Author: Mark B. York

If you run an online business you can not ignore the role search engines play in the success of your business. The majority of your visitors come from search engines. So it is of utmost importance for you to get higher visibility in search engines to survive in the competitive online market. Directory Submission is one of the prime options available to easily and effectively promote your website.

Search engines value one way links the most and directory submission provides you them. The main benefits of directory submission are:

New websites indexed by the search engines – If your site is newly launched and yet to be crawled by the search engine spiders, directory submission is the first and foremost thing that you should do. Search engines often visit the directories and hence the directories will send the crawlers to your site.

Quality one-way links – Directories provide you quality one way links with your preferred anchor text.

Increased Search Engine Ranking Position – Search engines specially Google love one way links and hence, you get higher placement in search engine listings.

Click Through Traffic – Directories will also send you additional traffic to your site which may become your actual customers.

There are mainly two types of web directories, General directories and Niche (Topic or Industry specific) directories. General directories cover a wide range of topics where niche directories list sites specific to a certain topic or industry. Both types of directories have their advantages but Niche directories have an edge over General directories. Niche Directories can give the following benefits:

Link Popularity: They will give you a one-way link to your site which will help you to rank higher in search engines. Thus your visibility increases and you will get more traffic to your site.

Targeted Traffic: As opposed to general directories, niche directories list sites related to a certain topic or industry. A niche directory related to real estate would not attract people looking for beauty products. Thus visitors to these directories will specifically look for your products or services and if they like your site, they can be possible customers for you. For example, if you are a business to business retailer, niche directories like ThomasNet will give more link value and targeted traffic to your website.

Famous general directories such as Yahoo! Directory charges $299 to list a site whereas DMOZ follows very strict rules for a site to be listed there. Likewise, most of the Niche directories either charge you a certain fee or apply strict guidelines to list your site. This will ensure that all submitted links are verified by a human being. This in turn ensures that there won’t be any spam listings in your neighborhood which is one of the most important factors to look out for when submitting to a directory.

As most of the niche directories charge a small amount for a listing and cover only a specific topic or industry, they normally have fewer listings than general directories. This helps you to get a good listing position and thus your listing can easily be found by your potential customers who are looking for products or services offered by you. Moreover, niche directories sometimes have the provision of submitting additional resources like press releases, articles, testimonials which will help your customers to learn more about your products or services. So, it is a wise decision to invest in niche directory links rather than submitting only to general directories.

Article Tags: Internet Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, Web Development, Website Design, SEO Services, Web Promotion, Web Designing, Internet Promotion, Internet Marketing Consultant, SEO Consultant.

Mark B. York is the CEO of Vertical Warfare, Inc, an Internet Marketing and Search Engine Optimization Company located on Long Island, N.Y.