Directory Submissions and Listings
Background
Well before search engines turned main-stream, human edited directories were the default form of Search. As the name suggests, a directory provides a nomenclature system with businesses being categorized by the industries they belong to. Human moderation ensures proper categorization and labelling for businesses in addition to verifying authenticity of a business when requested for inclusion. The directories effectively acted as Human Moderated Search Friendly Hierarchical Repositories. Directories such as Yahoo Directory and the Open Directory Project (DMOZ) came into prominence during those pre-search engine days.
As the search engines appeared, use of directories for the purpose of search reduced drastically. However, search engines such as Google based their very algorithms on discovery of new content via the rich hyperlink structure of the internet. As the directories were hierarchically arranged and human moderated, they became prime data sources in search engines' quest to index World's content. As fallout, the importance of directories in the world of search never diminished and till this date directory submissions and listings remain an important element in a website's internet marketing efforts and in proclaiming authenticity of the business.
Malpractices
As the importance of directories became evident they became an integral part of successful link building campaigns. However, it also resulted in scores of directories being set up for the sole purpose of link building. Many of them were actually hosted on the same servers. Each such new directory being set up facilitated easy link exchange, giving rise to link neighbourhoods, better known as link farms. Purely quantity based link building became a norm of the day and even today it continues to lure ignorant clients. Search Engines have been wary of such mass link building practices and as their algorithms evolve, such neighbourhoods and directories are nothing but sitting ducks to be taken off the index.
Best Practices
To use directory submissions and listings as an effective technique in search engine optimization, it's important to understand the purpose of directories for search engines that are looking for information about authentic businesses typically from human edited directories. The most probable premise is the fact that human editing ensures verification of authenticity and existence of a business. As numbers of such actively edited directories are limited, it's important to ensure that websites are being submitted to proper destinations recognized by the search engines. Few of the selection criteria which could be utilized involve –
1. Duplicacy Check: To weed out sites hosted on the same server, serving duplicate content
2. Age of Domain: Whether the directory is old enough to command an extensive listing of websites
3. Existing Listings: The type and kind of sites which are already listed
4. Navigational Architecture: The layout and internal link structure of the site, which could aid or hamper movement (crawl) of search engine spider programs etc.
As part of our professional directory submission and listing service, we utilize these and many more selection parameters to ensure quality listings from reputed destinations.
Please get in touch with us to discuss your specific requirements to generate business listings or generic link building requirements. Do fill the form here to Contact Us or send an email to info@linkcredible.com and let us help you.
