SEO and Directories

then you've probably submitted your website to several directories, you may even run one yourself. There are thousands and thousands of directories out there on the net and they all have their advantages and disadvantages. Good webmasters need to be able to evaluate these differences to assess what directories will be worth the time, effort and money to submit to.

Traffic

While all webmasters would like more traffic, and often have the goal of obtaining more visitors from directory submissions, the truth of the matter is that most directories don't bring in very many visitors. Even DMOZ, one of the largest and most popular directories on the web, brings in few surfers for many sites listed there. And other directories that spend several thousand dollars each month on advertising may only bring a few visitors.

Now don't get me wrong, sites in popular directories listed in a good spot near the top of popular categories many indeed see a nice amount of visitors, but this is the exception rather than the rule. But even one visitor a month is better than none.

SEO

The top search engines build rankings to a lesser degree based from on-page factors, like how many times your keyword appears on your page, or if the keyword is used with bolding, italics, H1 or H2 tags, etc. To a larger degree, search engines rank pages based on what the rest of the web has to say about them. This means that links to your website count as positive votes, and the anchor text in these links helps categorize the content of your page. If the rest of the web says a webpage is about a "miserable failure", search engines will take that strongly into consideration, regardless of what the webpage in question says it is about.

The main point being that directories provide webmasters with a way to vote for their own website by getting a new link. With respect to categorization, the downside with most directories is that instead of linking to your site with your keyphrase as the anchor text, they link to your site through the title which only provides some categorization depending on the title. Worse, directories sometime use the URL as the anchor text which provides no categorization benefit at all. But the absolute worst way that a directory can link out to your site is through a tracking-script URL which allows the directory software to count hits to your site, but provides no SEO benefit at all. The ideal case would be a directory that used a direct link with your selected keyphrase as the anchor text, but this is very rare.

One final SEO factor to consider, is the difference between floating text links and links that are naturally embedded within content. Search engines understand that natural in-content links may provide more accurate anchor text, and that floating links are often used with links purchased for SEO benefit. If you can get your anchor text link from within surrounding content text, that is the ideal case.