Does anyone have any suggestion or feedback about errors not to make, when submitting to directory services.
My tippage 1. Review what you placed in the form before you hit the submit button. I use a firefox extension to speed up filling out the form fields. Get it here > http://informenter.mozdev.org/installation.html Its great. Better than cut and paste. When using it I sometimes end up throwing my Title in the URL field and vice versa. So be sure to check that everything is where it should be. 2. Be sure to check the submission guidelines of the directory, if they have one, many do. Usually on the submit page. Be sure your site complies, else you are wasting your time, and the reviewers. And your site will be rejected. 3. Submit to relevant category and sub categories. For some directories this can be difficult. Sometimes you can get creative and find a sub cat thats close enough (and take a gamble on being approved). Other times you just hit the back button and go find another directory. 4. Check how many listings are present where your site will get placed. If the directory has too many (ie. 42 pages of 20 links per page) then you may not want to bother. Check how deep the directory is passing PR. If the directory passes PR very deep, even if not all the way, then it is good and those deeper pages may still get indexed eventually. If it only passes as far as page 3 and you are on page 40 something, then you may never get seen by search engines. Newer directories may not be passing PR to internal pages yet, but most will eventually. You get the added benefit of being on a shallower page with new directories because there are not so many listings yet. 5. Switch up your title text. Create 3 or more title descriptions and randomly pick one of them each time you submit. If all of the hundreds of back links to your site all say the exact same thing in the anchor text it can look a little spammy to the SE's. Switch up your description too, I've recently started doing this. 6. Develop a list of directories. (I'm not doing this yet ) rate and classify the directories. Then you have a great resourse to use later for submitting other sites. After submitting to lots of directories you will get to know how to recognise which ones are high, medium, or low quality and which are a waste of time. Very few are a complete waste of time, but there are some. 7. Dont be afraid to pay. Paid listings are worthwhile. If fundage is a problem then start with the cheaper ones. There are quite a few decent ones that are $5 or less that will get you on a page with decent PR. Later on, step up to the more expensive ones.
Spellcheck. It's surprising how many errors can creep into just a couple of lines of description. Actually cut and paste the url you submit, and test it. Don't type it in manually for every directory, it's very easy to make errors. Don't Capitalise Every Single Word, It's Really Annoying. If it were easy to correct this with a script it wouldn't matter, but it isn't because you have proper names to take into account of. It's surprising how many people submit this sort of description, and more often than not it's just not worth fixing.
The only thing I have to add is actually have a description. Not just one sentance but, three to four that actually state what your site is about and touch on why a user might want to visit your site. Don't list things in your description, if you do keep it short ( I try to keep it under three). It looks really bad when there's just words listed.
I keep a spread sheet of all the directories I submit and keep record of the url, category submitted, date and title used. I'll highlight the ones that accept the site so I'll know which ones to use in the future. I also try to check if the directory is indexed in Google.
It's a good Question. First and foremost, read the Submission Guidelines for each individual directory. Every directory doesn't adopt the same guidelines. Other things to think about, can you submit internal pages, should you include your Site Name in the title, etc. Another important suggestion would be to make your description long! Submissions where I get a few words as a description I delete without reviewing. If they cant describe their own sites with more then a few words it instantly tells me about the quality of their sites.
I have an article on my website on this very topic. It can be found here: 12 Ways to Use Directory Submissions to Increase Your Google Page Rank Of all the suggestions listed here, one of the biggest lessons I learned the hard way was to not put your website name and core keywords in your description or you will find your site competing in the SERPS against the directory submissions you made. This is particularly bad when they come up higher.
404 Error. Also, if you are seriously trying to compete with your entries in directories for your site name, that's really sad.
Sorry about 404, put wrong directory - link fixed now. I was never trying to compete with my own site. The point of this thread was to share mistakes you made or know of when submitting to directories. When I first started submitting my sites to directories, I inadvertantly made the mistake of creating competition for myself. In my description I had once put: <company name> offers x, y, and z services to improve your business. That would be something any good marketing copy does to help build name recognition. My original point was that in the case of directory submissions it is a bad idea to include your name in the description itself. Since, as I learned the hard way, the search engines will treat it as a competing site to your own for your own company name.
d \ Definatly a must, good way to keep track of were your site has been submitten so you can check to see if they list you.