Things you Should Know about Directory Submission

Directory submission is one of the best ways to build links for a website and to improve it’s rank in the search engine results. It involves submitting a page or a site to different online directories like Yahoo! Directory, Best of the Web, Google Directory etc. While doing directory submission, the following points should be remembered:

Your website should be submitted to both niche directories and general directories. You can look for niche directories by searching on the different search engines and submit to those which come up in the first few search results. For general directories, only go for the reputed ones. Ensure that all the directories you submit to, are ‘DoFollow’. It will help you to get the link juice and improve your rank in the search engines.
Though pagerank for the directories is not the ultimate factor, still it is much better to go for those having high PR. But, make sure that not only the home page but the interior category pages are also indexed.
To start with, you can submit only to free directories. But if you can afford the cost, paid directories are better, as the links seem to last longer. In most of the free directories, the links seem to disappear after about a year.
Do not post the same description of your business in different directories. It may be viewed as duplicate content by the search engines. It is recommended to write a unique description (about 200 words) for each directory.
Directory submission is a long term process. Never submit to all the directories at the same time. The best thing is to spread the submission over a period of twelve months.

Directory submission can be either manual or automatic. Automatic submission involves submitting with the help of a software which automatically posts the website to different directories. Manual submission involves visiting each directory one by one and manually submitting your site to each of those. While automatic submission saves a lot of time, manual submission is time consuming and tiresome. But in the long run, manual submission is much better than automatic submission as sites submitted with the help of a software are less likely to be ranked and indexed by the search engines. Automatic submission software also tend to bypass many important directories. In manual submission, the directory entries will be of much better quality and the sites are more likely to be accepted and indexed.