Having a web directory is becoming
increasingly popular these days. It can bring many benefits such as
delivering an increased amount of new visitors and providing a steady
income. Google, Yahoo and MSN contribute heavily to its algorithm. Many
webmasters are attracted by the fact that they can get traffic from
such directories and would pay a small fee or put a reciprocal link to
get their website listed in these directories. These benefits will
ultimately improve the promotion of the website.
Webmasters are also very interested with inbound links for improving
their PR (Page Rank) with Google. A good PR gives better position in
Google's search engine results. In theory the more quality inbound
links you get, the higher your PR will go. Directories give a good
solution for all webmasters. They also prove to be a good addition to
existing web sites.
We can differentiate 3 types of directories: free, reciprocal-link and
Pay for Inclusion directories:
1) Free directories are by far the most interesting for webmasters as
they can give a high PR without having to spend a penny. However you'll
have to spend some time submitting your website to all of these. They
don't usually give you much traffic either as there is an over
abundance of them on the internet.
2) Reciprocal-Link directories require placing a small link into the
webmaster's website. This can be dangerous if the directory has been
black listed by Google.
3) Finally, Paid For Inclusion directories can deliver very good
results as they usually give better PR and have more traffic than free
directories.
However, not all directories will give you good results. Many use a
redirect function for linking to your website. Your website won't
benefit from such links. You'll need a static outgoing link from
directories to gain weight with search engines. Many of the directories
do offer you deep-linking options which mean that they will allow you
to submit more than one URL from your domain in order to get your
internal pages more traffic and ranking.
So keep in mind that directories are wholly beneficial for your
websites as long as you take the time to carefully plan the submission
beforehand by checking if they are not using tricks (redirects,
reciprocal). Also, don't forget to submit your website to the most
relevant category on the directory and to read its description!
Francois Panassac is the owner of Creascripts Ltd and propose a
collection of Asp and Asp.net scripts. The most popular is a directory
software called Creadirectory which allows you to build a fully
branded, search engine friendly web directory similar to Yahoo and
Dmoz. He also owns many popular directories such as Allthewebmasters or
Agreatdirectory.
