Before submitting to site directories...

Submitting to site directories is a great way to gather backlinks for your site. There are literally thousands of them out there, both free and paid, all ripe for the picking. But before you go crazy with the submissions, make sure you get a few preparations done to maximize the effect of your submissions.

Firstly, you must decide on a category. Almost all directories require you to submit to a specific category (they wouldn't allow you to submit to top-level categories). Look at your product/service and decide which categories suit it.This will not only save you time, but will increase the chances of your site being approved into the directory, as well as help you rank for your keywords. Let's say you have a site that sells music CDs. You have a choice between "music", "entertainment", maybe "online shopping". Or you can even switch between all three. Just make sure you submit to enough categories if you do that, because if you don't this might dilute your rankings.

Next, create some titles for your website. Usually websites will accept nothing but the original title of your website, and some websites will even fetch your own title for you once you give them your URL. But some sites will allow submitting different titles. In this case, it would be useful to have multiple titles. Make sure your alternate titles have your keywords, but make sure it looks like a legitimate title, i.e. no keyword spamming.

Then, write a description of your site. Your site should have a meta description to begin with, and you can use this, but that won't be enough. Make something catchy, enticing, and reads nicely (again, try not to make it look like spam). Try to write more than one description. The reason for this is that different directories tend to have different character limits for descriptions. Usually they're either 200 or 500. Make full use of the maximum character limit.

Lastly, do not submit the same site multiple times into one directory. This will only anger the editors and they might actually ban your site. If your site doesn't get accepted, wait a few weeks, then try again.

Follow these simple steps and you'll have thousands of backlinks from directories in no time!

For more information about SEO, visit SEO Solutions.