Article DetailsHow To Submit Your Site To Web Directories |
| Date Added: April 09, 2009 06:14:50 AM |
| Author: Justin |
| Category: Reference: Directories: General Directories |
| Directory submission can be easy if you're experienced or an SEO professional. But surprisingly, many people don't know how to do it properly, which causes high rejection rate. People keep asking why their quality sites are rejected by directories. Here I will give some reasons why this rejection occurs frequently and also enlighten you how to submit properly your sites. This will help to reduce your link rejection to the barest minimum. Many quality directory owners I know are more careful than they used to be. The reason for this shift is because search engines are by far more smarter than they were a couple of years ago. Search engines have caught up with directories and devaluing the ones they see as link farms, among other reasons. Many directories have been penalized lately by Google and have lost their Pagerank due to improperly edited links being misplaced under unrelated categories. Search engines believe those directories are dubiously trying to manipulate their algorithms to rank junk sites high in SERPs. So, questionable directories are feeling the heat because of their unethical behaviour. And over here we are careful to make sure we don't accept junk link submissions. To help you benefit from your submitted links and gain the maximum link juice from search engines, I've written this article and included an image of a submission form. This will also educate you on what directory administrators expect from submitters. Submission Rules and Guidelines: A lot of directories have a web page they either call Submission Rules or Guidelines. And they expect submitters to read their guidelines first before proceeding to submit links. But unfortunately most people don't read this. They seem to be in hurry to get the job done. If you don't read guidelines, how do you think you will abide by it? Such person is bound to make a mistake. So the first thing you will want to do when you visit a directory is to read their guidelines. Every directory has its own set of rules that are different from others. Don't feel you already know the guidelines because you have read one from another directory.  Title: Almost every directory demands a submitter to fill out the title for his/her link. Some directories have very strict rules and expect you to use your company name or homepage title as your link title, while others are more lenient. Depending on the policy of the directory you're submitting to, you can use your site's official title or company name as your link title. URL: This is the simplest part. URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator, which is your site's address on the World Wide Web. Enter your website's address like http://www.mexabet.biz/. Description: "Provides back links to websites, thus, enabling them to rank well in search engine result pages. Search for links to websites offering the products and services you might be interested in." In this example, you can see I didn't use any form of promotional or advertising terms. Editors generally don't like submitters to use terms like "we", "I", "best", "high quality", "top notch" etc. It is awful to see that some submitters capitalize the first letter of every word. This is a pure waste of editors' precious time and is totally not acceptable. It is advisable you also read our Guidelines for link submission, to have a full grasp of what is acceptable and what is not acceptable here at Mexabet Web Directory. Bear in mind you're writing your description for human beings and not for search engines. Write a properly-written description that tells a story about your site. The use of sentences to write description has proven very effective and acceptable. Many webmasters make the mistake of stuffing keywords into their descriptions, making it less meaningless. If you cannot write good grammar, find someone who can to do it for you. Keyword stuffing in descriptions are seen as directory spamming by both human beings and search engines alike. Can you imagine the effect it will have on people if they see your link in a directory as spam? Will they visit your site? It is fine to blend a few of your targeted keywords into your description. Write your description in a way to entice people to visit your website. Meta Keywords And Meta Description: Some directories provide fields for submitters to enter custom keywords and Meta description. Here at mexabet, we are liberal and provide such field boxes to link submitters. These fields are the right areas to type in the targeted Meta tags that are relevant to your site's content. You can see from the image that I used "web directory, web link directory, back link directory" for my Meta keywords and "Mexabet Web Directory is the best directory to submit your websites and gain quality back links." for Meta description. Both fields are areas where directories allow promotional terms. Your Name: Type in your name into this input box. It can be your first name, full name, your company name or even an alias. This requirement helps directory owners to know and keep track of who the link owner is. Your Email: Many directories, including Mexabet Directory, send out email to the link submitter to acknowledge their receipt of such link into their systems. The link will then queue for review. Upon acceptance or rejection, another email will be sent out again to notify the owner. Moreover, it is used by directory administrators to notify link owners of certain changes. So, it's necessary you furnish the directory with your correct email address and not a fictitious one. But you will not want to give your business email away to low quality directories who will use it to spam you later. In that case, set up a free email account at Yahoo, Gmail or even Hotmail for this purpose. It is annoying to receive a message from Mailer Daemon that an email sent to a submitter cannot be delivered. For one thing it shows that the submitter is not sincere and cannot be trusted. This attitude can trigger the directory owner to delete the submitted link. So, why waste your precious time to submit a link that will not benefit you? Category: This another major area where some inexperienced submitters make mistake. You can see in my illustration that I selected "Directories" as a category because I was submitting a web directory. Always choose the best-fitting category or subcategory for your site. Doing this will help people searching for the products and services you offer to find your link easily in a related category. Search engines also place emphasis on placing links in related web pages. It is a wrong approach to chase high PR and submit your link in an unrelated category. Never leave the category where your link truly belongs to and go to submit it in an unrelated high PR category. Automated Submissions: Using automated link submitting software might be ultra-fast, but will it bring the expected result to you? Many directories implement Captcha that Bots cannot understand or fill out. Directories use different category structures that make each one unique in its own way. Bots don't understand these and submit links in any category they deem fit, causing high rejection rate. It is advisable you do your link submissions manually in order to gain what you're looking for in directories. Manual submission can be time-consuming but the reward makes it worthwhile. An automated submission is a waste of everyone's time. Duplicate Content Issue: Do you submit the same title and description to different directories? If so, this means you're submitting duplicate content. Search engines don't like it and it brings adverse effect on the directories and your website. Directory owners worry about this problem and will not accept your link when they suspect it contains duplicate content. Make it a habit to vary your titles and descriptions, while still making it relevant to your site's content. Wrapping It Up: Directory submission is still one of the ways to gain quality back links, if done effectively. Do it wisely and professionally. Even if your badly written description passes editorial review of any directory and your link gets approved, search engines will still flag it as spam. And when a directory has many of such listings, it will be regarded as a link farm. Do you want to enlist your site in such a directory. Let's join hands and make it clean for the betterment of everybody! |