Submitting to Web Directories

16 October 2008
How to get your website noticed by getting links to your site, particularly from online directories.

Getting links to your website

One of the key ways to get your website noticed is to get links from the best web directories and from other relevant, quality websites. The major search engines, such as Google, use "spiders" to crawl the web, following links from page to page. Any link to a page on your website makes a search engine rate your page higher. The more links that you have from quality websites the higher your search engine ranking will be. Hence, the higher you will appear in the search results page.

The obvious question that arises here is: "How can I know what is a quality site?" Put simply, a quality site is one that the search engines consider to be popular and so appears high up in the search results page itself.

There are numerous web directories out there, so which ones should you be submitting your site to? If there are any niche directories that are related to your business, then these are definitely worth looking at. Search engines could be viewed as a type of directory, and by far the most popular search engine is Google. Any website I build is registered with them. Some other directories and search engines require a fee to be listed.

The question of whether to pay for a listing in a directory is one you need to weigh up. You may want to start with some of the free ones initially. Remember to check your site statistics as they include details of where links to your website came from. You could trial a suitable paid directory to assess whether it provides value for money.

Reciprical links from other sites that are compatible with yours, but not direct competitors, are a good way of improving your ranking. Contact such sites to see if they are interested in exchanging links.