Many of us, website owners or search engine optimizers alike want to promote our website in order to increase its number of backlinks or inbound links which in return improves our site’s web presence. The number of backlinks is one indication of the popularity or importance of a website and it is used by search engines such as Google to determine the PageRank of a webpage.
One way of promoting a website to improve its web presence is through Directory Marketing. Directory Marketing is the process of listing your website in web directories. Directories are different from search engines because search engines explore all websites in the internet to return results to end users based on keywords provided by the user. On the other hand, web directories provide a list of websites which are in the directory and fall under the selected categories or subcategories.
The following shows the steps on How to do Directory Marketing:
1. Create a spreadsheet of web directories you wish to submit your website to – a web directory groups and organizes websites base on their content. You can search many web directories on the internet. Web directories are either paid or free. Example free web directories are DMOZ directory (www.dmoz.org), Librarian’s Internet Index Directory (www.ipl.org) and Jayde directory (www.jayde.com). On the contrary, Yahoo! directory (dir.yahoo.com), Starting Point directory (www.stpt.com/directory) and Business Directory (www.business.com) are just some of the paid web directories. Make a list of these directories and place it on a spreadsheet so that it will be easier for you to tract your list of web directories and so that you will avoid making repeated submissions.
2. Submit your website to SEO friendly web directories - directories that will provide links that are counted and valued by search engines are regarded as SEO friendly directories. Submit your website only to SEO friendly web directories so that your submission will have value and you will not waste your time and effort on doing so.
To determine if the web directory is SEO friendly, view its page source by right clicking on the page and selecting ‘View Page Source’ on the menu. If the code shows "noindex” or "nofollow" or both, do not submit your website on that directory because that directory is not search engine friendly and your submission will count for nothing and search engines will not find and index your link. Moreover, the links must be direct and they should appear in the typical HTML format (example: <a href=”www.mylink.com”>Link Description</a>). If you could see other format outside the typical HTML href format, that means that the web directory that you are currently checking is not SEO friendly and links to this web directory have no value at all.
3. Place your website link in the correct category – select a web directory and browse on its available categories or subcategories. Always place your website link in the right category or sub-category because submissions to irrelevant categories will be rejected. Some directories are human edited and they use strict guidelines for submissions so if you do not want your submission to get rejected, always read and follow their guidelines for submissions. This might be time-consuming on your part but doing so will definitely yield a good result.
Choosing between free or paid directory depends on your personal preference but I believe submitting your website link on free directories that have already stood the test of time is a better choice. Whatever your choice is, the result is still the same – once your submission is approved, you will start to get more traffic on your website and your website’s rank will improve eventually. Thanks to directory marketing!