First of all let me just define exactly what I mean when I say human powered directories. We all know what the major search engines are, Google, Yahoo and MSN etc. Directories are slightly different and contain site indexes in a slightly different way. The best examples of human powered directories are Yahoo! directory and DMOZ. Both list sites according to categories and both contain millions of indexed sites. There are many more directories but these are the two I would like to focus on as the rules for submitting to these will pretty much apply to all directories.
The first question to may be ask is, what benefit will I receive by submitting my site to various directory sites. Well I will answer that question first by telling you exactly what you are not going to get. First of all there is no point optimising you listing as the categories are placed in a random order sometimes alphabetically and other times based on Google PageRank. Also if your looking for traffic you are looking for it in the wrong place. There are millions of sites indexed and the chances of users deciding to scroll down categories instead of using a crawler search engine are slim, to say the least.
So no optimisation reasons and no traffic. Why use them then. Well there is a very good reason why you submit to directories. The first one is that as a rule most crawler search engines start their life at one of these large sites and if your webpage is listed there your site is guaranteed to be crawled. This helps as if your site is crawled via a link rather than a submission your site is more likely to be indexed.
The second reason for submitting your site is for those valuable inbound quality backlinks. A link from the directories is seen as a high quality high PR backlink and will go a long way in getting your site to the top of Google.
Before submitting to these large indexes you must ensure a few things. Make sure you have at least 6 to 7 pages of unique relevant information, also make sure any broken links on your site are fixed. An important thing to remember is to place your site in the most relevant category, remember sites are human edited and if it is in an inappropriate category the chances are it will not be listed. Submitting to directories can be time consuming but is vital to your search engine optimisation efforts.
Contributor: Tom Greaves. If you want to know more about search engine optimisation visit search engine optimisation.
