Web directories are the very useful part of the internet search technology. Most of the web directories are maintained by humans. Weather it is their administrators or a group of people who are hired as paid staff or volunteerily. The best and the biggest example of our time is DMOZ.com the open directory project.

Many new directories have came into existence in past some years. Some are focused towards a particular niche like Travels, Real-estate, etc. Other major number of directories are the ones that provide listings of all the general web sites. Most of them allow a free listing on the directory as they monetize their web directories with the advertises from the sponsors or with google adsense. While other directories require you to pay a listing fees to get listed in that directory.

Directories are the food for the search engine bot as they can get listings and the URL's properly categorized by some human while crawling that directory. The incoming link for premium directories like DMOZ and Yahoo can surely benifit a lot to a web site in getting a better rankings then the competitors site.

yup very true, but there is a catch here!!
All the directory these days claim that they have a free listing as well....but if we submit our website to these free listings it take around 4-6 months for them to be approved and many of them even after the long wait dont see the light of the day!!

So, no point in free listing submissions!!
thats what my experience tells me until now; i just started a blog on open source and thought of doing a little SEO and thats what i have experienced so far!!

What are your thoughts about this???

Have you done many free submissions? I agree with you that there are some directories that are much like you describe, but not all are.

The problem with most paid directories is that because they charge, they will not get as much content as free directories. If they have less content, they generally will not grow as fast or get as much traffic. While paid submissions of anywhere from $1 to $30 are not too much money, then you must decide what directories to choose from and which to pass on. Not too many small site owners can afford to pay 500 directories $1 each, much less larger amounts.

So in my opinion, the small directories that charge limit their own growth while making some money today. It's the same idea to a lesser extent with asking for return links. Most small site owners are not going to add 500 links to their sites for all the directories.

Both the site owner and the diretory owner need to realize that a well-written directory listing is worth having the directory owner publish the link on their site. I think it is an even exchange and both sides should respect the other.

This does not happen much and people submit and don't follow the rules, over-submit, and submit the most awlful listings. I know, because I own and operate Consultant-Directory.com. It has been up for several years and has over 10,000 listings now which some say is the point when a directory can be considered "serious".

We don't ask for your email, a link, or any money, yet our site provides us with a nice side income each month. We are proof that you don't have to charge or get links back to be successful with a directory. But it is work. I have about 700 submissions right now waiting to be reviewed. Of that I can expect to approve only about 100-200 since all the others have problems.

Enough about me. My suggestion is that you do spend some time and submit to as many directories and search engines (not all spider unless you submit, like SplatSearch.com) and have patience that many of them will publish your listing if you have followed the rules.

I can understand your frustrations I had also wasted time in doing the free directory submissions but only some of them gets approved. But after all as it is free we cannot demand any services from their original owners.

And to be honest I also own some directories and I also do the same thing :gasp:

hi,
but i have also observed a pattern....
while the general web directories are paid and their free listing doesnt work...there are those directories like country specific ones which allow users to post links for free and then you get included sometime soon!!

So, why not try those!!

Yes that does help. But they are hard to find. I did had lists and lists of directories in past when I was a linkbuilder myself. But now I am just doing SEO and link building guys do the linking things. I will ask my linkbuilder and post a list of this kind of directories here.

link building guys as in you have got data entry operators for link building is it??

Nah. I am proud of my link builder as he can shoot out 1500 directory submissions in one night. Still he has the energy to do 350 Article submissions for each articles that I give to him. And I do give him atleast 5 articles.

hey..sorry if i am being stupid...but is the link builder a software or a bot or a human??

LOL!!

He is a Human. 2 years younger then me and learning new things from me. I also pay him 3 times more then market rates as he is a friend and a really good link builder.