Directory Submission Tips

In directory submission, a website is enlisted with an online directory. It is a great way to gain quality one-way incoming backlinks and boost up your search engine rankings. The more backlinks you have to your site the higher you can climb in the search engines. Of course paid directories is going to be better because the links seem to last a lot longer. Free directories will remove the links after a year or so. The other advantage of submitting your site to Web directory is search engines spiders will find your link easily and your site will be indexed faster. There is no fixed number of directories that we should get listed in.


Before accepting it into the directory, human editors review each submission for content and quality, and they are very selective. To be reviewed by the proper editor, you have to submit your site to the proper category and sub-category. Inappropriate submission are much likely to be rejected, they won’t forward it to another editor because they are overloaded with submission. Some directory owner will ban your IP address if they found many website submissions that are totally unrelated to its category. It means you can no longer submit any website in the future regadless of whether your future submissions are relevant or not.

Before submitting your site, do make sure that your website is not already listed in the directory because many directories have people who will go out and add good website to their directory. Read the submission guidelines and rules, every website directories has different rules. For example, some web directories would not allow you to include a trailing slash (/) at the end of your URL. In certain directories, free web based email address such as Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, etc are also not accepted and will be filtered automatically.

Do not submit a website that has broken links or has navigation or hosting problems. You are also not allowed to submit sites that are “under construction”. It is also strongly suggested not to submit your website to the same directory more than once because it would be considered as spam by the directory itself and also by the search engine. Many directories also forbid auto-submission software, your site can be removed even after being accepted without notification to you, so be careful.

When writing for a brief description about your site, insert lots of keywords. Check whether how many keywords you can submit, then how they should be formatted. The quality of your submission is also very important because it serves as an indicator to editors about what can be expected if they review your website. That’s why a well written submission can highly improve the chances of being accepted.

Do check your email (the one you use for applying your site to the directory). They won’t queue the submision for editorial approval until it has been confirmed by your email, and some directories will automatically remove submissions which remain unconfirmed after a set period. Many directories will send lots of ads via email, so if you do not want your primary email flooded with such emails, you can create a new email account specifically used for registering to web directories. Don’t forget also that the submission you make can take a few days to a few months beffore a response is received.

| Difference between Web directory and search engine |