Submission Best Practices

Nowadays, directory submission is a common search engine optimization (SEO) method, one of the easiest and most affordable ways to get backlinks, improve your website's ranking position and, as a result, drive more visitors to your website. As general web directory submission is one of the easiest ways to get back links, most web masters make use of this strategy to get their back links. However, not all of them reap the best results.

To get maximum results from your link building efforts, you need to understand some basic things:

• Firstly, the web directory that you choose should be an indexed directory. In other words search engines should know about the web directory and only then search engines will be able to index the back links. If you submit your website to a brand new internet directory of which top search engines like Google knows nothing about, then you will not get back links nor benefits.
  
• Page rank of the web directory. Getting back links from web directories with higher pagerank will help you improve your ranking fast.
  
• Regularly submitting your website to top web directories will help you boost your online performance because search engines value back links from credible sources. You will need a lot of back links to reach the top of the search results and to retain your top position.

How to use Directory Gist for submitting your website

Submitting your website to the directories listed in our database is as simple as ABC :

1. Search the database with your criteria;
2. Click the link and go to submit

You can manually submit your website(s) to the directories listed in the database or use our Online Submission Tools to save time.

Directory Submission Basics

1. Most directories will only accept submission for the homepage of your website, (e.g. http://www.example.com). Niche directories accept submission for internal links of a site. However, there are also general directories that accept deep links from a site. Such general directories usually charge a submission fee for the extra deep links (e.g. http://www.example.com/myproducts/product1.html) inclusion.

2. There are "language-sensitive" directories that accept submission in particular language(s) e.g. Arabic, English, German, French, Chinese, Italian etc. 90 percent of directories are english, however.

3. Niche directories are developed for a specific niche of websites including business, home improvement, gambling, shopping, society, software, travel etc.

4. Regional directories are specifically for company websites or informational websites that are based on specific regions including North America, South America, Middle East, Africa, Australia, Asia or Europe.

5. Submission for Basic listing in most directories are free. However, some of the popular web directories on the internet include Yahoo! Directory and open Directory Project (ODP). Yahoo! Directory offers paid inclusion which cost about $299. The paid submission does not guarantee your website will be listed in the directory, but it will put your site in front of the submission queue.

6. To increase approval rate, make sure you follow the submission guidelines when submitting to a particlular directory.

• In the submission form, Title should be the title of your website homepage or company name
• Description should briefly describe the content of your website
• Most directories use database. Fill in Keywords (mostly separated with commas) in the submission form to list most relevant words your website could be found when searching the directory's database
• Do not spam the directory. Submit your website to the most appropriate categories
• If you are submitting to search engines, all you need to fill in is your website home page address (e.g. http://www.example.com). The search engine's crawler will visit the address and index (add to database) all other pages on your website
• Observe other rules as may be specified in the directory's submission guidelines

7. You can get best results from submission done manually. But because there are thousands of directories on the internet and Directory submission can be time consuming, you can hire a SEO company or an individual freelancer to help you in the submission work.

8. If you decide to purchase a submission service, make sure the submission is done manually and NOT through an automated software. Some scam artists will advertise their service as manual submission but in truth, they use fully automated software to blast your website to thousands of directories.

9. Most web directories will reject websites that are submitted through fully automated software. If automated submission is performed consistently, the directory owner may ban your IP address

10. To strike a reasonble balance between manual and automatic submission, we highly recommend you use Semi-Automatic Submission Tool such as Josytal Website Traffic Booster for your submission. The tool comes with the most current database, enables you to load each submission page, automatically fill in your website information, automatically and/or manually select necessary category. If there is a captcha on the submission form, then you will have to enter the captcha value manually and then click the submit button. Josytal Website Traffic Booster will inserts some pause time between submissions, so that evertything looks natural. The result is very close to submitting manually. Registration and first 10 web directory submission and 5 search engines is free.

11. Josytal Website Traffic Booster also includes links monitoring tools you can use to exchange and monitor reciprocal links with thousands of directories and websites.

Differences between search engines, directories, and FAA sites

There are very strong differences between search engines and directories. Directories are huge databases of collected web sites that are sorted and reviewed by humans (example Yahoo, Open Directory) and each web site is viewed, summarized, and placed in an exact category. Directories take longer to compile but are far more detailed than search engines and usually offer the most complete information system on the Internet. Whereas search engines (example Google, Alta Vista) generally spider (a software program that actually visits an url address) and retrieve most of the web sites information from either text or meta tags. Then they classify each site from the information gained. Some search engines allow for manual data entry but they are generally less categorized than directories. Gernerally, search engines and directories will list your website in their databases on permanent basis ("permanent" refers to a time span of 1 year or more).

On the contrary, FAA (Free for All ) sites contain listings, virtually dumped into groups, that afford limited exposure, with limits placed on entries, such that they are listed limited length of time. Links submitted to FAA are short-lived. Be informed, some summision agencies or self-made SEO "guru" unwittingly place FAA in the same category as search engines and directories. We disagree with this assumption. FAA's results are virtually void on search engines. Many search engines will even penalize your website for being listed on FAA website, so you should be aware how worthless they are. Despite these setbacks, many submission services use FAA as their backbone of submission sites!