Website promotion - Directories

You should start your website promotion efforts by listing your site at the most popular Internet directories. Because they can send you substantial amounts of traffic and affect your ranking in various search engines, it is wise to make sure that your site is present in all of the major directories before doing anything else.

Step one - General information

Submitting to directories is easy and doesn't require much effort. It's ensuring that your submission will be accepted that makes this task a hard one.

1. First, read "Boost your traffic with website directories" to get a basic idea on what directories are and how to submit to them.
2. Examine the article about web page design to get some tips on how to improve your site and reduce the chances of it being rejected.

Step two - The Open Directory Project

Start with the Open Directory Project. While your site has to offer good, unique content to be accepted to the ODP, its editors usually review sites quickly and won't reject them without a good reason for doing so. This, along with the fact that submitting to the ODP is free of charge, makes it a perfect starting point. Completing this step successfully will also provide you with experience that will prove to be very valuable later on.

1. Read my thoughts on how Google's ranking algorithm works and notice how an ODP listing seems to affect your ranking at Google. Keep this information in mind when you submit.
2. Take a look at the advice on submitting your website to the ODP.
3. Finally, submit your site to the ODP.
4. If your submission isn't successful, consider becoming an editor at the Open Directory and listing your own site.

Step three - Yahoo

After securing a listing at ODP, your next task is to get the folks at Yahoo to notice that your site exists and is worth a place in their directory. This might cost you a fair amount of money if you are running a commercial site, but is usually worth it. Non-commercial sites can get in for free, but might require several submissions and a lot of patience before they are accepted.

1. Check out the Yahoo-specific guidelines and hints and the article about how Yahoo's search feature ranks sites.
2. Bite the bullet and submit your site to Yahoo.