Directories and SEO

Directories and SEO

The first thing that people often do when new to promoting their website is to pay a company $20-$30 to get them listed in hundreds of web directories. But what is a directory?

Directories are lists of sites, categorised and organised by separate topics. Each directory listing will contain a short description about the site. Unlike search engines that use software spiders (Google), directories are put together by human editors who approve the listings. Listings are often free but in some cases, pay for inclusion is offered for speedier and highlighted listings in directories such as Yahoo! The most valuable and probably the most difficult directory to get into is the Open Directory Project (known as DMOZ).

Before, spending your money on directory listings you need to consider two things.
The first is that companies submitting your website using software will often only get you a top level listing. In other words, they will not drill down into the sub niche which your website would more accurately sit.

Secondly, the search engines frown on a website suddenly getting hundreds of new links. They consider fast link building to be spamming and you may find that all your efforts come to nothing because of it. Best to ask the company you are using to spread the directory listings over four to six months which will be seen as more of an organic growth pattern.

So will you get any traffic from these directory sites? I can honestly say that I have never received a single visitor from a directory site. Frankly I don’t care because I don’t use the directories for traffic; I use it to promote my SEO Services business and the businesses of my clients.