Internet directories are sites that list other websites into easily findable categories so that people who use them can quickly find what they are looking for. While search engines have overshadowed them to an extent in recent years, they are still a valuable tool for reaching potential customers.

By listing your store traffic site with internet directories:

You gain an additional backlinks to your site

This helps your site rank with search engines

You provide another place for people to find your site at

This helps you get more targeted traffic from non-search engine sources

Before you start submitting your site to directories

Since quality directories generally have sites which are submitted to them reviewed by people, I highly recommend that you only submit your site to them once it looks to be complete. This means that:

• Your site should not have broken links
• Your site should not have "Work in progress" or "Under construction" type notices on it

Once you have reviewed your site and made sure that it does not have broken links or notices state it is incomplete, start by submitting your site to at least a few good directories.

Initial Directory Submissions

When submitting to directories, it is entirely possible that they will decline to list your site. If that happens, don’t worry about it. Instead, simply note the directory on your to do list and submit it again in a few months once you have more content up.

To start with, I suggest listing your site on at least the following directories:

DMOZ.org

This is one of the main directories on the internet.

To submit to dmoz:

Go to DMOZ.org Add Site Information.

Read the instructions there and make note of the following:

• You shouldn’t have broken links on your site
• Don’t be promotional with your description. State the facts plainly without a bunch of keywords.

Browse DMOZ.org and find the category that best fits your site.

If in doubt, choose the one you think your site fits in best.

Use the "Submit ULR" link in that directory.

Enter your site with its full url (http://www.whatever.com/)

Finish submitting your site

Editors will review it by hand and let you know if it is accepted or not.

This could take quite some time, so don’t worry if you don’t hear back for a while.

WOWDirectory

This is another excellent directory.

To submit your site to WOWDirectory:

Wait until the weekend

Seriously. You cannot submit for a free listing except on weekends…

Go to The WOWDirectory Site Adding page

This might take some time to load as the instructions are via video.

Find the category your site belongs in

Go to WOWDirectory.

Browse to the category your store traffic site should be under.

Once in the proper category and subcategory, browse to the proper local area.

Submit your site

Select "Add URL"

Read the instructions

Fill in the form

Select "Submit" when done

Like the others, this can take some time to be processed.

Further directory submissions

Once you have submitted your site to the above directories, I recommend looking over The Vilesilencer Top 100 Directories Page and submitting your site to at least a few of the ones listed there as well.

Illumirate, Turnpike, and InfoListings would be a good start.

Finding other good directories

Besides Vilesilencer, another good way to locate directories that perform well is to do a search for your targeted keywords in Google or Yahoo and see if any directory entries come up in the first few pages.

If you like selling locally, searching for your keyword plus a local city or county name will often bring directories up on the first page. Look them over and submit your site to any which look promising.

On the internet, there are a number of sites that list feeds from all over, which people can search on to find content. These sites are called feed aggregator sites. By submitting your feed to them, your posts will be found by people searching those sites for information and products.

The Benefits of Submitting Your Store Traffic Site

By taking the time to submit your store traffic site to feed readers, you do the following:

• Get automatic backlinks to your new articles and product showcases
• Let people who prefer feed aggregators to search engines find you site, products, and services

When you start article marketing, this will help to more quickly get people viewing your articles.

Getting your sites feed URL

To submit your RSS feed to aggregator sites, you will first need to get the URL to your rss feed.

Getting Your RSS Feed URL

By default, your feed should be found at /feed on your site.

e.g. http://www.privateerwebsolutions.com/feed for this site

If you cannot find your feed URL:

Locate the RSS logo on your site (most themes have one)

This is normally an orange image with a radio like graphic

Select the RSS logo

This will take you to the RSS URL and display your feed

Copy the URL from your browser

Initial Feed Aggregator Submissions

I recommend submitting your RSS feed to the following feed aggregator sites as they are highly used, free, and simple to get setup with:

FeedRaider

Setup an account

1. Go to Feedraider.com
2. Select "Sign Up" at the top right
3. Fill out the provided form and submit it

Create a Feed Page

1. Select Create
2. Enter a Title (I recommend using domain keywords)
3. Select your layout and privacy settings

When finished, you will be taken to your new feed page

Add your websites RSS Feed

Select "Edit"

Select "Add new feeds"

Enter your feed URL into the provided box

Select "Update" at the bottom of the page

Confirm your Feedraider account

You should receive an email after you create your feedraider account.

Select the verification link within it to confirm your account.

Fail to do this and your account will be deleted automatically after a while.

Yahoo Feeds

To setup a yahoo feed account, you will need to create a Yahoo account.

Visit the Yahoo Feed Page

Create a Yahoo account ( or log into yours )

Select "Sign Up" or "Sign In" under "Get Started" to login or sign up.

Fill out the signup form if you are creating an account.

When finished, select "Continue" to return to the Yahoo Feed Page.

Submit your site feed

1. Select "Get Started"
2. Scroll down to the Feed URL box and enter your feed URL into it
3. Select "Add"

When finished, you will be taken to your yahoo page and see your feed at the top.

Your feed is now available via yahoo feeds.

Feed Fury

Go to the FeedFury Website

(optional) Create a FeedFury account

Submit your feed

• Select "Submit Feed" from the left Navigate menu
• Enter your feed URL
• Fill in the Captcha
• Select "Submit Feed"

You should see the page reload with the phrase “Success: Feed added to site” at the top

Further Feed Aggregators

If you want, you can search for other feed aggregators to submit your site to, but the above should be good enough initially to help people find your site and build backlinks to your articles automatically.

If you have a page with a lot of outbound links, you will have a much harder time ranking that page than if you would if you had fewer outbound links.

To avoid what is commonly called "bleeding pagerank", I recommend including the following attribute in links to other sites unless you specifically want to help them build pagerank:

• <a href="URL" rel="nofollow">Link-Name</a>

Additionally, you might want to also consider having links to external sites open in a new window so that your site will still be displayed once a visitor closes the external site. To do so, include the target attribute as follows:

• <a href="URL" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Link-Name</a>

By using both together, you avoid passing your pagerank on and ensure that visitors who follow external links have a better chance of comingback to your site.

The quality of a link from another site depends upon several factors:

The page rank of the site which links to you

Page rank is an artificial rank provided by search engines to decide how much authority a particular site has.

Page rank starts at 0 and goes up as high as 10, with each rank being many times better than the previous rank.

A single link from a page rank 8 site can be worth thousands of times as much as a link from a page rank 0 site.

The wording of the link which points to your site

Getting a link via your sites primary targeted keywords is worth a lot more than getting a link via your store name…unless you are really working for brand recognition.

If a search engine sees a link to your site with the words "excellent antique books", then it will give you some rank for those words in searches.

If, however, the link uses the words "Tims Magical Stuff", then search engines will give you some rank for "Tims Magical Stuff". This is still good, but not nearly as good as "excellent antique books" if antique books is one of your sites targeted keywords.

The type of site linking to your site

If you get a link from a high page rank site of good reputation, then your sites authority can get a good boost.

If, however, you get a link from a blacklisted site, your sites authority might actually drop a bit. Typically, however, this isn’t too bad unless you have almost all of your links from sites of ill repute and none from authority sites.

Whether the link has nofollow set or not

Links back to your site which have rel="nofollow" in them do not seem to help your page rank, though they do provide a place for more people to find your site from, which is almost always a good thing.

Now that you know what a good link is composed of, you know how to create the best links to your own site when you have the option to choose the links words. This is one of the reasons that I recommend keeping a keyword log for your site handy. If you can get ten good links pointing to your domain which use your targeted keywords, chances are good that your site will soon start showing up on the first page of major search engines for those keywords…provided that there isn’t too much competition for them.

To see a sites page rank in Google, get the Google Toolbar for Mozilla.

And yes, there is a lot more that could be said on backlinks, but the above should be good enough to get started with ranking your site.