Examples Of Successful Web Directory Listing Titles & Descriptions
Here are a few examples of successful titles and descriptions that I have created in the past:
Affiliate Programs Guide - Articles and tutorials on how to start making money with affiliate programs.
Dreamweaver Tutorial - Tutorial for novices and gurus alike which covers various aspects of how to use Dreamweaver.
Free JavaScripts - Over 400 free JavaScripts. Link Popularity Checker - Generates a report of your site's link popularity in top search engines.
Notice how the important keywords are in both the titles and descriptions? Always try to include additional keywords in the description that are not in the title. This will help to create more keyword phrases.
For example:
Affiliate Programs Guide - Articles and tutorials on how to start making money with affiliate programs.
Important keyword phrases include:
affiliate programs
affiliate program guide
affiliate program articles
affiliate program tutorials
affiliate program make money
Create a number of listing titles and descriptions. Play around with it. Even leave it and come back to it the next day. I am often surprised how a fresh mind can improve a title or description I had written the day before.
You really only have one chance to get the listing title and description right. Because once you submit it, it's virtually impossible to get it changed unless your site content changes significantly.
Directory editors do not care about your site's rankings. So don't expect to be able to edit your listing if it doesn't get a good ranking.
When you are 100% satisfied with your title and listing, you are ready to submit your site to the web directories.
How To Select The Most Appropriate Web Directory Category
The choice of category can make or break a listing. Select inappropriate categories and your submission will probably be rejected. Select unpopular categories, or categories situated down too many levels, and you may only receive a trickle of visitors.
Another important consideration is that search engines tend to give listings indexed in web directory categories nearer the top of the directory tree. So always try to select a category as near to the top level as possible.
Go to a web directory's search form and enter the most important keyword phrase you are targeting in the search box.
Let's say your important keyword phrase is "cheap web hosting" and we conduct a search in the Yahoo! Directory:
Take a good look at the title and domain names of the top listings. Notice how the keywords appear in the majority of the listings?
Now take a look at the link directly underneath the top 5 listings. You should see one of the following text links:
More sites about: Website Hosting
More sites about: Website Hosting > Directories
This tells you that the Yahoo! Directory considers these two categories as the most relevant for our keyword phrase. More often than not, the searched keywords are in title of the category itself.
In fact, the category is the most important factor in a site's ranking in the Yahoo! Directory. Select the wrong category and your chances of achieving top rankings are virtually zero.
Click on one of the 'More sites about…' links. This takes you to the listing's category in the Yahoo! Directory.
You notice the border at the top of the page that stretches across the screen, directly underneath the banner? It's in yellow. This indicates a commercial category. Noncommercial categories are in blue.
You should find the, "Suggest a Site" link at the top of the page. These links correspond to this particular category in the Yahoo! Directory. Every category has its own submission link. So you must visit the category you want to submit to and click the "Suggest a Site" link to submit to a particular category.
