Link Building Strategies >> Web Directories

Why Submit My Website to Directories?

Web directories can play a role in search engine visibility. But like anything else online, web directories range in quality from top-of-the-line to waste of time. So what are web directories, and how do they help with SEO?

What's a Directory?

Web directories are not search engines, though many people confuse the two. Web directories can help your search engine ranking, though, so it's important to understand what they are and how the work.

Directories are Different from Search Engines

People confuse directories for search engines all the time. A directory is basically a big catalog of websites that's edited and managed by people.

Search engines and directories have the following things in common: both have databases full of websites, both have a search field where you can enter key phrases, and both provide search return pages with websites ranked by most to least relevant. But the similarities end there.

What's the Difference

With a search engine, robots find websites and add them to the search engine's database. With a directory, human editors find websites, screen them for quality and relevance, and add them to the directory's database. This "human intervention" is the primary factor that distinguishes a directory from a search engine.

Yahoo is partly a directory. If you go to dir.yahoo.com, you'll be looking at the directory portion of Yahoo. You'll also notice a common feature of directories-the category. Directories use a system of categories and sub-categories to group websites (and to help people find them effectively).

Directories Can Help Your Search Engine Ranking

An obvious benefit of having your website listed in a directory is that people can find your site when they search that directory. But directories can also help you rank well in the major search engines like Google. How? Because Google, for instance, uses directory inclusion as part of its algorithm.

In other words, if a website is listed in a directory like Yahoo, it can score more "points" with a search engine like Google. When you think about it, it's perfectly logical. Being included in a directory is a vote of confidence. It means a human editor-not a robotic crawler-has reviewed the website before adding it to the directory. This tells the search engine that the website has some degree of quality, legitimacy and relevance.

In her book Search Engine Visibility, search engine expert Shari Thurow states the following:
"The quickest way to achieve an initial, effective popularity component is to have your site listed in what search engines consider reliable resources: the major directories."

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