Indexing Your Website

Index is a website which contains details and links to millions of websites divided to categories and topics. Indexes can have multiple purposes.

Local Business Index – like Yellow pages. This kind of indexes apply to people who are searching for services in their town or area. It is a good idea to sign your company into few such indexes in case your business is locally oriented like flower shop or electrician. Inclusion in these indexes , at least the most popular of them , is usually quite expensive but also useful from the point of view of customers seeking local service and search engines, since you can include your site URL and earn a strong incoming link .

Global Business Index – like Hoovers.com or business.com. These indexes usually contain data about large companies with turnover of few millions of dollars a year. Not everyone is able to enter such index, although some of them allow small companies listing in exchange for reciprocal link or inclusion fee . Inclusion in these indexes is important to large companies who apply to customers worldwide , and they also give a good incoming link in terms of SEO.

The third type of indexes is Internet indexes which main purpose is to provide incoming links to websites. Usually these indexes are manually edited which means it can take months before the editor approves your link. Some indexes like yahoo require inclusion fee , some are free, like DMOZ and some require fee or reciprocal link. Website promoters largely use indexes to provide the new built websites with incoming links, although , not all indexes are usefull and important in terms of link strength and website promotion. Therefore I suggest to submit your website to as much as possible free indexes but be careful before paying for listing or exchanging links with nameless indexes.

In this article I will list some of the most important indexes to be included in.

General Guidelines to submitting your website to index:

Make sure your website has no pages "Under construction" or "Not exist" (Error 404) , since some indexes might disqualify your website because of that.

Wright down a short profile of your website which includes:

Site Name , Full URL, 10-15 key words and phrases, short description (200-500) characters. Site name should not include many keywords, it might cause rejection by the editor.

Open an excel file dedicated to indexes and directories where you keep all the passwords and usernames since you will probably need to come back to these websites few times to follow up your registration.

Place your website in the most suitable category, in order to improve your chances to be indexed and later to improve the impact of the indexing on your page listing in search engines.

Indexing takes a lot of time because index editors are volunteers and the demand is huge, so be patient and do not submit your website more than once , since it makes you look dummy and may cause your website be rejected .

DMOZ Open Directory Project

This is the most important and appreciated index on the web. It is edited by volunteers , and has more than half million categories and around five million websites.

The main importance of DMOZ is its influence on major search engines like Google , Yahoo and etc. which derive information from DMOZ and ascribe large importance to links incoming from there to your website.

To include your website in DMOZ go to www.dmoz.org , find the most appropriate category to your website, press Add URL and follow the orders. Take few minutes to read DMOZ terms of submission in order not to mess up your application.

DMOZ will reject your website If it is placed under wrong category, mainly under construction, has no value to public or is poorly described. Description must be objective otherwise most chances it will be excluded.

DMOZ will not notify you about reception or rejection. If you can't find your website, don't hurry to submit it again , try asking at DMOZ forums what is the status of your application.

Entering DMOZ index is the only way to enter Google website directory.

Yahoo Directory

Yahoo is the most popular website in the world and US. Inclusion in its index might be worth the huge fee of 299$. Wright a short description (10-25 words ) , make it objective and fluent , include 2-3 keywords but do not exaggerate.

Make sure your website is in a good condition (no 404 pages and under construction pages) Yahoo is not condemned to include your website even if you pay the fee , but they are supposed to review your listing in about 7 workdays. In yahoo index you don’t need to pick a category , one of the editors does it. Must say, most of the websites are included. Business sites must pay the fee every year while non-profit sites must pay only once. Indexing Your Website
by Gally Reznor