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How to find niche directories to submit to?
21Jan2009 Filed under: SEO Author: Pawel Szulencki
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You have a website and you would like to promote it by submitting to web directories, but you don’t know how to find the most relevant? Heres a guide that will help you find the most relevant directories to your website.
Top directories
Yahoo! directory - http://dir.yahoo.com/
Open Directory Project, ODP (also known as DMOZ) - http://www.dmoz.org
Those two directories are the starting point to most people. They are very important as search engines start their journey through the Internet with those two web directories. They are the biggest and oldest web directories, human edited with lots of helpful websites in it. You should add your website to both directories.
The bad news is that the submission time for DMOZ is anytime between 2 weeks to several months and Yahoo! is a paid directory. Nevertheless being visible in those directories is beneficial and highly recommended.
Search engine rankings may also be influenced by being listed or not in either of those two directories and thats why they are so important. In some cases search engines may also pull out the meta data from your listing in one of those web directories and present it is search engine results. To stop that kind of situation from happening you should use the “noydir and noodp” meta tags.
How to find niche directories?
For obvious reason you should submit your site to market-specific directory for maximum exposure. People interested in your products and services may be searching in your niche directories and find your website that way.
There are niche directories almost for every market, but finding them might be somehow challenging. There are several ways of finding niche directories:
- Search for niche directories with search engines.
Go to Google, Yahoo!, MSN or any other search engine and type the most general keywords related to your industry or type of business. Top directories in you niche should come up high in search engines. Maybe not on the first page of results, so make sure to research more than the first page of results.
Search also for “Add link” + keyword, “Add listing” + keyword to find web directories dedicated to your niche. - Research directories for other directories.
Visit DMOZ directory and go to directories category - http://www.dmoz.org/Computers/Internet/Searching/Directories/ Here you will find many links to different directories and going through the different links you may discover many niche directories and places you may add your website to. To make the process easier in some way you may also visit Google directory (http://www.google.com/Top/Reference/Directories/) which is DMOZ directory organized by Google with option to view listings in alphabetical order and in PageRank value order. The other feature may be helpful when you want to submit your site to top directories and gain possibly the highest PageRank that way. - Reverse link analysis.
Check your competition inbound links to determine the directories they use in order to promote their website. Go to Google and type link:domainname.com or Yahoo! site explorer and type website domain name. In Yahoo! Site Explorer click on Inlinks tab to see inbound links to website.
Go through competitors inbound links and discover which directories did they use. That way you can find many interesting niche web directories you can submit your site to.
Finding the right niche directories is a very important process. Web directories may not only pass your website (still) valuable PageRank, but also will help your visitors find your website. And that should be the purpose of submitting to web directories: your visitors. Submitting your site to 1 000+ wrongfully chosen and non-relevant web directories may bring PageRank to your website, but submitting to relevant, niche web directories may bring you new clients. Focus on that.
Sphere: Related Content- Tags: link building, research, web directories
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About this blog
Pawel Szulencki is a SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and Marketing certified specialist who is interested in organic SEO, paid campaigns (PPC) and Social Media Marketing channels. (Read more)
Make Money Online (1 comments.)
January 23rd, 2009 at 9:27 am
you can take help from directory submission service for directory submission. But manual submission is best method.
Make Money Onlines last blog post..Make Money Online Basic : Need to Set your Goals
Sandkasten Mickey (1 comments.)
January 23rd, 2009 at 2:20 pm
Thanks for the Info. I have bookmark your Site
SEO Canada (1 comments.)
January 24th, 2009 at 5:10 am
It’s a shame that it is so difficult (impossible) to get a new link into DMOZ these days (unless you know someone). The original spirit of that site has been comprimized, thus it is so much more important to find good niche directories these days.
Pawel Szulencki (171 comments.)
January 24th, 2009 at 6:19 am
@SEO Canada: Unfortunately i have to agree with you. But still, if you get lucky and your site get listed, its a big plus for your site.
ktos (1 comments.)
February 20th, 2009 at 6:33 am
Yahoo directory and Dmoz is overrated especially the second one which is dead end in my opinion
so I will not bookmark this post
sorry harve
Tristen (1 comments.)
April 20th, 2009 at 9:43 pm
The internet brings enormous potential for marketing your business and just about everything your business has to offer; the networking has just begun.
Business directories have become an effective way for the public to express opinions, make comments and select the appropriate business to deal with. On the same hand, business directories offer the business a great opportunity to advertise and get enormous internet exposure. For businesses that increase their exposure and generate interest through listings in business directories has become the smart thing to do. The powerful marketing tool of business directories will be enjoyed by the innovative public for a long time to come.
Businesses that use internet business directories enable them to receive instantaneous feedback. Enhancing the relationship with a customer can increase business success. Customers always look for the opportunity to give feedback to the business and the internet business directory has made it a great quality control avenue. Scary? Not for the business that is willing to adapt and market their business with this technology.
For marketing and promotion, the internet business directory has become an important part of business strategy.
Tristen Thomas
Lee, Blogger's Workshop (1 comments.)
May 23rd, 2009 at 4:56 pm
Excellent post. I particularly like the reverse link analysis strategy - very ingenious!
Thanks for the great info - I’m off to find some niche directories for myself!
Lee, Blogger’s Workshop
Jonny(new comment)
January 20th, 2010 at 8:37 am
Submitting to DMOZ is frustrating at the best of times. I tend to favour a submit and forget policy.
Nevermind any SEO benefits of submitting to Niche directories, they can also be great for targetted traffic.
Nice tips on finding directories in your niche.