Importance of Web Directories in SEO
Gaining the visibility on the online platform has become the necessity for businesses today. Whether you have a small business or a large corporation, you cannot afford to lose out on the opportunities provided by the web. The Internet has changed the face of the business.
Everyone is looking up for something on the internet. People are also looking for the information related to your business. This is why it is important to come into the perception of the internet users. Businesses use different strategies to enhance their internet visibility. Social media optimization, social media optimization, and digital marketing are some of them.
Understanding Web Directories
- There is one practice, not very widely known, but can have a great impact on your online presence. It is called Web Directories.
- Many webmasters are not aware of it. They do not know the difference between search engines and web directories. There is a huge difference between the two and the way they work. A search engine, like Google, is something that crawls the entire World Wide Web. It is always on a look out for the new web pages and web sites. The moment it finds a website, it indexes the page link.
- A Web directory is something different. While search engine reaches out to your site and pages, you will need to reach out to web directories. The links have to be submitted manually to the web directories. While doing so, you will need to choose the appropriate category as well.
- The submitted links are not reviewed by algorithmic boats but by the humans themselves. Based on the review, the link may be rejected or accepted.
- The web directories play an important role in SEO. At the same time, they are sometimes more trustworthy than the search engines. This is because many people prefer human judgement over computer evaluation.
How are search engines and web directories related?
- Google and other search engines take into account a lot of things before determining the page rank of your site. Relevance of the content, traffic to the website, site layout, site load time, and backlinks are some of the factors.
- Search engines have now also started considering the entries in the web directors (Some people says its dear, but that one is incorrect). However, there is one thing to note. There are many web directories out there. But from the SEO perspective, submission to only the directors with higher reputation and page rank is fruitful.
The top web directories
Here is a list of top web directories today:
- DMOZ: DMOZ is one of the most highly rated and trustworthy web directories. It is an open directory project. There are highly qualified volunteers who review your submission. If your entry is accepted, you can see some really good SEO results.
- JoeAnt – It uses volunteers to edit but does charge a fee. It is also a great web directory.
- World Wide Web Virtual Library (VLIB) – VLIB is indeed the oldest website directory and trusted well by the search engines.
Why it makes sense to submit to web directories?
- After all this, one may still wonder, why submit to web directories. Why focussing only on SEO is not better? This is because submission into the web directories can boost your SEO efforts. The links to these directories have been already validated. Therefore, search engines consider them trustworthy.
- The other reason is that all the top web directories are highly ranked on the search engines. This is why they can draw a lot of traffic to your website (through the search engine results). Higher traffic to your site means even better SEO. So, it works for you indirectly as well.
- Some people search the web directories instead of search engines. This allows them to search by categories. It saves them time. At the same time, you get more traffic to your site. As already mentioned, higher traffic also results in higher search engine rankings.
