I am working on submitting my site to directories and there is something that has always bothered me. I have read in many places that you should change up your description. I have a hard enough time coming up with one good description. How the heck am I going to change it up enough for all these directories? The main description I have is this "Laughsonthenet.com where we try to bring you more pictures, jokes and funny news articles that you can handle." I know it could be better but it is something I really have problems with. Then I need to change this for different directories? How often should I change it (how many directories should I submit to before I change it) and just how much do I need to change it? I want to get as much as I can from these directories. I do not have any money that I can really invest into advertisement for the site so I really need to do as much free stuff as I can. Any advice on this matter would be great.
if you submit on directory using 1 description i think it's okey. that description on directory will never affect your website i thought .
Look, your description for your site via your meta in your web site that the SE sees/shows is always the same, so what difference does it really make? Why should this be any different for a directory? A while back some SEO's thought that if you changed your keywords, your description and other subtleties as it came to your web site/link you could some how avoid looking looking spammy. The reality is, the "links" themselves and their frequency, location and usage carries more weight with an SE than the description you use to describe your site. I'd be more concerned about content quality than I would a description of that quality content.
Thank you greatly for the replies. When I was submitting a few months ago I was try to change things for about every 100 submits even that was proving to be hard. So it is good to hear that at least some people think you do not need to to do that. I have however had to write two different descriptions because I have noticed that my current description is too short to be accepted by some directories. I do not have any set number of submissions I do every day. I am trying to try at least 25 links in my list of directories every day but I am noticing a lot of links are bad. But at least once I get though the list it will be a fully updated list and I can share it on here. OK I am kind of getting off subject so I better just end this here, thanks again for your replies.
Hi Adam, love your quirky site. I was going to add it to my blog directory but came across a bad link. If you mouse over you'll see it's the heaven and hell jokes page.
Syted. Thank you greatly for your compliment. I was looking at my stats the other day and it looks like I have a few bad links. I will try to find a site or something that will crawl the site and give me a list of the bad links so I can fix them. I will get back to you when that is done.
I always use to change my description after a week and its gives a positive impact on my keywords ranking.
You should first fix the design of your website. When you submit a website that worths to be included in a web directory, the last thing you should worry about is writing an unique description. The approval/rejection is more about the quality of the website you submit and how useful it really is.
Why should he 'fix' the design, what's that got to do with how useful it is? And what do you mean by 'quality'?
The descriptions not great. It's what directories should expect I guess. Should it be "than you can handle."? A few pointers: - You shouldn't use branding or URLs in the description - You should attempt to write from 3rd person perspective, you've written from 1st person. - It should be minimum 100 characters. Yours is around 110 with the URL (which you should remove) - It should describe the site and what it has to offer without being promotional That doesn't surprise me since most SEOs can't write one either. The directory landscape has changed. I think you are trying to employ a "more is better" tactic, when the truth is that you are probably going to hurt your site more than help it, especially if you use duplicated titles/descriptions. Penguin has ensured that doing volume link building is going to hurt a site, you should forget about hundreds and thousands of directories and literally focus on say a good 100 or 200. Maybe in the past it was, but it represents dupe content. An editor that allows "that description" in, unedited, isn't doing their job. It's a weak tactic to use the same description over and over. Because that's one instance of it. And we would change the meta description on each page of the website. It should be different because when it isn't it's duplicated content. We are talking about the directory model that does the least editing (free ones) so it should be a better description for starters. Don't get me wrong here, I do understand your point. When Google, and a tonne of others, were using DMOZ clone directories every description would have been the same. So what's the diff? The difference is those descriptions are A+. They are well written. Even if they are duped a lot. It won't make any difference him changing the description a bunch of times because for the first part, it's branded, which is wrong, and for the second part its 1st person, which is also wrong. How many free directories are going to change the perspective that the description is written from? How many will remove the URL? I don't know what they were thinking with the keywords field since it is generally only used on the directory itself in either the meta, or as a search tag. Changing that won't do anything. The description on the other hand could be interesting to change for several reasons. One of which is to make it look more natural, yes. The text surrounding those "links" you speak of is also important Me too, but the question is about the description they are submitting, not what is important on their website. That is the most absurd "rule" I've ever heard. Let's make another one up. You should hop on one leg, singing the national anthem with peanut butter smeared all over your face exactly 3 seconds before you push the submit button, otherwise your submission will be ignored. Get real!
Submitting to a bunch of garbage free directories will show bad linking to Google and could get your site penalized. There are only a few well developed directories that are worth your time to submit to.
I agree with Silencer that, although he didn't state it this way, site descriptions should be thought of as content, and good content increases the value of the category that you are submitting your site to, as well as the value of having your site listed there. Unfortunately, too many directory owners still operate on the idea that site descriptions should be devoid of anything useful, including good grammar.