When most people are trying to get more traffic to their site, they immediatly start submitting their companies and web sites to the big search engines (Google and Yahoo), and the Open Directory Project (DMOZ). These are a key source of traffic, but often times people neglect to submit their sites to category specific directories.

You may ask, "Why should I bother wasting my time submitting my site to smaller directories, when I can submit to the big search engines?" First of all, most of the directories you will find, will have free listings. They usually take shorter times to add your sites to the directory as well. This usually happens because they do not have as many submissions to review. This means you will not have to wait nearly as long as you do for your site to be listed in larger directories. Also, your site can get a fair amount of hits from category specific directories. Many sites are recieving hundreds or even more hits a month from these directories. The clicks from these directories are usually quality as well, because you know they are looking for what you offer when they browse the category. In search engines, the visitor could find your site looking for something completely different.

Adding your site to category specific directories is by far no substitute to large search engines such as Google or Yahoo, but it is a great way to get even more traffic to your site. For the time it takes and the price (FREE) it is really worth it to find a couple directories a day to add your sites to. If you have a webmaster related site you can start with adding your site to this directory.

Steve
steve AT wmindex.com
Webmaster Index