Every online business needs traffic, which comes with increased visibility on the web. One great way to get noticed is to get listed in the major directories. Links from good directories increases your site's visibility many fold.
There are thousands of web directories on the net and selecting the good ones to submit your site can be a time consuming task. Also there are free directories and paid directories. You need to submit to both types of directories.
The following checklist is for paid directory submission only. This checklist will help you choose the best and worthwhile paid directories on the net.
Submission Check List:
1. Check out if the directory is indexed in major search engines.
2. Check the robots.txt file. Make sure that search engine bots are allowed to crawl the pages where you intend to put your listing. Check the Meta tags to make sure that search engine spiders are not prevented from following links in it. A Meta tag with noindex/nofollow will not be indexed or spidered and links in that page are not followed by bots.
3. Check if the directory is being maintained regularly. Visit the directory from time to time to see if errors are getting corrected, site information is getting updated and the like. In short, look for positive activity on the directory.
4. Check if the listings in category pages match in theme and content or not. Directories with tight focus on relevant grouping of web sites are useful for visitors and tend to show up frequently in SERPs for keyword searches.
5. Check out the age of the directory. Do a whois search ( http://www.whois.net) to get this information. Many new directories vanish after a few months due to lack of maintenance and promotion. With older directories you can at least be sure that you listing will remain visible for a reasonable period.
6. Check if the directory consists of too many empty categories - it is not useful for visitors and also does not send a too good signal to the SEs about the directory. Think twice before submitting to such directories.
7. Check if the contact information is available on the site. Proper businesses will provide you with some kind of contact information.
8. Check the Alexa rank of the directory - it is not accurate, yet you can get an idea of traffic the directory receives.Look for directories with decreasing Alexa Rank as it indicates that the directory is getting popular.
9. Check if the directory provides SE friendly urls. No JavaScript link or redirection. Also watch out for dynamic urls. Sometimes search engines find it difficult indexing or recognizing dynamic urls with parameters like http://www.<examplesite>.com/index.html?cat=1&p=12... An example of SE friendly URL is http://www.hedir.com/business.html
11. Check whether category pages have too many outgoing links. If your link is one of 100 links on a page, visitors will find it difficult to locate your site.
About the Author
Lakhya Phukan is the webmaster of Hedir Web Directory. You can http://www.hedir.com/>submit your site at hedir, or search for the http://www.hedir.com/groupthink/about52.html>syndicated directory list at hedir.