 Search
Engine Optimization Part 2:
Directories and Paid Submission
First Published: November 2002
Last Update: November 2002
Author: Bob Wakfer
In the previous article in this series http://www.compar.com../articles/news1vs16.html
we discussed the importance of Content, Meta Tags and backward Links to
successful ranking or indexing by the search engines. This article builds
from there, because besides valuing reciprocal links from other sites, the
search engines place a very high value on sites that are listed in
Directories.
Just as there are many search engines there are also a myriad of
Directories. Many of these directories are industry specific such as
directories specializing in oil and gas related sites. Others are
regionally oriented such as city, and state directories. If your web site
fits into a specialized category or has particular regional interest then
you should submit it to these regional or specialized directories.
However if your website is seeking a wider audience then there are
three Directories that you should consider. Just as the majority of
searches are done on five or six search engines, these three directories
get the majority of the Directory inquiries or searches. The three
Directories are the DMOZ, also known as the Open Directory Project or ODP,
Yahoo and Looksmart.
How Directories Work
Submissions to Directories are reviewed by human editors and placed
into appropriate categories within the directory. People searching in
Directories follow a path and drill down to the category in which they are
interested. When submitting to a Directory you should investigate the
various categories and ask to have your site listed in the appropriate
one. If you have picked an inappropriate category the editor may suggest a
more appropriate category, but he/she may just ignore your submission.
This is particularly true if they suspect that you are trying to spam the
Directory by getting your site listed in many categories.
You may have noticed that we speak of submitting your sites to the
Directories. In the case of the search engines some SEO experts are
arguing that you should not submit your sites. The search engines have
robots that are constantly crawling the Internet and if you have any
backward links to your site the search engine robots will find and index
your site. As we suggested above the search engines appear to value a link
from a directory listing in particular. So you could argue that the best
way to get found by the search engines is by submitting to one or more
Directories.
However submitting to a directory is not a simple matter. Yahoo and
Looksmart both charge a price for a site to be submitted. DMOZ works with
volunteer editors and submissions to this Directory are still free. Here
is what you must be ready for before submitting to any Directory. First
you must select an appropriate category. Then when you submit your site
you will be asked for both a title and a description. The title and the
description will be used to describe your site in the Directory display
page of your category. If your site title and meta tag description have
been well researched and written you may be able to use them in your
submission, but ideally you should have researched and considered this in
advance.
The annual fee to submit and maintain a listing in Yahoo's Directory is
$299. You get no guarantee that your submission will even be accepted and
you do not get your money back if your submission is rejected. A
successful submission to Yahoo can be a long and arduous process. At one
time to be included in Yahoo was of paramount importance. That situation
has changed a bit of late because Yahoo now uses Google to find any pages
that are not listed within it's own Directory. Google in turn appears to
place the highest value on site listed in DMOZ. As a result we do not
normally recommend that our website owners submit to Yahoo.
Looksmart has a combination of a onetime listing fee and then a
"pay per click" charge once your site is listed. We are going to
talk about pay per click systems in the next section, but without going
into a great deal of detail I can tell you that once your site is listed
in the Looksmart Directory you will be charged 15 cents every time someone
actually clicks on your list and comes to your site. So the question every
web owner must answer is do you generate 15 cents in revenue for every
visitor to your site? If not a listing in Looksmart is a losing
investment.
The only possible exception to this argument is that the MSN (Microsoft
Network) search engine uses Looksmart in a very similar way to how Google
uses DMOZ. So while you might lose money on your Looksmart listing you
might make it back on the additional traffic from being well indexed in
MSN. This is a situation that takes some individual study and analysis,
but as we will see in the next section there may be better and cheaper
ways to pay for clicks than listing with Looksmart.
Pay Per Clicks and Buying Keywords
One of the original methods of attracting visitors to your web site was
via the use of banners. There were several ways of paying someone to
display a banner on their site that would lead viewers to your site and
one of these was to pay a predetermined fee for everyone who clicked on
the banner and came to your site. Banners are now considered passé as a
means of advertising or attracting traffic, because viewers have become
inured to banners and generally ignore them. However a number of search
engines have now adopted this business model and will let you purchase
keywords, by paying for every click through to your site from the search
engine.
The most famous of these search engines was original called 'goto'.
They have changed their name and today are know as Overture. Here is how
they work, and with minor alterations this is how all the pay per click
search engines work. Overture allows web owners to bid on keywords that
they think people will use in searching for their site. Overture then
displays the highest bidders first when that keyword is used in a search.
The second highest bidder second etc. Overture's minimum bid is 5 cents
but some web owners are paying up to $12.00 to secure first place listing
for their websites search terms.
If you purchase keywords in this manner you must keep a balance
available in your account at all times. If your account balance gets
consumed - every time someone clicks on your website the value of the
keyword is taken from your account - your site will be removed from the
sites listed. Overture is particularly successful with their business
model because they have made deals with many of the most important search
engines to display the 3 highest bidders for any search term. These web
sites either show up in special colors at the top of the search page or in
boxes labelled 'sponsors link' on the right hand side of the search page.
Buying keywords is an excellent strategy to drive traffic to your site
quickly and early in its existence. After you start to generate normal
traffic and have regular visitors then you might consider dropping the
paid for keywords and search terms.
In our discussion of Looksmart we pointed out that if your site does
not generate 15 cents profit from each visitor you would lose money by
being in the Looksmart directory. This same calculation must be done when
buying keywords. If the average profit per visitor is less than you are
paying per click through then buying keywords is bad business. However you
can buy the less popular or highly specialized keywords on Overture for as
little as 5 cents so it may be cheaper to do this than be listed in
Looksmart.
About the Author
Bob Wakfer is the President of Computer Partners and a
long time student and practitioner of SEO. Computer Partners offers web
site design hosting and search engine optimization for its clients. If you
would like to discuss any of these services with Bob you can email him at bob@compar.com.
Links to other SEO resources and information:
Below are some Search Engine Optimization books you may find interesting:
| 
