First of all the only reason you want to list your website on Web Directories is for Google PR as Web Directories submission is a part of the link building strategy. There is no other reason for listing your website on those other than PR!. The incoming traffic is too small to count! Conversions? Just forget about! Maybe more than half of these clicks are coming from your competition. Ignore this traffic, has no value at all!

Also forget about good and bad Web Directories, there is no such a thing. There are Web Directories with some good PR, the greater the better, which will pass to your website some of their PR juice and this is what are you looking for. So, again, there is no real traffic form WD, you are looking here for PR. Still, the page rank suffer variations, one WD which has now PR5 can be tomorrow with PR0, so don’t count too much on this also. The Google PR is not written in stone, keep this in mind and don’t stop your search for good Web Directories after including your website on a couple with very good PR and reputation. Also there is a chance that Google has hidden the PR, made it 0 so people like you, SEOs cannot take advantages of these authoritative directories.

Here some rules for Web Directories submission I developed over the years:

• Check the PR of the home page – if zero go away. Still there are rarely situations when the index page has a small PR than other pages so you might consider browsing to the favorite category to check what PR is holding.
• Check the PR of the specific category where do you want to list your website – if zero just drop it. Furthermore, if is about paying a fee, run!
• Check the price. A good price should be no more the $10 life time but of course if your budget is not limited then go for more. The majority are charging around $40, if you have a fat budget go for it.
• Don’t pay big bucks for sponsored or premium listings, is not giving you any advantage at all. Since the traffic coming from those millions of Web Directories is almost 0 why on earth to pay for placing your link at the top of category? Web Directories are for spiders not for humans! I don’t know anyone browsing this listings. Also I checked my websites’ logs for years and guess how much traffic I’ve got from Web Directories? ZERO!
• Having a good PR doesn’t have also so much importance as this page PR is redistributed to all the outgoing links from that page. You will receive a big or small PR juice based on the number of other websites listed on that page – small number of websites – good PR received. E.g. if the page your website is listed on has PR4 and there is listed your website and another one, than the PR you will receive will be PR2.
• Don’t use automatic submission – those Web Directories who accept easily websites submissions, mostly free, are considered links’ farms and are gonna cost you PR or even removed from Google index and you don’t want this. Link text from quality sites will boost sites in Google, while, “spam” and “link farm” sites can get you penalized or may hurt your rank. List your website manually!

The goal is to find an appropriate category that is not overpopulated. Check also if there are other places with external links on that page. Having a backlink from a PR2 website is not something to die for but is more than nothing. Think big – how will be to have an army of those backlinks with small PR? Sounds better, right? Think that there is a good chance that those web pages to get tomorrow PR3 or so. Even better!

Advices:

• Check to be human edited
• To make sure you’ll be accepted, read first the rules and apply in respect for those rules.
• Make sure you list your website in a proper category, backlinks from pages unrelated with your website profile won’t be considered by Google or at least you’ll receive less PR from that page. And of course there is a chance your website won’t be approved based on improper listing.
• If possible list your website on a category with small numbers of websites listed. This will give you more PR juice. The more outbound links on a page, the less “credit” each link will be given in terms of link popularity. Let’s say that there are multiple categories where you can list your website, very similar categories – go for that one with the smallest listings.
• Web Directories submission is an all-time job, the early you start it the better for your PR.
• List your website as soon as possible on DMOZ, the largest and most popular WD at this writing time. DMOZ has a couple of partner websites (AOL Search, AltaVista, HotBot, Google, Lycos, Netscape Search) and once you will get your website listed on DMOZ, automatically it will appear on these websites also. The only catch (there is always a catch right?) is that is taking sometime a long period of time to get listed or even worst you will never see your website on DMOZ. Why? That’s the big question.
• Don’t list your website on many web directories in a short term. Act as a human and not as a robot. Google may become suspicious and raise the “alert level” over your domain and you don’t want that.
• And one golden rules at the final – don’t spam! Listing your website in multiple categories will give you nothing in return. Play fair and you will win the game.

Here a short but powerful list with top Web Directories where we strongly recommend you to get a listing as we found them, over the years, very valuable:
1. Yahoo Directory
2. DMOZ
3. Best of the Web
4. Starting Point – PR0 at the writing time but still strongly valuable for your business
5. Business.com

Popularity: 16%

Related SEO Blog Articles

• No Related Post