Web directories and reasons to submit your sites.

Do you have a website and are looking for more traffic? If so you dont have to despair trying to figure out how you will direct traffic to your site because there is a tried and true way to increase your traffic in no time!

Few webmasters realize the real potential of the web directories. However, the ones who do always manage to reap the rewards of a good web directory submission campaign. This is, on many occasions, what makes the difference between existing on the World Wide Web and not being visible at all.

So what exactly are web directories? Well, it is what the name states. It is a directory which contains links to other websites on the Internet. It manages and categorizes the site submissions it receives based on each sites theme.

Many people confuse the link directory with the search engine. While the former simply manages categories and places the web sites in the category that they belong to, the latter displays the sites based on the keywords that represent them.

There are various types of web directories. Depending on the subjects they cover, they can be either general directories or specialized directories. The general directories cover any theme, and they have broad thematic coverage. In other words, any site can make a submission to these directories, as long as it doesnt interfere with the policies (for instance, there are directories which dont accept adult or gambling sites, but there are some which accept them).

Then, there are specialized directories, and these cover a specific niche, which can be anything from a regional approach to a specific subject like Medicine, Marketing, etc. The best thing to do if you own a site and want to promote it is to submit to the general directories and then find out if there are any niche directories that you could submit to.

Another classification is by the fees they charge. There are free directories and paid directories, and they are self-explanatory regarding what they mean. Also, another category which is between these two is reciprocal link directories, which means that you will have to link back to them from your own site. This seems like free submission but it isnt quite like that.

The main two advantages of web directory submissions are the extra traffic you get and the backlinks to your own site (which is good for your search engine rankings and which ultimately also turns into traffic). However, if you do it strictly for the backlinks, make sure that the directories you submit to don’t associate the (nofollow) attribute with the link (which basically means that the search engine will not follow the respective link).

The most notorious web directories are the Yahoo Directory and DMOZ (the Open Directory Project). The Yahoo Directory has two options, a free one and a paid one, and DMOZ is free (however, you will probably have to wait a few months until you get included, because the links are manually reviewed and included in the directory by a group of volunteers). But in the end, its well worth it because if you make a consistent web directory submission campaign, you will certainly see great results.

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Social Bookmarking for Small Business Sites

Anyone trying to generate traffic to their small business website needs to take advantage of the incredible opportunities with Web 2 and social bookmarking. It’s incredibly easy to use and a terrific way to increase traffic to your website. It’s possible with social bookmarking to get new customers visiting your website within days, even within hours!

Social bookmarkings are websites that list popular websites. Each social booking website compiles lists of people’s favourite websites depending on the interest or the theme of that particular social bookmarking website. These site listings are similar to search engine listings because they are searchable by tags as well as keywords.

But the great thing is that these tags are like keywords except they don’t come with any rules and you are able to choose the keywords you want. You use whatever word you want to help you remember where you put stuff.

Social bookmarkings are a total popularity contest. They rank sites to be most popular depending on the amounts of votes it gets. And the fact is social bookmarkings attract a ton of traffic. The Alexa ranking for Del.icio.us is 139, its 207 for Technorati and 85 for Digg. These websites are listed in TIME magazine’s top 50 coolest websites.

The best way to join in the fun of social bookmarking to get yourself acquainted with what’s out there; A list of some of the most popular social bookmarking websites are:

simpy.com, spurl.net, ma_gnolia.com, shadows.com, Technorati, blinklist.com, furl.net, del.icio.us, myweb2

Check these sites out and figure out which of them relates most to your website. Keep an eye out for what people are adding and what is most popular. Some social bookmarking sites, like Technorati give a graph that marks the number of mentions specific keywords or tags have gotten in the last month. This is critical information for any webmaster wanting to improve traffic to their site. If you click on the graph it’ll tell you the number of searches for those keywords up to a year. It’s a terrific way to gather marketing information, and monitor trends. And the best part is it’s free!

After you figure out what works best on particular social bookmarking sites you can plan content that would fit into that scheme. Write the stuff and start submitting it. But put some time and thought into your content. If your stuff is good you will attract more attention and repeat customers. Put useful information in your content and format it so that it’s easy to read. Using bullets and quick tips are effective formats for web content.


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