Article Directories and Web Directories are One More Option to get free traffic to your website.

The net is full of ezines, where you can submit your articles for free or for a small charge. Article directories and Web directories are one more way to get a backlink. The end result is to get more targeted traffic to your site.

Directories are great places to list your sites to improve traffic and your business exposure. It is always advisable to list your sites in nice little niche directories, mini-hubs and get a few incoming links from other places.

Some free directories, such as DMOZ (Open Directory Project) rely on volunteers which makes their process a little slow because there is more submission volume compared to people who are willing to review. Your site’s acceptance could be inconsistent because your site is now view based on the editor’s point of view.

If for any reason your site is refused on DMOZ, you should not get hung up on this, move on to other places where you can get your site listed faster.

Submitting your site in directories that uses mathematical algorithm to determine your relevancy based on activities and consumer behavior is more objective, works faster and eliminates bias – Google is one of such directories that use spiders to scan through your sites to determining which Web content pages are both relevant and good.

 

How Article Directories Work

 

Article directories are websites that house free articles. These free articles are written by individuals like you and me.

The primary reason for submitting your article is to brand your name and/or promote your business by directing readers to your website for more information or to your affiliate site to generate sales.

These articles should have copyright protection to protect your work so that the credit for your efforts will not be taken by someone else. To know more about copyrights or how to protect your article, visit http://www.loc.gov/copyright/

Article directories are a great place to promote your business, especially if you choose the directories that are specific to your niche.

Most people get hung up on the fact that they cannot write, this should not be a barrier as we’ve discussed earlier: you can hire someone from elance.com or guru.com to write your article for you for a fee.

It is always advisable to have an idea on the topic because you really do not just want to copy and paste your writer’s work. You might want to add a little information of your own so that your article would have your voice.

Back to choosing directory that are specific to your niche …

Choosing a directory in your Niche area

When you have a directory in your niche area, it is easier to target people who may need your service.

For example – imagine you are a bookkeeper working from home. You wrote an article about bookkeeping best practices and placed it in various related article directories with your website link for further information or to learn more.

• Those who are looking for bookkeeping information read your free article and wants to tap into your knowledge, they click your link, opt-into your list or newsletter or buy something from your site.
• Your article just help to promote your site and you just gained a new client who may regularly visit your site, bring you repeat business and/or send you referrers.
• The other thing your article will give you is backlinks from other people who found your article worthy and place your link on their site for their own customers to take advantage of your rich content.
• This is a win-win-win situation because they are providing great service for their client, the client is benefiting from your information, and you are gaining free clicks and potential customers.
• To take full advantage of article directories, you should put your articles in as many as you possible can find that relates to your niche audience.
• There are directories for various things beside articles. For example, there are directories for Podcast and Video (see previous topic for directories).
  • Such directories are often organized by categories to help visitors find information they need more easily.
• The cool thing about such directories is the fact that users may be able to play the available feed episodes from your site.

The video directories are sorted by region, category, and popularity to help improve viewers’ experience. Some video feeds are created by people who want to show their work in a step-by-step or a movie trailer or an interview relating to a product or reviewing a product. The possibilities are endless for what you can use video.

Generally speaking, article directories and Web directories are a better idea for SEO (especially when the link does not have the ‘no follow’ attribute) than for getting traffic directly. Learn more on how to get free and non- stop traffic for your articles.

Similarly, to social bookmarking sites, there are so many directories, that you can’t complain of lack of choice.

There are lists of paid directories and niche directories, so you may also want to give them a try.

Just like articles, audio and video exposure of your product will get you more clicks, expose your product and or services, increase the traffic to your site and ultimately make you more money on the long run.

Check out these directory listings: –

http://directorycritic.com/free-directory-list.html — Free directory listing

http://www.e-zine-list.com – e-zine listing

You can also go to major search engines, key in your keyword plus (+ sign) directory.