Features of a Quality Web Directory

One of the best ways to get your website known and ranked higher in the search engines is by submitting your website to web directories. There are literally thousands of these web directories out there these days and to ensure that the big search engines like Google and Yahoo are going to find you, it is important that you make sure you are submitting to the quality web directories, so how do you determine what features make for a quality web directory?
r
rThere are several things you should look for in a web directory before you spend the time to submit your website information and these include:
r
r•Page Rank: This is the number that Google gives out to pages on the Internet and ranks them in importance from 0 to 10. Not only should the web directory that you want to submit to have a decent page rank, but make sure that the page of the category in which your site will be featured has page rank as well. A higher page rank generally means a higher amount of people clicking on a day to day basis and this will lead to an increased chance of those people finding your site.
r
r•Appropriate category: Sometimes a web directory can have a wide range of categories to choose from and sometimes only a hand full. Be sure that your website will go into a category that makes sense. You don't want to have a cell phone site and be in the dog food category because there was no cell phone or mobile phone category. This type of action can actually hurt you with the search engines so you don't ever want to do this.
r
r•Quality of listings: Take a minute or two and click on a few of the sites that are listed on the web directory. If you are running into a bunch of sites that have no page rank, or are worse yet spam sites, run away with winged feet. Not that every site associated with the web directory has to be ranked, but a quality web directory will have quality sites listed on it, it only makes sense. If Google views you as associating with sites that spam you will be lumped into that category and your personal ranking will be hurt.
r
r•Site design: A quality web directory will look up to date in its design and will not be littered with ads. Some ads are alright as everyone is entitled to make a living, but if the web directory is clogged with these ads, then chances are they care more about you clicking on their ads then they do about you submitting your website to their directory.
r
r•New links: Many quality web directories have a link that you can follow that will take you to the newer submissions on the site. Take the time to check these out and make sure they actually were recently added. It does you no good to submit to a web directory that may have actually been abandoned and has no one to update the submissions.
r
rFinding good quality web directories to submit your website to will only help you in the long run, so it pays to take a little time and determine if a web directory is actually worth your time.