point of view. Did you choose a category that is relevant to your site? Is your title and description relevant to your content? Is the form filled out completely?
If there is a comments box on the application, point out the strengths of your site. Find something unique about your site that will add value to the directory.
Recommendations for Better Placement
Most category search results are displayed in alphabetical order. So, you will get better placement if your company name begins with a letter close to the beginning of the alphabet.
Keyword search results are displayed in order of relevance to the keyword. So, it's crucial to include your single most important keyword in the title and description.
Following Up
Most directories will give you an estimate of the time it takes to get listed. If you don't get in by the estimated time, submit again and follow up with email or a phone call.
Tell them that you appreciate their time and realze that things fall through the cracks. Tell them why you think they will benefit by including your site in their index. Tell them that you have submitted a second time and look forward to their response.
Words of Caution
Only submit the main page of your web site. Additional pages will be rejected.
Never submit your site over and over. That will only irritate the editor and you may never get listed.
Don't submit to a regional directory that is not relevant to your site.
Don't submit your site until it's 100% ready for review.
All of the above will easily take you hundreds and hundreds of hours of pure work.
Do you want to drive mega traffic to your site by ranking high at all the top 100 major search engines and directories?
Do you want to save hundreds of painful hours of pure grinding labor?
If you answered yes to the above questions, read below.
To your success.
J. Alarcon
The SubmitPro can help! It's a semi-automated directory submitter.It's 100 times faster than submitting by hand & just as effective.Fill out one form to submit to top 100 directories. At (http://submitpro.net/index.cgi?id=freemoney) you will see all features & can download free sub- mission software.
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