What’s an Online Directory Anyway?
A online directory is a directory on the World Wide Web. It specialises in linking to other web sites and categorising those links.
The easiest way to describe an online web directory specific to one area is to imagine something like the yellow pages, but an online version. Whilst a hardcopy of the yellow pages may be great, the online directory gives you first hand and up to date news. This is a great way to source particular products and services there are a number of companies now housing specific web directory sites online. This makes it easier for you to find what you want at the click of a button.
There are three types of these directories and they serve very similar purposes in being able to deliver information on an abundance of different companies, events and more websites over the World Wide Web.
A Simple Directory
The simplest directory allows you to submit your site under a particular category like entertainment or finance and will ask you to pick a catagory that best represents your sites theme. This type of directory is sometimes referred to as a FFA (Free for All) directory. Some of these directory sites will use a bit of software verification before adding your site to the list to make sure it’s not a duplicate and to make sure your site actually exists.
A Monitored Directory
The ‘Monitored Directory’ is very different to the simple directory, because they will have a human monitoring the content and making a decision as to whether or not that particular website gets listed. They will normally list your site as it is submitted if they accept you. If you boast a lot about your site you may find that they reject you as the same if you were to use too many capital letters or over use of the same words, try to avoid this if you can.
An Edited Directory
The ‘Edited Directory’ will limit the sites contained in their directory and they will also what they are going to say about your site. They will normally edited or re-write the entire description for your site. For anyone trying to find out valuable information this will be the best resource.
Why submit your website to an online directory?
It is common knowledge to website developers and Internet marketers that incoming links to your website are good for search engine optimisation. An inbound link can be considered as vote that your site has good content worth reading. Once submitted a directory provides a link to your website.
John Mce writes on behalf of Kent Messenger Online – http://www.kentonline.co.uk/
The Value of Unlimited Distribution
Competition is incredibly high between niche topic articles on the Internet. If you have a website or products you want to promote, you need to have a foolproof marketing strategy. You wouldn’t only put out a few fliers if you were going door-to-door to sell your product, so why would you only deliver your articles to one or two article directories? Unlimited directories take care of the article delivery for you.
One sure fire way to increase traffic to your website is to consistently write unique content. Content articles drive targeted traffic to your site to increase your sales and revenue. You can get noticed by writing tightly focused articles and distributing them to as many different sites as you can.
Inform Your Readers
Articles you distribute are not meant to be sales pitches, but should offer readers new information related to the topic of your website. You risk publishers turning down your articles if they contain blatant promotion. The body of the article is where you need to provide interesting material to draw your readers to your site to find out more. Keep the article to a reasonable length and make sure the title contains powerful keywords that are directly related to your topic.
Linking to Your Website
Generate a list of relevant topics and find out which keywords are searched the most before getting started. With your list in hand, you can brainstorm to come up with ideas for unique content that will pique the interest of readers. Once you hook a reader in with an informative article, you can invite them to click on the link to your website. You won’t be able to discuss your website within the article, but you can post your information and a link to your website in the author’s resource box.
Use the about the author portion of your submissions to establish about your qualifications, offer your website as a source of more information and provide a link to your site. Keep this section short and simple. Assuming you reach your target audience, they will ideally click on the link to your website to learn more information or make a purchase.
Submitting and Promoting Articles
The occasional article, whether it contains highly searched keywords or not, will not increase traffic and keep your stats high. It’s important to submit unlimited articles to directory services and publishers to gain exposure to your site. Placing your articles on many different sites is a highly effective fundamental technique that gets you a ton of back links.
Promoting your website with unlimited article distribution is just smart business. The more one way links you get to your website the better. Search engines count these links and give your website a better page rank. This places your site higher in search results and gains more exposure for your articles.
The Value of an Unlimited Distribution Service
A service that offers unlimited distribution is priceless. Unlimited distribution allows you to reach many sites at once. Submit your articles and watch your visitor stats grow. The alternative is to manually enter your article and other information repeatedly to a wide variety of article directories; which is very time consuming.
Using an unlimited distribution service saves time and money. All you have to do is provide a quality, educational article and let the service deliver it to thousands of sites to help you get noticed.
Tiva Kelly is the Head of Article Coaching at article marketing. She offers advice to authors at www.articlemarketer.com, a highly popular article distribution service. Learn how to market your small business by submitting articles through Article Marketer.
http://www.articlemarketer.com
Many Webmasters Are Using Directories For One Way Links
Most website owners do not take into consideration on how their website is designed. When we talk about design we are not talking about the graphics or the colors you use but we are talking about how your site is optimized. Your goal is to increase the targeted traffic to your site.
When listing your website, make sure you list it with a high quality directory that has a good record and quality sites; this will help with rankings and traffic. A few good quality links will draw the perfect customers for your business. Links in directories are free, paid, or free but need a reciprocal link. Links are provided on pages with similar or relevant content. When looking at directories make sure the link can be followed, if the link is a rel=”nofollow” don’t waste your time.
One of the most important reasons why submitting to directories is very important is because they are human edited, and search engines will look to these directories to confirm the value of sites in their search engine results. Directories will always be around but just like everything else on the internet they will need to adapt and keep up with changes and offer other services. Directory submission is a well established and often overlooked search engine optimization strategy.
You should keep your title within the following limits and that should be around 60 characters. Use your real site title. Remember to include a benefit in the title to compel your readers to read the rest. The more targeted your title is, the more qualified web visitors will visit your site. If you’re official website title is Tech Law, then that is the title to submit. Your title is usually displayed in search engine results.
Many sites that are submitted to directories are not accepted because the description does not conform to the rules of the site. When writing the description it is not supposed to sound like you are advertising your site it will need to be written in the third person and do not include superlatives or any type of excessive marketing. Description should be written in third person. Make sure your (USP) unique selling proposition is included in your site’s description. Your description should be unique even though it resembles description style of other web sites in your targeted directory. One way to get help for an accurate description is to ask friends to review your site. The description is the most difficult item to define correctly.
The other important factors in directory submission are making sure you use the correct title, keywords, and descriptions in the right category. Remember, that just any directory submission is not going to get you the traffic you want it takes time and patients.
RSS directory submission provides immediate link popularity. Some of the free directories are not being listed well by Google and other standard search engines. Paid directories have a competitive edge because the free directories sometimes looks like spam to the search engines, this is because the site is not optimized. Each listing carries a brief summary of the content contained within. By getting accepted it means your site meets the directories guidelines and is a quality site. Directories will typically not accept extensions.
David Marc Fishman helps webmasters with a link directory and web directory to establish one way links at http://www.vwutt.com and http://www.zsozi.com.
The Free Article Directory – What is it?
The radical changes in the structure of the internet and its adoption by people of all ages throughout the world have lead to new business models being adopted. As a webmaster, it is now possible to provide quality free information to the public while still earning a healthy income for your hard work. The free article directory is a perfect example of a new type of revenue model that has been proliferating across the web.
While there are a few notable exceptions (such as non-profit Wikipedia.org), most content-driven websites are able to earn money by displaying advertisements on their pages. These types of advertising are either keyword-based text ads (such as Google’s Adsense program) or paid sponsorships. Keyword-based text ads allow targeted ads to be delivered to the visitor based on the content of the page. Paid sponsorships are where the webmaster receives a fee for linking to an external website. A free article directory provides a wealth of information at no charge to the visitor.
Of course, not all article directory webmasters are completely altruistic. If the directory is popular and publishes current, well written, informative articles, it can provide the webmaster with a handsome income solely from advertising. Now I have come across dozens of free article directories that exist solely to display ads. The pages on these sites are littered with advertisements, making the pages a complete eyesore. These directories typically don’t receive high traffic because visitors find it hard to actually read the articles.
The article directories that do last are the ones that have successfully integrated the ads into an efficient and eye-pleasing layout. These directories have loyal followers and typically rank better in the search engine ranking pages. It is this type of article directory that I wish to discuss – the visitor-oriented, free article directory.
You may be just a curious websurfer wondering what the purpose of an article directory is. As I have mentioned previously, it is a directory that provides content on a variety of topics of interest to the visitor. There are general directories with dozens or hundreds of different categories. There are also niche directories targeted at a certain small segment (such as health related article directories).
Authors write on a topic relating to the theme of their own website in order to establish themselves as experts in a given field and to obtain important links to their website from the article directory. The author generally submits his/her article manually to a few directories or uses an automated submission service to submit to hundreds of article directories. If the article is approved by the article directory, it provides a targeted low-cost form of advertising for the author.
For those who are looking for an inexpensive way to get your feet wet in web marketing, this could be an attractive option. I have built dozens of websites, and article directories are among the easiest to manage and promote. You can obtain quality directory software for free (ArticleMS and Article Dashboard are the two most popular). They have excellent content management systems and can host thousands of articles with no problem.
Once you have the backend in place, you can customize the free skins that are available. Then you need to promote, promote, promote. Trade links with other related websites and directories, and write a few articles yourself. Play with different advertising methods on your pages. Because these sites are dynamic, it is usually possible to cut and paste a single snippet of code in order to place an ad on every page of your site.
A free article directory proves that it is possible to provide a quality free service, and still be rewarded for your efforts. Hopefully we’ll see more and more online businesses turning to this type of revenue model.
The author is the developer and operator of Articopia.com – Article Directory. Submit your article to our free article directory at http://www.articopia.com