When youre looking for the right directory to list in or to use for research, it can be a nightmare. Everyone thinks of Yahoo!, of course, but there are quite literally thousands of other directories out there, many specialized, others not. How can you tell the difference
By being educated on what youre looking for. When youre looking for the right directories to list in, use the following guidelines.
1. Everyone lists in free directories. Why not You can list in as many as you want, and youre not losing anything by doing so. Free directories include Yahoo! and Dmoz, as well as hundreds of others who either use their own listings or license listings from Yahoo! and Dmoz. You shouldnt stop here, though, especially if youre running a commercial website.
2. The more directories youre listed in, the more inbound links to your website youve got. And the more inbound links your website has, the higher the search engines will rank your page. Make sure when you create your directory listing to use your keywords in the text; in some search engines, this will help your ranking as well.
3. Some of the free directories are not being listed well by Google and other standard search engines. This is not because of some nefarious competitive advantage, but because the free directories often look like search engine spam or because they dont optimize their sites well. The paid directories are careful to watch for this; after all, the more hits they get, the more they can charge for their services.
4. After listing in all the free directories which you should, as it costs you nothing but a little time you should start listing in the better paid directories. Even though you have to pay to get in them, they give you an edge that the free ones dont. For one thing, theyre more exclusive, and customers wont be looking at your competitors as much. For another, as noted above, the directory will probably place higher in a search engine. And they tend to be specialized. If you sell medical equipment, listing in a medical equipment directory will almost certainly be a worthwhile investment.
5. If you list in really good and specific directories with proven traffic from customers you want to draw, youre investing your money in the right place. A few good quality links will draw the perfect customers for your business. Finding the right directory is hard, but search for directories that specialize in your industry and in industries that cross into yours; for instance, if you provide medical equipment, dont overlook listings for scientific and laboratory equipment.
6. The next generation of directories is here now. With sites like MSNs Small Business Directory, targeted searching for exactly what you want is easier than ever before. In addition, many of the newer directories offer you additional small business tools, more information, specialized content for your industry, and many other services. Youll only find these with paid directories.
Adrian Lawrence is the webmaster of Indexplex a leading web directory .
Please feel free to republish this article provided this resource box remains
together with a working hyperlink.
Back in the early days of the Internet, there were only human-edited directories. These were found primarily in specialized browsers like the Archie or Veronica systems. Later, Yahoo! used the same basic idea to create a descriptive listing of websites. This was the birth of the first major online directory for the public World Wide Web.
Online directories have been around since the first days of the Internet, and without them and search engines wed have no simple way of navigating through the sites. Today, there are thousands of directories online, which can make it very confusing to determine which are giving you the best quality information.
In fact, many online directories are no better than junk. Unfortunately, with Googles AdSense program, it has become very profitable in some cases to put together a directory just so you can run ads on it. These sites are automated and certainly no better than you might think.
The best directories are the ones edited by dedicated humans, not dedicated servers. Thats because a human being knows what you really need to know, while a computer doesnt care. Examples of these are Yahoo!, which has a search engine component, but still maintains its directory content; and Dmoz, an open directory run by volunteers that also has pretty good quality content. These directories, and the many quality paid directories that exist, will be around for a very long time.
Search Engines or Directories: Whats The Difference
To understand why directories may be the future of online searching, you should understand the difference between a search engine and a directory.
Search engines catalogue the full text of a web site. This text is stored in a database and made fully searchable. The information appearing next to a link is dependent upon the metatag information in the web page, or upon the section of the text where the search term first appears. There is no human intervention, and no guarantee of quality.
A directory is quite different. Human editors place each site in the directory. Theyve gone out and examined the sites in question, put data together to clarify what the sites really about, and ranked it more fairly than a search engine could. And the new generation of directories includes wiki technologies and content that helps define a topic as well as show you where to go for further information.
What About Wikis
Wikis are community-edited informational sites, and theyre showing up all over the place. The first was Wikipedia, recently known for an act of vandalism that made up one persons background. This incident was heavily covered in the media, and may have coloured the opinions of many people. However, this incident was atypical of wikis. Nature magazine and other science editors recently did a quick review of Wikipedias science content, and determined that it was at least as accurate and up to date as the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Wikis are proving themselves to be both valuable and accurate. They are also a great place to go for directory-style and in-text links to sites to deepen your information. Pretty soon, a wiki is going to be a natural place to go to search for information on just about anything.
Paid Versus Unpaid Directories
There are both paid and unpaid directories as well. Some of these directories are basically clones of Dmoz and other popular directory sites; this means the owner licensed with the directory to duplicate it, and then sold advertising on it. The site owner gets directory content with little or no work on his part, as well as the advertising revenue.
Not all unpaid directories are like that, of course, but you do get what you pay for. A paid directory is both original and human edited. It can also afford to pay for extras like advertising and marketing, ensuring the directory is known by the public. Paid directories can also employ SEO experts who can work toward raising the search engine rating of the site, and traffic experts who can monitor and increase the traffic to the website.
In the long run, listing with all the unpaid directories is okay, but listing with paid directories gives you an edge. And in todays marketplace, you need every edge you can get.
Adrian Lawrence is the webmaster of Indexplex a leading web directory .
Please feel free to republish this article provided this resource box remains together with a working hyperlink.