Directory Submission
When promoting your website, directory submission
can be a great way of getting free or very cheap lifelong links to your site.
If you are in a competitive market segment on the web and you don't have a whole lot
of links pointing to your site then the major search engines like Google
won't list your site high in their search engine results. As of late, the search engines
have refined their techniques so that they provide more weight from sites that are
related, that is sites with the same general topic.
Niche Directories
Niche Web directories can be an important tool for improving your rankings. Listings
in directories related to your site will be given more credit and thus help your rankings
more than a link from a general site. For example, if you have a law site then a link
from a legal site would be more valuable to you than a link from a music site. It is
also important to limit the number of times you link to unrelated sites.
There
are specific directories for almost every niche that you can phantom. Niche directories
include finance, travel, sports, SEO, webmaster, kids, entertainment, weblogs,,
law, gambling, games and hosting. Web-Directories.ws has listings of 1400 niche
directories in over 50 categories. They have a total of 3000 directories
listed, including free, paid and regional directories.
Search Engine Optimization
Search Engine Optimization is the science of improving your site in order to improve
its search engine rankings. It is the process of making your site more
attractive to the search engines.
101 SEO Resources is
a directory that offers a wide range of hand picked SEO tips & resources. They
offer searching tips for Google, Yahoo and MSN. The site
is a source of ideas and SEO tips. The site
has great tips, ideas, tools and webmaster information for both beginners and experts.
They have suggestions for of keyword
ranking and link popularity tools.
Travel
If you own or manage a travel site then consider having your site listed in the Book-a-Trip
Travel directory. This directory is great travel resource that offers a
wide selection of related travel services including weather and map links.
They have a
collection of travel photos from around the world.
Submit your travel site for valuable exposure and search engine benefits.
Other Niches
As I said, check the above niche list of a list of directories in you specific industry.
Another example of a niche directory is Devmagic
Software, a site dedicated to software utilities and
tools. The
Offshore Directory would is an example of a very specific financial site, with listings
related to tax
shelters. The website offers tax information related to tax shelters
such as legal, tax consultants and banking.