Free SEO Friendly Directories
There are thousands of SEO friendly directories on the Internet. Getting your site listed in these directories can be a good way of building volume backlinks. While most of these directories don't have extremely high Page ranks, having links spread across various sites and various page ranks is a valuable part of any link building program. For competitive keyword phrases it can make the difference between winning and losing positions.
We manually submit to over 1200 Directories and have built a very inexpensive Directory Submission Programs.to help you dominate in the world of SEO friendly SEO Directories.
SEO Directories and Portals What they are and how they affect SEO.
 A web directory isn’t your typical search engine. Directories are typically organized by subject and/or topic, where a search engine is a tool for locating one web page in a database where there could be thousands of pages. Google remains the tool most people use to locate information on the internet.
Google is an excellent tool for locating certain pages. Searching by the website name will typically find the site sooner, but what if you want to browse through a list of coffee mug distributors? You could search for “mugs,” or “coffee cup,” but your results will typically show pages that are the most popular (as determined by inbound links). This is great for a large distributor, but if you’re looking for a smaller company, it may be impossible to find it. A directory would let you browse coffee mug distributors, maybe by selecting retail, then dishware, then mugs, depending on the organization of the sites directory.
Directory’s browsing experience is like shopping on the Internet. Each listing has a sub listing, until the browser can find what they are looking for. A good directory, like a good website, will be dynamic, so that you are able to find information quickly. Imagine shopping for a house, and all you had was a search entry box. You might search by square feet, builder, year built, and so on, receiving millions of results which may not be what you are looking for. It would be easier to filter through categories and sub categories to find your home? It would be, only if the developer of the directory matched your own mental organization of information. A directory’s structure has to be determined by someone, which translates that structure into a vast number of the directory’s users.
Subject Specific SEO Directories or Portals
Portals are a subtype of Directories. The primary difference between portals and directories are that many portals are niche focused. An example of a portal is http://www.retirenet.com where the focus is on retirement housing and retirement communities. Companies can pay to be listed in this portal. The other primary difference with portals is that they often have complimentary information / articles about their niche subject. This can make them VERY competitive in a particular keyword space. Making them not only an advertising opportunity but also a SEO competitor.
How are Directories and Portals important to SEO?
Both types of websites give you an opportunity to be listed on their site (link building). Sometimes the sites are free and sometimes the sites are pay per inclusion, while some portals are even pay per click. Knowing which portal or directory is a benefit to your SEO efforts (i.e. they pass link juice to your site) is exceptionally important. Each and everyday we evaluate directories and portals for the value they may have to our clients. Do they use no follow tags? Will they let us specify anchor text? Is your listing going to be buried so far in the site that it has no value? You need to measure two important things when making a  decision about a paid directory or portal. Does it have any SEO value OR am I paying because the site itself will deliver visitors / traffic. If it has no SEO value then it must have traffic value or vice versa.
Directories (specifically Portals) are likely to have more of a prominent role in the future of web browsing. As people purchase more goods and services from the Internet, tools to sort through the vast amounts of the information will be extremely valuable. Directories can also focus in counteracting the “page-rank” style of indexing used by search engines such as MSN, Yahoo and Google. In this system, relevant pages often get ranked lower than the quick marketing pages developed by companies to exploit search engine ranking trends. Also, as the Internet continues to expand, and hosting website space continues to get more inexpensive, more pages are more likely to exist that have little or no value to most Internet users. Directories allow users to filter down to just the specific selections they are interested in, and nothing more. As stated above, the greatest hurdle for a good directory is a system that has a foundation of definition. Someone has to layout the structure, and whether that is an individual or an online community of users, the directory’s definition has to function properly for everyone.
What paid (non industry specific) Directories and Portals Do you recommend?
Reminder: Web Directory Factors to Consider. Although submitting to directories can be costly, they can yield long term benefits for your website. Some important factors to consider when selecting a paid web directory to submit your site to are as follows:
1. Does the directory have a high google pagerank?
2. How long has the directory been established?
3. Are the links displayed in a search friendly format, and do search engines recognize them as inbound links?
4. Do they charge a once off fee or a recurring yearly fee?
Some of the More Established Web Directories on the Internet are:
1. dir.yahoo.com
2. dmoz.org
3. zeal.com
4. botw.org
5. goguides.org
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