How Directories Help Search Engines
At the beginning of the web era, users would go to directories
to find sites relevant to their interests. In fact, Yahoo!, the
web's number one destination, started as a directory. Nowadays,
most users rely on search engines, not directories, to find what
they're looking for.
When search engines started to become popular, they relied on
web pages' 'keyword metatags' to determine the topic and
relevance of the page (the keyword metatag is a section within a
web page's HTML code where webmasters can insert words that are
relevant to the page's content). Webmasters discovered that by
stuffing their meta tags with popular search terms repeated
hundreds of times, they could propel their pages to the top of
the search results.
Search engines caught up to the abuse and decided to ignore the
meta tags and rely instead on web page copy. Webmasters then
started to overstuff their page copy with popular search terms,
often writing them in the same color as the web page's
background, so that they could be detected by search engines
while being invisible to users.
Again, search engines discovered the trick and decided that the
best way to rank a web page's content and its topical relevance
was to rely on inbound links from other pages. The rationale
behind this is that it is much more difficult to influence other
people to link to you than it is to manipulate your own web page
elements. In fact, inbound links are the foundation of Google's
Pagerank algorithm.
There are several ways to get inbound links, among them writing
articles that include your bylines with a link to your page,
exchanging links, and listing your site in directories.
Listing your sites in good directories is probably the best way
to get quality links that are highly valued by the search
engines. Since directories rely on human editors who enforce
strict criteria to list a site, and since directories organize
the information in highly focused categories, they are an
invaluable resource for search engines to measure the quality
and the relevance of a web page.
In summary, directories are important not because they generate
significant traffic (they don't), but because they are given
great importance by the search engines to qualify and rank web
pages, and to determine their topical relevance.
You should definitely list your site with quality directories if
you want to increase your chances of success with the search
engines.
