There are numerous open directories available online.  The most popular ones include Google, DMOZ and Yahoo.  It was actually Rick Skrenta and Bob Truel who created DMOZ (a.k.a. ODP or the Open Directory Project), which then led to the creation of the numerous other open directories that are in existence today.  These open directories are valuable resources for getting all kinds of links, from back links to incoming links and even more. 

There are some distinguishing characteristics of open directories.  First of all, they are multilingual content that is available to all of the directories users.  Secondly, these are ran by volunteers from the web community.  As such, some of these directories are updated regularly, while others are not. 

These open directories are very popular with webmasters because they know that there are a lot of users who will frequent these directories.  They are also popular because they enable web sites to collect relevant links, which will then help them to get a better Search Engine position.  Plus, these directories also have their own traffic that they are able to send to web sites whose job it is to then convert this traffic into customers.  With all of this in mind, open directories really are 1 of the top strategies used to promote businesses.

If you decide to submit your web site to these open directories, there are some things that you should know:

1.        Check to make sure that there is an editor for the category that you plan to submit your web site to.  If not, you may consider applying as you will then be able to add your web sites a lot faster.

2.       Do not try to put keywords in your title if they are not already in your company name.  If you do, your site will either be edited or rejected outright.

3.       You also should not try to put extra keywords into your description as this will either get you edited or rejected outright.  This description also needs to be kept short and concise.  Your objective here is to state what your web site has to offer.

4.       Patience is definitely required here as it may take weeks or months for your web site to be reviewed.  If it has been quite some time since you have submitted your web site and it is still not listed, then you could send a polite note to the category’s editor in order to find out if there was a problem.

This may sound as though it is a lot of work, but it really is quite easy to do.  Of course, it is going to require some patience and time, but then again, what type of web site marketing is not going to take this.  There most definitely is not any magical trick that you can use to get your web site out and about quickly so that it can be seen.  So, take the time and do the work that is required, then you will be able to reqp some great benefits. 

Whenever you are searching for something specific on a Search Engine, you will receive a number of different pages that may contain possible answers to what you are searching for. These are the answers to what you are searching for, returned to you on your Search Engine Result Page (SERP). There are probably a lot of results on this page. Well, more than likely you will probably find that you will open only those sites that are listed on the first 3 pages while ignoring the rest. If you are a webmaster of 1 of those sites that is being ignored you may be wondering how you can get better positioning for your web site. Well, the answer is simple: through Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

SEO refers to a process through which a web site earns high ranking amongst search results. Through this process, a web site is able to get a good position on the SERP and thus pull in a large amount of unique visitors.

So, who needs SEO? There are 4 different types of web sites. These are:

• Personal sites
• Corporate Sites
• E-commerce sites
• Sites that provide information

Both personal and corporate web sites can actually hold their own without SEO because they are targeted to specific people and the site does not want or need an audience beyond these people. However, this is not true for e-commerce and web sites that simply offer information. These web sites definitely need unique visitors who can only be found through good rankings on SERPs, which are achieved through SEO.

One thing that is important to think about here is the keywords that you choose to use. These are the words or phrases that summarize the main topic of your web site whenever a Search Engine scans the text of your web site. While scanning your web site the Search Engine will pick up the words that you use repeatedly and then match them with the words that are being searched for. If these words match up with one another, then you will get a high ranking.

So, when you select your web site’s keywords, you need to be sure to choose those words that are most likely to be used by those who are searching for a web site like yours. Once you select these words, use them abundantly within your web site’s text but be careful not to place them where they would seem awkward, or you may attract criticism or be penalized. You should strive to have a 3 to 5% keyword density on each of your web site’s pages. They should especially be used within the first 2 paragraphs of your web site, as well as in the concluding line of text. Most importantly, these keywords need to be used in your anchor text, because Search Engines like Google place a lot of importance on the anchor text of inbound links.

Of course, you will have to decide for yourself whether or not SEO is for your site. When making this decision you should remember that more than 80% of people find web sites via Search Engines and 90% of these people do not look beyond the first 30 results. This is especially important for businesses because 75% of people who use Search Engines are looking to purchase a product or a service.

It is clear that directory submission could contribute immensely to link building. But, how to get your website acceptable to directories? In order to get better acceptance in directory submissions, the first thing to take note is to make your website relevant to the directories. Any thing junk or random is not entertained by any of the popular directories. Further, submitting your webpage in to right categories makes the process quicker and such pages will generally gets listed without any delay. Remember, it is manual editors who accepts or rejects applications for submissions, and for a person who might be viewing thousands of web pages daily, it is far easier to reject a page than accepting it. So, how simple and straight you could make your submissions as possible, the more are the chances of it getting listed in the directories.

Another aspect that goes a long way in enhancing acceptance in directories is the way the titles, description and keywords are organized for a web page. Every directory will have their own rules and regulations, and hence web pages must also be organized around such constraints. Regarding descriptions, most directories require it to be short – in the range of 100 – 250 words that may vary from one directory to another – crisp, and to the point. Descriptions that are huge or of ‘beating around the bush’ type are generally showed the door by the directory editors. The same is the benchmark for keywords as well – it needs to be more organized and focused, and not just another group of irrelevant and relevant ones mixed randomly. In that regard, it will be prudent to make a short list of all prospective keywords first before finalizing the most optimal keyword for submission. That will ease the job for you.

Finally, do not spam your directory listings with words being used uncontrollably and insensibly. Directory editors hate such practices and similar applications are rejected outright without any chance for a second consideration

Social bookmarking has complicated the life of SEO professionals while increasing the relevance of what an Internet search ultimately finds. It may be said that social bookmarking has made SEO more human through sheer lack of control over the content or its form. Websites offering social bookmaking are quite popular as they allow users to store, share, and search for information on folksonomy techniques.

Folksonomy implies that the main users of the content are the authors among themselves. This makes the content more organic and helps to develop a chain of similar content so that social bookmarking becomes relevant when one user or group can easily find other users or groups through a common content base.

Social bookmarking is also challenging because folksonomy, by default, rejects the search engine mindset that SEO experts were hitherto used to. Social bookmarking, through folksonomy, does away with the basic WWW protocols that form the rules for SEO.

Social bookmarking is not just related to web pages but it can also link directly to RSS feeds, music, video, eBooks, shopping items, map locations, and so on. There is practically no restriction on what may turn up through a social bookmarking search.

Though exciting, the concept is not entirely new and can be traced back to April 1996 and the launch of itList.com It took only 3 years for the field to get intensely competitive and only the dot-com fiasco put it in the back rows for a short while. Social bookmarking made a comeback with the emergence of blogging and websites such as del.icio.us, Digg, and reddit.

A social bookmarking system is nothing more than a list of Internet resources that anyone finds useful and shares this list with others. Sharing may be over a closed network, with custom privacy settings, or open to anyone on the Internet. Other users typically conduct a search for matching interests based on category and tags.

Categorization is crucial to social bookmarking due to the diverse nature of content. Most services permit users to search using assigned “tags”. The rank enjoyed by a resource depends on the number of users that have bookmarked it, and not the content of the resource itself.

While originally social bookmarking was only about sharing bookmarks, competition and other factors have forced growth into commenting, rating, import and export, reviews, email links, automatic notification, RSS feeds, web annotations and so forth.

RSS feeds are especially popular with users because it permits them to use “tags” to establish preferences and avoiding manual checking for resource updates. The RSS feed automatically provides information on any updates that take place.

From a search perspective, social bookmarking is good because humans do everything and that implies a natural ability to understand the content. There is no spider or crawler determining content validity or relevance to jumble search results. This means that the tags used are semantically classified, something that cannot be achieved with search engine keywords.

The trouble is that there is no standard, no keywords, no tag structure, and what is more, users often implement their own tag schemas leading to infinite standards.

Users have already started abusing this system by combining it with SEO to increase web visibility. More tags from a web page get it a higher rank and this is easily exploited to falsely get a higher ranking.

Article By: Manish Mathukiya, Who offer SEO Services and Manual website directory submission services.

The major reason a website is built is to have it seen by the world, by customers, friends or family. The easy part is choosing a domain name, finding a place to host your website and in some cases writing the information you want to be seen by all. However, just because you have a website does not mean your website will even be found except by persons that you give the exact address. This is because it takes a lot of work to get your website in the major search engines. Oh, don’t get me wrong, you will have a listing in Yahoo, Google, and a few more but more than likely you will not find your website if you search through the search engines using words other than the address at least not in the first few pages. You will probably find your website back past page 10.

Links to your website play a very important role with many of the search engines thus obtaining inbound links is a major part in the process of getting your website seen by the multiples. You can spend hours of your day trying to find quality website that you would like to display a link to your website, you can also pay others to place a link to your website on theirs, however, both of these ways are very time consuming and you still may not get the “back links” that you deserve. The easiest and best way to receive inbound links or back links to your website is through directory submissions.

Directories a few years back was the favorite for many people when searching for certain types of services, stores, and websites, however, today search engines have taken over this area. This certainly does not mean that directories are a thing of the past. Search engines love directories. Of course, you cannot depend on traffic from the directories but you can depend on search engines picking up your link that was found in the various directories. This will improve your rankings among the search engines since you will have more inbound links to your website.

Okay, you may be wondering why directories are so important and why search engines accept these links so readily. The answer is quite simple. When you submit your website to a directory, a real person views your submission, your website and your content to ensure that the website is a quality site, that you have the proper title, description and content for the category and sub-topic you chose. If all is well, your website will be included in the directory. This gives your website credibility that it is a quality website with relevant information on the topic, because of this search engines will naturally consider all links submitted to directories without thinking twice.

Another good thing about directories is they also supply their links and data to other websites databases and yes to some search engine databases. Search engines look at the type of back links you have, whether they are from quality directories and what other types of back links you have. This will help them determine your relevance and the quality of your website. Therefore, if you only have back links from sites that are not considered quality then your search engine ranking will not be as high as if you had back links from all quality websites and directories.

Many times, if you have several images, flash, or other items the search engines cannot read as well as the written word, they may not be able to categorize your website properly thus a low ranking will be given. However, if you are listed in directories, the search engine will then be able to give you a better listing, thus a better ranking.

Now, you know the importance of directory submissions to get your website seen, however, there is another less known fact that is more important if you wish to rank high in the search engines. This is the value you can receive from varied titles or anchored text which it is commonly called.

Anchored text will enable you to use keywords for optimizing your directory submission. For directories you will normally have to submit your front or home page to the directory. If you use keyword or keyword phrases that are not seen by the person accepting your website you may have your website rejected. It is very important to ensure that you have the keywords on your front page along with your description for you to receive quality inbound links.

Your anchor text or title should vary from one directory to another for more than one reason. One reason is of course, spam. If you have several inbound links with the same exact title this can be considered spam and most of the inbound links will not do you any good as they will be unacceptable by the search engines. Yes, it can be very hard to use the proper keywords in your title or anchor text to ensure quality links. However, using a keyword selector tool can help you know what words to use when creating your content; this will give you more options for your anchor text.

Next, when planning a title for your anchor text do not use wording that sounds like an advertisement. This is often unacceptable and you will not even get your website included in the directory let alone help you with receiving inbound links.

As an example, let’s say you have a website devoted to educational toys. You can use various titles according to the toys that you have your website for your submission, such as Educational Toys for all Ages, Toys for the Bright Toddler, or Toys that make your little ones think. All of these could be used for the same website, use your imagination and be sure that the words appear on the page you are submitting. This will give you more inbound links which will give you more listings in the search engines under different topics, such as educational toys, toddler toys, or toys for little ones. With these you will have three inbound links from different directories.

Manish Mathukiya Offers Directory Submission Services. He also offer best quality Paid directory submission service and delayed directory submissions. He is editor of Mathukiya Directory - A Free Directory.