If you own a website, you know that there are many different ways to promote your site.  You can submit it to the major search engines, write articles, blog about it, and social bookmark it.  But one of the more effective, but often overlooked methods should be an essential part of your website promotion strategy: directory submission.

What is a web directory?  Well, you can think of it like a search engine where a human has decided that the sites listed there are of some value.  Usually, you can find more relevant results if you make a search compared to traditional search engines.

Most people submit their sites to free directories but that takes a lot of time.  For those of you that have the time, that is great, but for the rest of us, thankfully there are directory submission services available.

Quite often free directory submission services are very inexpensive and definitely worth the money.  It is a great way to get your sites indexed and help the ranking for your site.  Just be sure that they allow you to vary your title and descriptions for your listings so you will not be penalized for duplicate listings by the search engines.

So, make web directories one of the tools that you use to promote your sites.

Now if you are promoting your website(s) you are probably submitting them to web directories, right?  Well, if you are, I have come across one valuable resources that will help your marketing efforts.

For example you should check out this list of 8000 web directory listings.  It is the most comprehensive list that I have ever seen and has a boat load of places to submit your site.  Looking for a free general directory?  It is one the list.  Paid directories?  Yes they are there too.

What is nice is that they have niche listings as well.  If you are looking for directories that only allow blogs, they have a list for that.  In fact, I would suggest you check out some of these specialized directories and list your site on the ones that allow deep links.  This way, you will be promoting your main page and your inner pages as well.

Just be sure to do a few directory submissions each day.  This way, your link building will look more natural, and you should see better results.  Best of luck on your directory submissions!

Looking for resources and places to promote my websites today, I came across the folowing web directories that will help boost your traffic and increase your search engine rankings. I made sure to find sites that will fit any budget. Take a look at these sites:

A Free Directory is a brand new site (about a week old) that uses a customized version of a free template. The result? Eye-catching and unique. You can get a free or paid featured link and the sites are approved within 24 hours – talk about service.

Directory of Sites is a brand new site (a day or so old) so is yet unproven. They offer free and paid links on the site and the approval for my sites was pretty quick. It remains to be seen how this site does, but I have a good feeling about it… time will tell though.

The Best Damn Links Page is just that – a great directory. This one is an example of what you can do with an older site to make it great again. Whether you have no advertising budget or some money to spend, anyone can get a backlink from this site.

Tower Promote Free Link Directory is a directory on an old, established domain. Search engines tend to rank links from older sites as more important than newer ones, so a listing here is a must. You have three choices of links including free and reciprocal as well as paid featured listings.

Mitefind Paid Link Directory is not a free directory, though I thought I should mention it here anyways. For less than two dollars, you can get a backlink from this site which is an old established domain. Why pay? Usually with a paid directory, your site listing is approved faster which means your link gets indexed faster by the search engines. An added bonus of this site is that any other directories that the site owner creates, your site will be listed on those sites automatically. You can think of this offer as perpetual promotion of your website.

Be sure when you submit to link directories to follow the site submission guidelines - that will ensure approval of your site within the directory.