Is getting yourself on a web directory important?

Many would say yes. Few would say no. In reality, they’re both right.

Web directories are like the directories you would find in your local mall. It is basically a list of web sites, usually organized into categories. These lists often include a link to your web site. Now everyone knows that getting links to your web site is an important part of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). These backlinks are used by the search engines to gauge the popularity or importance of web sites. The more links you have, the more likely the search engines will consider your site’s content important and increase your Page Rank. So on the surface, the idea of getting a “free” one-way link from a directory to your site is a good idea, right?

For the most part, getting more links is a good idea. You can’t really be penalized for have a link to your web site. But as with many things, some links are better than others. There are such things as “bad neighborhoods” on the Internet — sites who’s Page Rank or practices are such that, even if you have a link from them it wouldn’t count for anything. Search Engines penalize these sites, but they won’t penalize the sites that they are linked to because that penalty can be abused. So it’s safer for them to just not count it when calculating a web site’s importance.

Things to consider:

What is the Page Rank of the Directory? If you are thinking of submitting your domain to a Directory, you should look for ones with a Page Rank of 4 or more. The higher the Directory’s ranking, the more importance the link from that Directory will be considered by the search engines. Having your domain listed on a hundred Page Rank 2 sites is not worth nearly as much as having it listed on a single Page Rank 4 site. And you would need to be listed on thousands of Page Rank 1 sites to count the same as a single Page Rank 4.

How many links appear on a single page on your chosen Directory? The didn’t use to be very important, but it is something to think about now. A few months back, Google changed how they “count” the number of links on a page. And since the Page Rank and the number of outbound links are used to calculate the relative importance of the target page (that’s you), the fewer other links on the page, the better.

Should you use a bulk submitter? You seen those ads that claim they will submit your URL to hundreds of directories and search engines for one low price. The search engines are basically excluding these bulk submitters. The reason for this is that the quality of the web sites and their content is generally low. Search engines have enough work to do without having to crawl a hundred new web sites every day.

What should you say? Many of the Directories are edited by people, so be sure to have well thought out content for your submission. Some also have a word limit, so careful consideration of your ad copy length can be important. You should also attempt to make your copy read like it’s not baseless self promotion. You want to be brief and factual while trying to lead the reader to your site.

More information:

A web site called Vile Silencer has a list of the top 100 free general directories. The list includes the Directory’s Page Rank, Alexa Rank and a few other details to help you decide whether or not the Directory is a good fit for your web site.

So is the idea of creating links to your web site on a Directory a bad thing? Not really? But it can be time consuming find the right Directories to use. And since there are probably thousands of Directories available, you’re looking for a needle in a haystack. You’d likely be better off finding a few good Directories and getting on those than to worry about hundreds of Page Rank 1 Directories that will give you no real benefit. Your time is better spent creating more content and optimizing your site for your customers.