What is directory submission? -----------------------------------------

Website directories are web-based resources that list websites according to topic/niche. You might have heard of the DMOZ and Yahoo directories; they are human edited directories where any website owner can submit their websites to these directories and editors will manually review and approve the listings. The reason that directories like Yahoo and DMOZ are called human edited directories is because of the manual review process.

In the beginning, these kinds of directories were used frequently by internet users to find what they were looking for. Nowadays search engines have largely taken the place of web directories because search engines are typically more up-to-date than web directories.

However, there are still internet users who browse through web directories – quality directories are a fantastic resource for side-by-side lists of related websites. And, if your website is listed in a quality directory, you may very well end up with free traffic to your website. In addition to the benefit of potential website visitors from the directories themselves, search engines love “human edited” directories – when a directory manually approves website listings it shows search engines that such directories follow some quality criteria.

If your website is listed in one or several directories, you’ll likely get some traffic from these directories and more importantly, search engines like Google, Yahoo and Live.com index these directories regularly. The search engines will “see” that your website is listed in the quality directories and will help improve the quality of your website (in the eyes of search engines). You can also improve the “Trust Rank” of your website in search engines by listing your website in directories.

Directory submissions are a procedure where your website is submitted to different directories according to their quality guidelines. In order to even get reviewed by a human editor, let alone approved – you must follow the submission guidelines for each directory that your website is submitted to.

Now, take a look at Open Directory (DMOZ) homepage below. You can see that there are many categories, and each category has many sub-categories. Because DMOZ is a human edited directory, when website owners ordirectory submission teams submit a website to DMOZ, it will be reviewed by the editor of the category where your website is submitted.

OK, so how can I submit my website to these directories?

Each directory has different criteria, also called “submission guidelines” that must be met when you submit a website to each of the different directories. But, generally speaking, for each directory that you submit your website to, you’ll need to navigate through the categories until you find the most

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fitting category for your website, and then click on the “Add link”, “submit website” or “submit” link in that category. The wording for the link may be slightly different in each directory – but it’s pretty easy to figure out.

As an example, let’s say we want to submit www.webtrify.com to the DMOZ.org directory.

The first thing we should do is identify the right category for the directory submission – and we can do that by visitingwww.webtrify.com. The website is actually a blog with information about diamond jewelry. So, we will need to find a suitable category for this website on DMOZ

DMOZ.org – Open Directory

 

Usually, the diamond jewelry sub-category will be available somewhere under the shopping category. So, we will go to: Home>Shopping.

 

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But, there are a number of sub-categories in the “Shopping” directory, so we’ll want to look for the jewellery category.

 

Through trial and error, we find that most suitable category in DMOZ for jewelry is >> http://www.dmoz.org/Shopping/Jewelry/Diamonds/Diamond_Jewelry/

Now we will just need to locate the “suggest URL” link in this category. By clicking the suggest URL link, you’ll be directed to a submission form where you can submit the website’s details. Information such as the website title, URL, and description will need to be placed in the form.
Just as with many other directories, DMOZ has their own set of submission guidelines, which you should read before you input your website’s information. Take note: if you do not follow the submission guidelines, editors will review your site but they will not approve it. Be sure to read and follow the submission guidelines for every submission.