Benefits of Submitting Your Website to Web Directories

In an attempt to increase traffic to their Website many webmasters submit their site to Web directories. Getting your site listed in a Web directory may serve two purposes:

1. 1. That you'll get traffic directly from the listing.
2. 2. That you get a backlink to your Website.

Both of these are important in getting traffic to your site. If your Website is new, getting a backlink to your site is especially important because it will help the search engines to find your site via the directory link and index it. So submitting a new website to a directory is a good way for the search engines to find it.

If you have an existing site, getting a link from a directory means that your site will have yet another incoming link from the directory so your website may be placed higher in the search engine listings.

However, you don't want ALL of your links to be from directories. Get a few from directories, especially niche directories that are on topics related to your site. The rest of your incoming links should be from other sources.

What to Expect when Submitting Your Website to Web Directories

To find directories where you can get your Website listed you can simply do an Internet search for directories. You can search for general Web directories or for directories on your particular topic. Niche directories are especially good for SEO if you submit your site to directories on the same topic as your site.

Most directory owners review the submitted sites before they are listed and won't add sites that are of low quality or totally off topic.

Some of the Web directories you find will state that they are free to submit your site to. With most you'll have to pay a fee to get your site listed in them.

Often you will find directories that call themselves a "free directory," but when you actually attempt to list your Website there many of these free directories will ask you for a small payment. That doesn't seem very much like a free directory to me.

To their credit, some of these "free Web directories" that ask for money will also list a free option for you to submit your url, but state that it will take them several months to list your site, unless you pay the fee for quick inclusion. Some of these sites that once had a free url listing option now have it disabled.

Also, there are quite a few Web directories that are still online, but are now defunct. Except for some of the well-known directories it might be a good idea to email the webmaster to see if they are still functioning before you pay a fee. Another good way to determine if a directory is still active is by looking at the date of the last addition to the directory if this information is available.

Reciprocal Link Requests

Some Internet directories will request a reciprocal link from your Website back to theirs in order to get your site listed, although this is getting less common than it used to be.

Common Problems When Submitting Your Site to Web Directories

Many of the Web directories will have a form that you must fill out in order to get your site listed. On this form you are required to list information about your site and they will also ask for the url of the reciprocal link from your site to theirs. Sometimes this works fine and sometimes it doesn't.

One of the most common problems you will run into when submitting your Website to some of these directories that use an automated form is that they will want you to place the reciprocal link back to their site before they even let you submit the form. You may be thinking that this is really no big deal, but read on.

So you stop filling out the form and place a backlink from your site to theirs using the exact html code that they have asked you to. Then you go back to complete their form and then hit submit. Very often you will find that the automated form won't recognize your backlink. So now you've given them a backlink, but you can't list your site in their directory, or even submit their form, because the form keeps giving you a message that no reciprocal link was found from your site to theirs, despite that the link is present. If you e-mail the Website administrator of the directory to tell them about the problem you will often get no response.

Sometimes you are able to submit the form to list your site with no problem, but they never list your Website and they never even bother to tell you why they didn't. This is a really common problem for free or reciprocal directory submissions. Most paid directories will get your site added.

Conclusion

So in conclusion, yes, even in 2025 there are some benefits to submitting your site to directories with niche directories probably being the best type to get your site listed in.