Why Do I Have To Submit My Site To Directories and Search Engines?

by Marie Cor

Generally search engines will consider your website important and rank it high in search engine result pages if other high quality and relevant websites link to you. This is called link popularity which refers to the number of links pointing to your website. These inbound links, in turn, are calculated by search engines as one-way votes of confidence in the quality and relevancy of your site to your targeted keywords.

Everyone knows the objectives of every online business marketing strategy are to build one way inbound links and to increase optimization strategy to their website. This is easier said than done. Driving internet traffic to one’s website and getting noticed by search engines require dedicated efforts from a link builder.

Link building activities such as directory submissions direct traffic to websites since users are likely to click on the first link they see in the SERPs. Thus incoming links from other websites would surely result to high dividends to your site and your business.

Giving your website wider search engine coverage would mean that your website stays ahead of competition. That’s why “links” play a major role in determining your ranking position on major search engines. And when it comes to link building, Directory Submission is considered the most popular and widely used form of earning back links from websites.

Basically a back link is what a directory submission will give a website owner. It also refers to a link coming from any other website to one’s own website. Directory submission is a concept that website owners find popular and important in recent years and constantly they look for ways to not only increase the amount of traffic directly received, but also possibly to have a higher rank in different search engines.

Directory submission is easy to do and available in both free and paid forms. Choosing the paid option would result to better placements and more click-through visitors from the directory to your site. Free option, on the other hand, provides a way for search engine spiders also known as crawlers to find the website and index its pages in their own database. Either option will increase back links for any website in an incredibly easy manner.

The most significant benefit of directory submission is increasing your popularity link, which is a reliable measure of the quality and quantity of incoming links to your site. Major search engines give importance to links while evaluating the ranking of a site. Since directories are human edited search properties containing credible information are reviewed by human editors and compiled by subject category. Human editors identify websites with good quality content and designate them to the exact and relevant directory category. Directory submissions, in these instances, should be focused and topic specific. That’s why evaluation takes time and focus since the editing is done manually. Without directory submission a site located in relevant and good quality directories can not garner high rankings in search engines.

A higher position in the search engine results, a fully indexed website in real-time, and impressive click-through traffic are the three most significant benefits of directory submission. As the owner of the site you don’t have to submit to the major search engines. With the advent of sitemap protocols among the big three - Yahoo, Google and MSN - indexing the pages of your site becomes automated and up-to-date. A well indexed website ensures high visibility among the major search engines.

All have been said and done about the significance of directory submission in link building. It’s also proper to discuss the reasons why some submissions are disapproved. So that it would be proper and fair on both sides.

A submission to directories doesn’t guarantee that your site will be listed. There are policies to be followed and considered in adding or rejecting sites. The following is a compilation of reasons why some editors disapprove a site.

• First on the list is that the site does not fit into the directory’s topic.
• Second is having an invalid description, and third having an “under construction” or incomplete sections at your website.
• Other reasons include the site contains broken links or broken pictures, it is not written in a supported language or that it takes forever to load.
• Some extra considerations include the site is overrun with advertisements, or that every page of the website opens in a new window. Once that happens, the user gets confused and wouldn’t be able to tell what the ads are selling or what your site is all about.
• Another thing that all search engines and directories frown upon is the use of black hat optimization techniques such as placing hidden text on a web page. Any site found to be in league with the cheaters and gamers of the SEO industry will be dropped from the search result pages. Some sites have been known to be banned from major search engines like Google or Yahoo.
• A “members only” site is password-protected and so cannot be properly reviewed by the editors themselves.
• A site with excessive ads and pop ups can be annoying. Likewise with broken links, pornographic content and the use of sexually explicit or prejudiced language, these will surely have your site rejected and thrown into the trash bin.
• Affiliate sites with no physical addresses or contact information listed on their sites, sites that redirect to another site, ad sense scrapper sites are also big no-nos.
• And lastly sites with duplicate titles and description as previously submitted sites are instantly denied.

These significant points are very important when doing directory submission. Any good link builder will surely know and understand how these will make or break a site’s performance in the search engine rankings. After all, every online business’ concern is the bottom line, and helping website owners achieve this goal is any link builder’s reason for existence.

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Outsource Directory Submission