Some of us will recall that not too long ago there was a search engine named Archie. And another named Gopher. I’m talking as recently as about ten years ago, when the World Wide Web was just on the brink of exploding.

And since then, the good ole’ www has grown exponentially and is still growing. So fast and so so wide and far that unless you’re a heavyweight like NY Times or MTV, chances of your site being discovered are quite slim. Almost nil, in fact… that is, if you don’t promote them. Not everyone has a fortune stashed away as advertising budget, so one of the extremely effective solution to being found lies in the all powerful web directory.

As the name indicates, it’s nothing but a directory, with planned categories and sub-categories, brief descriptions of the websites and, of course, the address, i.e., the URL. By submitting your site to a number of web directories, you make sure your site gets a place in huge databases of websites, and, subsequently, can be discovered by anyone who look at these directories, browsing/searching on keywords.

The web directory process can be automated in many cases (sometimes with dedicated software), or you could choose which directories you’d like your site to be listed. However, not all submissions may be free of charge. Some may ask for a nominal fee for manually reviewing and listing your site, while others may request a reciprocal link from your site, which, in my opinion, is quite fair.

Either way, you only stand to benefit — the more places your website URL is found, higher the chances of being discovered. This is a straight forward, ‘white hat’ method to get back links to your site, which are crucial to get ranked on Google and other top search engines.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 28th, 2009 at 11:08 pm and is filed under Internet. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.