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Directories were crucial in the building of the early internet and served as collection points for global data, until the search engines improved at finding sites themselves. Traffic would come as humans searched such portals for regional businesses and information resources. In many cases, they were the first (often only) source for exploiting the benefits of anchor text. A site could be submitted with their targeted keywords, anchored to the url. In return, the directory owner could be in a position to reap the rewards of advertising and could even collect email addresses. Indeed, directories were one of the first to use google adsense, in a big way. ENOUGH WITH THE HISTORY ALREADY! While the delightful lads and ladies over in the Irish Webmasters Forum are building a list of mainly national directories, consider emailing regional ones, even if they don't have a submit function. Important! With the addition of possibly 30,000 (?, maybe more?) newish directories in the last few years, it may help to consider the direction of them, from a search engine and seo view. If a directory lumps each listing within a category, into one page, then what would the keyword density of that page be? And especially if a submission is stuffed with multiple instances of the same word within each individual listing? If a directory offers a "detail" or "read more" page, it will be bare indeed if only a few words are submitted. You may get your link but won't do any great service in return -----> almost meaningless. So before you may decide to approach a regional or local database provide; Provide a description which is just that, and not a repetitious string of similar words. It won't help.... But rather optimise it, to preserve everyone. Use this free or paid opportunity to work some anchor text relevance. Branding of a company name, is best achieved on your own website, not on the title line. We can't direct the international ones, but we can mind the few Irish directories which we have by submitting somewhere near the maximum allowable characters ( description length ).
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Ideally, an seo directory (search engine friendly) will have the following attributes; - No redirection script where the "title" is anchored back to the directory itself. In this case, the benefit is theirs; not yours save a limited amount of traffic - no seo benefit to you.
- Sef urls themselves
- Enough categories for focus, or some facility to create them
- Reasonable uptime
- Irish servers where the market is Irish
- A details page, where your submission is featured on its own. Facilities for unique meta tags on such a page is a major plus, as this lends to uniqueness. Otherwise, a directory may have hundreds or thousands of tarnished or imperfect pages.
- The difference between a link farm and a reasonably good directory, is the content.
- Human editing - this ensures family safe listings, less spammy input, and regional focus
Submitting to directories for maximum return. *Don't try to brand your company name or website name, in the title field. Your site will be found anyway and your name will be on that site, when indexed! This is the number one waste of time and lost opportunity. The title field should be used to align your strongest targeted keywords, to your website, by virtue of anchor textDon't be shy about your offerings. No-one expect lies, but put your best foot forward. Someone will be reading these.
See also Article Directories.
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Directories