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Everyone knows the importance of submitting their web site to the major search engines. And it's easy. Just enter your URL in the input box. You can cover all the major search engines in less than 15 minutes (including the time it takes to boot your computer). But you shouldn't stop submitting there. Be sure to include web directories to your submission list.

Web directories are unlike search engines whose bots crawl the web looking for new web sites to spider. Directories arrange web sites into categories and contain only sites that have been submitted. They do not crawl the web looking for new web sites to include. It takes more work to submit your site than regular search engines. First, you must find the correct category for your web site. This may take some time. Often, you must also include a description of your web site along with contact information.

Finding Your Category

The easiest way to find your best category is to search for your most important keywords. You can also search for your competitors to see what categories they are listed in. Analyze the search results to see if those sites have a similar subject as your site. An alternate method is to drill down through the categories until you find web sites similar to yours.

If you are looking for an audience in a particular geographic area, submit to a category divided into regions or states. Although my Utah Fish Finder web site would fit on Open Directory under the category of Top: Recreation: Outdoors: Fishing: Freshwater, I opted for a regional listing of Regional: North America: United States: Utah: Recreation and Sports: Fishing because I am more interested in attracting Utah anglers. Under that category, I rank #1 for the keywords Utah fishing.

Advantages to Directories

There are advantages to submitting to directories. Search engines index those directory pages just like any other web site. Your listing has a link to your site which helps you with your rankings. And these links tend to have more importance because the site descriptions form content on a particular subject, that of your category.

Another advantage of submitting to directories is that there are many niche and topical directories on specific subjects. These won't bring you the volume of traffic you might get from Google and Yahoo but few webmasters would turn down a steady stream of targeted visitors.

Specialty Directories

You might not be surprised to find search engines devoted to popular topics like financial web sites. But to show you how narrowly defined their subjects can be, check out ElvisFind This search engine and directory contains nothing but search results about Elvis Presley. Here you will find 324 Elvis-related web sites and 9 subject categories.

Okay, so your web site is not about Elvis. But if you had a travel site with a destination package to Memphis, you might also have included a day at Graceland. Submitting to this directory would suddenly make a lot of sense.

Usually, submitting to the major search engines requires a long wait until your web site gets indexed and added to the listings. With these smaller specialty search engines, they add links to your site much faster than the big boys. Some will even add your URL as soon as you click the Submit button.

General directories contain a wide range of subjects and categories. An example is Open Directory at www.dmoz.com This is one of the largest and most important directories. Their search results are used my many search engines such as Google and Yahoo. You'll need to be patient with this one as an editor must view your site before you are added. This could take many months since the editors are overloaded with work.

Indexes to Directories

While there are numerous small specialty engines, it is much harder to find ones that relate to your web site. Below is a list of indexes to these search engines according to their subject. They will save you time finding topical indexes that fit your site's content.

Search Engine Watch: http://searchenginewatch.com/links/specialty.html

Search Engine Guide: http://www.searchengineguide.com/searchengines.html

Open Directory Search Engine Categories: http://dmoz.org/Computers/Internet/Searching/Search_Engines/Specialized

InvisibleWeb-Net: http://www.invisible-web.net

While specialty search engines won't bring you a lot of traffic, they are an important source of building inbound links. And inbound links affect your rankings, especially with Google.