The Internet now features a large number of both general purpose and specialized directories. The specialized directories focus on a specific topic or region.

Unfortunately, submitting your web site to plethora of available directories requires a significant investment of time and effort. The key to achieving a positive ROI (Return On Investment) from directory submissions is to focus on those directories which will provide you with high-quality inbound links.

It is important to note that many web directories have issues which prevent them from providing useful links. Taking time understand these issues and submit only to directories which will provide value will provide significant time savings in promoting your site.

A Taxonomy of Web Directory Issues

Web Directories Which Are No Longer Managed

A survey of 79 general-purpose web directories revealed that 62% of those web directories do not appear to be processing submissions.

In many cases, this is because operators of web directory launched their site with great enthusiasm, became overwhelmed by amount of effort required to maintain a web directory, and stopped maintaining their directory. These operators leave their directories online to take advantage of residual advertising revenue, but no longer invest time required to process directory submissions.

Web Directories which Block Search Engine Robots

Some SEO's believe that they can preserve Google PageRank by not giving outbound links from their web sites.

Web directories which operate in this manner will sometimes block Googlebot and other search engine robots from their directory pages using robots.txt or meta tags.

Before submitting to a web directory, check PageRank of directory page upon which you expect your listing to appear. If that page has a PageRank of zero, it could mean that site operator is blocking Googlebot.

However, this same symptom can also mean that site or page is new, and has not been assigned Google PageRank yet. To research this further, examine sites robots.txt file and source code to directory page upon which you expect your listing to appear.

Web Directories which use Scripted Links

Many web directories use scripted links to avoid leaking PageRank. Scripted links use PHP or JavaScript links to redirect user to target page. Although these links work correctly for most site visitors, they do not work for most search engine robots.

To determine if scripted links are in use, place your mouse cursor over an outbound link on directory page upon which you expect to appear. Examine link text which appears in lower left corner of your browser.

You've found your market, developed a marketing and business strategy, identified or created your products, and finally finished your site. Everything else is in place, and you're ready to get listed in search engines. In order to get indexed, you will need to let search engine spiders know about your site in first place.

Are there ways to lure spiders to your site without manual submission? Thankfully yes, and in fact, many professional SEOs recommend that you follow these methods rather than submit your pages directly.

The very best way, if possible, is to get a link to your site from another site that is already indexed, spidered frequently, and is related to your site. This may include mentions in blogs, news releases, and so on. This technique can get you spidered very quickly, sometimes within a few days or less!