Things to Know Prior to Starting Your Directory Submissions

Directory Submission web sites have varying rules and guidelines that you must meet before you are able to submit your directory listing to their directory. Directory Submissions are reviewed manually, whereas search engines are usually an automated process. Why do the directory submission websites have so many rules or guidelines? The basic reason is to ensure that their directory is a relevant source of information and a service. If they list a lot of irrelevant or spam information then there is no use for any customers to use their directory to search for your business. It is for this reason the process of questions and requirements or rules assists in evaluation of the site and whether a particular site should be accepted or rejected.

So you do need to ensure you are being accurate in the information you supply and provide the details that the submission website requires. However, don’t despair there are ways to easily make submissions successful and your attention to the details without hours and hours of effort will be rewarded. There are some things you need to know and listed below are some pointers to consider before you get started.

So prior to starting your directory submissions ensure you have the following clear:

1. Do not use any web pages that are still under construction or are not completed to a high standard, you do not want to list information that is no use to anyone or is incomplete.

2. Make sure you do put in as much time as you can to ensure you are collecting the correct details to provide the website as a rejection of your information only wastes more of your precious time.

3. Make sure you do not use any mirror pages. The majority of directories will not accept submission of mirror pages.

4. Check that your links are all operating correctly. If you submit a page that has broken links this will be taken as a sign that your site is of sub standard quality and will most likely ensure you are rejected.

5. Make sure that you use the top-level domain of your site, basically that means do not add anything such as index.html or any other sub domains of your website.

The next and important step to follow is to ensure that you have chosen the appropriate category for your particular website. There is no point listing under a car sales category if you sell clothing items, this may seem an obvious statement however if you are not paying attention to what you are doing an incorrect entry will almost certainly ensure your rejection.

Remember also that the search engines will check the links that are on the web page which you are listed on and this can lead to better rankings for you.

Make sure that your keywords are being used correctly and that you are submitting a relevant and useful description. Often a directory will restrict the size of your description or the number of keywords you can use. The way to solve this problem is to use a description that is relevant to describe your site that is something between 100-250 characters. Make sure that you are using the most informative approach in your description you don’t have to make a sales approach and in fact this will often put your customers off. Be informative about what it is your site covers so that your customers will be interested in progressing further to your site directly from the information contained in your description. In some cases you may have to alter your description so it is helpful if from the start you have this information at hand so a good idea is to make 4 descriptions of various lengths, short say 100 characters up to long at 250 characters. Then you have the information ready if you are submitting to a directory that wants more or less characters and you don’t have to start again with your description. Try to do this prior to actually getting to the point of directory submission.

Follow these pointers when thinking about your description information for your website.

a) Use standard upper and lower case words do not put all of your text in capitals.

b) Use correct sentences in your description so you are almost talking about what your site can to do assist the customer without being a sell sell sell description.

c) The word site or website should not be used in your description to describe what you will give on your site as this is too commercial.

d) You want to get your prospective customer interested in your site but don’t call your site excellent or wonderful or words that just go over the top.

e) Use your keyword phrases in your description but try not to repeat them once is enough.

f) Make sure you are not repeating your website URL in the description itself.

After you have this information clear and concise you have the most essential part of your directory submission material ready. An example for you is what is used on our site: Luminous Co., Ltd is specialized in manual directory submission services, blog comment posting and article services, also copy-writing and many other SEO related services.

Now you need to look at your site title. Have on hand around four alternative titles for your site and use them on the different directory submission sites to get the best results and variation from all the submissions you make. Try not to include any URL or keywords in the title unless there is no other way to describe your website. Be realistic and relevant in your site title.

These tools should give you a good start to your directory submissions, and should work well for you with most directory submission sites. So do your research. First plan out your information and how you will use it in the submissions and this will save a lot of time and energy for you later when actually getting started with your submissions. You should see reasonably quickly some results to the effort and time you have taken to get things right from the start and all going well the business will start to flow from your hard work.