Choosing Web Directories

Link building is now part and parcel of every Internet Marketer's life. While there are many ways to build links, this article focuses on discussing links in web directories. The number of web directories have been growing rapidly on the Internet and webmasters can no longer ignore the fact that web directories allow a site to build backlinks very quickly. However, are all web directories equal?

Web directory owners have to battle the constant problem of automatic submissions. Therefore, directory scripts nowadays come with a built-in feature CAPTCHA (an acronym for "completely automated public Turing test to tell computers and humans apart"). With the implementation of this feature, spammers can no longer flood a directory with automated submissions. This, however, has a side effect. Without the aid of automatic submission tools, webmasters who are attempting to build links in web directories will now have to submit links manually. Anyone who have done so before will agree that the process can be tiring and time consuming. Due to this reason, manual web directory submissions should be restricted to only worthy directories. A list of high quality, established and popular web directories should be made and kept for future use. How then should webmasters go about selecting the directories that matter most? Here are three useful tips for your web directory checklist.

For a start, note the page rank of a web directory. A high page rank usually means two things: There are high quality sites linking to it, or there are enough smaller sites linking to it to give it a high page rank. Whichever the case, links from a quality web directory should pass some page rank to the links in it. Unfortunately, that's not true for all directories.

Page rank pass easily if a directory has search engine friendly pages. A good directory that passes page rank should not have URLs with long query strings in them (e.g. http://somepage.php?id=2134567456484456456123). Instead, a search engine friendly URL should look something like "/Arts-and-Entertainment" or "Arts-and-Entertainment.html". Always take the effort to choose web directories that are search engine friendly, even if they have a lower page rank. Page rank fluctuates and if a web directory happens to inherit a higher page rank over time, chances are your site will inherit some page rank value as well. Also, note that if your links land in a page that is too deep to inherit any page rank, it wouldn't do any good either. Is page rank the only thing that matters?

Of course not. A link in a high traffic web directory can bring a decent amount of traffic. Considering that most web directories accept links for free, it appears to be a pretty good deal to have links in them. Some directories require a modest one-time fee to list a site but it still appears to be a good deal considering all the future traffic that a listing can receive from the directory.

To check the popularity of a web directory, simply go to http://Alexa.com and key in the domain name in the search box.http://Alexa.com shows an estimation of how popular a website is on the Internet. The higher the ranking (the smaller the number), the better. Assuming we now have a list of web directories with high page rank that are search engine friendly (high quality), and they are popular to rank well in http://Alexa.com (popular), we still need a way to assess how established a web directory is.

Archive.org has a really cool tool called the Wayback Machine. The machine captures screenshots of websites and post them in its archive for public search. A quick search will reveal the different phases that a website has gone through. Also, don't forget to do a quick whois check using any whois tool such as http://whois.domaintools.com.

Let's do a quick recap. Here's your check list:

1) High page rank with search engine friendly URLs (quality)
2) Good Alexa ranking (popularity)
3) Good history revealed by Wayback Machine (established)

Remember that manual submissions can be time consuming. So choose those web directories that matter most to submit to. Now that you know how to choose web directories to submit to, you can always take the easy way out. Hire someone to do the manual submissions! Armed with the knowledge in this article, I'm sure no one would be able to pull a fast one on you. Ask for a sample list of directories and go through the checklist. It goes to show if the service provider knows what he or she is doing. And if you like what you see, go for it!