How Directories Can Help Your Rankings

In the crowded world of cyber-land it is often hard for your website to get noticed. This is where an Online Directory comes to the rescue. Getting listed on a directory helps you get more inbound links. This subsequently raises your credibility and thus makes your website more visible by increasing its chances of being ranked better by search engines.

What is Online Directory?

An Online Directory works just like a real world directory. It lists and categorizes your website according to the area of its specialization. For web users it helps to narrow down the search. The entries to directories are checked manually and not by a computer software. This means only authentic sites are accepted by a directory.

Directory Listing helps Search Engine Ranking

Links play a vital role for search engine ranking. Search engine crawlers travel between websites using these links. So it is good for your website to have many links so that your site is visited often by the crawlers.

Listing on a directory helps you to earn incoming links. Inbound links are like votes for your website. The number of inbound links to your website raises your site’s ranking in a search engine. Because search engines often view the number of inbound links to a website as proof of the site’s popularity and quality.

Listing your site on a directory also helps in building topical links. In a directory your site will be listed under a category that is relevant to the topic of your website. Such inbound links are considered good by search engines.

Choose Good Directories for Better Ranking

It is always worthwhile to get your website listed on a quality directory. Some directories offer free listing and others charge a price for submission. It is advisable to list your website on reputed directories.

Ensure your links are not linked from ‘link farms’. This is not a good practice because it will eventually end up harming your reputation. Search engines frown upon such practices.

Make sure that the directories are search engine friendly. Some directories do not allow search engines crawlers to index their listing pages. They contain codes which direct the crawlers not to follow the links or to ignore the page. This kills the primary purpose for which we list on the directory.

Getting backlinks from reputed directories is beneficial because search engines will give you a good ranking. Some of the well known online directories are Yahoo Directory, DMOZ , Gimpsy, JoeAnt, GoGuides.org, and Looksmart.

Listing on directories is a favored method followed by webmasters for search engine ranking. Online Directories are helping websites in a big way to become visible. Now many sites have a chance to be seen and spotted by search engines. This has hugely benefited these sites because visibility has led to increased traffic and revenue.