March 16th, 2010 by Mike

While by far the largest percentage of referrals to websites comes from search engine result pages (although social media is also becoming more important), online directories are still important sources of traffic and links. Directories are arranged and vetted by real people, as distinct from search engines, which are fully automated, and so the listings exist prior to the user navigating through the different levels to the category they want, rather than being generated for specific search terms.

Don’t go out and submit your website to any and every directory. Although some of the better directories are good sources of incoming links, quite a few are deliberately ignored by search engines, and listing in the worst ones will actually damage your rankings. Good directories are good SEO, bad directories are bad SEO. That’s not rocket science, but how do you find the good ones? In this post we’ll have a brief look at major directories that can contribute positively to your link building strategy.

Yahoo! owns one of the biggest. The local listings are especially useful. There are free submission or sponsored (read that as fee paying) options, and your site won’t pop up straight away. The delay is a good thing for those taking SEO seriously, because it means some care is being taken over what’s included and what isn’t. And if you’ve been taking our advice, your site will have plenty of genuine content, so it should go through fine. In this case- and with directories more generally- exclusivity is actually helpful. A standard Yahoo directory listing is positive SEO, and well worth your time.

DMOZ (www.dmoz.org/) is a massive directory but its aims are even bigger. Note the .org top level domain. Also known as the Open Directory Project, it’s run by volunteer editors with the admirable goal of listing all of the quality sites on the web and leaving out all the less useful and uninteresting ones. The philosophy is very much that of the Open Source movement- a lot of people looking at a problem or a piece of code can come up with the best answers. This directory only accepts some sites and inclusion is by no means guaranteed, although it is free. Build a fair degree of quality into your site before applying- added website value is good search engine optimization practice anyway, of course. You can only submit to one DMOZ category so choose wisely. Do some keyword research, and whatever else you do, do not give money to anyone offering you fast or guaranteed DMOZ listings.

Although it’s not so well known to the general public, DMOZ will get you a better inbound link than Yahoo or any other broad online directory. Those two are in a class of their own, so you should submit to both of them before looking elsewhere.

Other directories that might be useful to you are local business listings (although not all of these are any good, examine them with a critical eye before submitting) and subject specific ones. Find the sites where people hang around and chat about your area of relevance, and quite often they will have a directory listing section. Submit your site, and then stay around to do some social media marketing.