The web directory list we use and recommend is the Vilesilencer SEO Friendly Free Directory List. This is an excellent list of 500 general directories all of which were free to list with and not requiring reciprocal links, at the time of the last update. Additionally, the site lists a good number of niche directories that may be relevant to your site. The directory list is updated monthly and all are tested to ensure that they are search engine friendly.

As well as viewing online, a downloadable Excel spreadsheet is available. Before you get started, you may find it useful to read their Submission Tips page - we follow a very similar approach with a few modifications as explained below. Use whichever suits you, but remember to keep a record of your submissions else you'll soon end up not knowing where you have submitted and where you haven't.

Submitting to a Directory

First let us have a look at how to submit to a typical Web Directory. You will find the procedure is very similar from directory to directory, although some will have slight differences such as requiring you to create a user login first.

1. Go to the Directory website and drill down to the category which is most appropriate for listing your site. If there is more than one category that is suitable, choose the one that is firstly displaying PageRank in the toolbar (evidence that Google has indexed the page) and secondly the one with the least number of listings (will pass more PageRank than a page with a lot of listings)
2. Scout around on the page and find the “Submit” link – it may say “Submit a site” or “Suggest a site” or “Submit URL” or “Submit link” or similar.
3. Fill in the submission form
   Below is a typical submission form. You will notice that this directory has a field for you to enter a reciprocal link. Many new to directory submission feel obligated to create a reciprical link - don't do this, it is not a manadatory requirement and will devalue the benefit of the link you receive. Similarly, some directories infer that payment is required, but don't make it mandatory.
   If the directory has changed to requiring payment or a reciprocal link, skip it and go on to the next.
   
   
   
4. Some Directories will send an email requesting confirmation of the submission; if so, confirm.
5. Sit back and wait for acceptance...
   No seriously, don’t worry about this!
   Just move on to the next directory.
   Some directories will review your submission within a few days, many will take a few weeks, some take months and the odd one may take years. We recently received an acceptance email from a directory submission from a campaign we did over 3 years ago!
   Some will send you acceptance emails, and you’ll occasionally receive the odd rejection. Don’t worry about them, there are plenty of directories and it is not worth the time checking up on if your site has been listed or why you were rejected. The majority of directories will accept your site idf you follow our procedures and any particular guidelines the directory lays down.

Below is a screen capture of a typical set of listings from a Web Directory.
For each listing, the blue text is the link to the web site which comes from the text entered in the Title field on the submission form. The grey text below this is the site description i.e. the text that was entered in the Description field.

Notice that the Title used for each listing is not the real name of the site. For example, from the domain name of the top listing, you would expect it’s name to be “Red Fly Studios”. Instead, the submitters have used as a Title a phrase based on the keywords that they are optimising for. Remember, link text is extremely important in Search Engine Optimisation.

The purpose of the Description text is supposedly to let people know a little more of what they can expect at the website. However, more importantly for our purposes, it allows you to associate your keyword laden link with relevant, on-theme text which further adds relevance to the link. Hence when writing a Description, expand upon the theme you are pushing in your Title, using variations of your key phrase, synonyms, and closely associated terms.

Directory Submission Procedure

This is our procedure for submitting to directories:

1. Download the Excel spreadsheet from Vilesilencer.
2. On the General tab, edit and re-order the listings by PageRank with the highest to the top. We submit to the highest PageRank directories first. If your Excell shills are not up to re-ordering the list, you can simply scan down the list by eye and select out the PR4 plus sites to submit to first.
   (The reason we do this is that the higher PageRank directories are more likely to have a greater number of their pages listed in Google's main index)
3. Download the Directory Submission Data spreadsheet.
   
   This is a real-life example from a project we recently completed. It shows the data we compile for directory submissions prior to commencing. Different directories require different information and this spreadsheet covers the variations. You can use it as a template to create your own submission data; simply replace that shown with your own.
   
   The spreadsheet is fairly self-explanatory, but we’ll go into the data requirements in more detail. The numbers throughout the spreadsheet are character counts (including spaces) – we work these out by copy & pasting the data into Microsoft Word (use Tools > Word Count and note the number for “Characters (with spaces)”.
   
   Official Site Name
   All Directories require you to submit a name for your site. This is often called the Site Title or Title on the submission form.
   NB: do not confuse this with the Page Title discussed on On-Page Factors & Optimisation – this is a completely different beast.
   
   Some directories will not accept a keyword word laden Site Name or Title. They insist upon you submitting the “Official Site Name” and will not list a site unless you do so. But, because of their strict editorial policies, these directories often have a good deal of credibility with Google, and hence are very desirable to be listed in – dmoz.org is the stellar example.
   
   There is no exact definition of what an official site name is, but it’s rather easy to see from an example. In the second spreadsheet you downloaded, the site being promoted is godirectentertainment.com.au. From the domain name and the header banner on the site you would naturally tend to call the site “GoDirect Entertainment” – this is it’s Official Name.
   
   You’ll notice in the spreadsheet, we actually used “GoDirect Entertainment Booking” as the official name. We sneakily added a keyword to the end of the Title so that we are optimising the link for the key phrase “entertainment booking” which we figured would be far more valuable.
   
   It’s a bit of a gamble doing this as some of the stricter directories make reject the submission – but we figured we’ld probably get away with it as it was not too blatant. And it looks as though it paid off overall – the site is currently #5 out of just over 9 million results for the phrase entertainment booking in google.com.au and still rising (October 2007).
   
   Official Description
   This is a very “safe” description to be used for sites that insist on an “Official” Title. It attempts to be just a straight factual description of the site such as an impartial editor would write.
   Site Name & Description
   In these rows, there are 10 alternative Site Names with corresponding Descriptions. Each Site Name is based upon a particular key phrase we are interested in chasing, and the corresponding description is written for that particular Site Name and is different from the other descriptions.
   
   The aim here is to try and look natural to Google. 500 links coming to your site using exactly the same link text and also surrounded by the same text (i.e. the same description) would be very obvious to Google. It is likely assume that someone is trying to spam their index, and hence discount links or, in the worse case, penalise the site.
   
   Naturally obtained links are written by different web masters, and so will have variations in link text, and surrounding text. Hence we usually write about 10 different sets of Site Name and Description, each based upon a desired key phrase.
   
   When going through the submission process, we cycle through these, dropping down to the next in the list for each new Directory. Notice the “last->” in the column next to the list – we cut & paste to move this down as we go through the list as a place-marker, so that we don’t lose where we are up to. When you hit the bottom, start again from the top.
   
   A Site Name should short and based on a key phrase - a maximum of 60 characters (including spaces and punctuation).
   
   A Description should be a maximum of 200 characters (including spaces and punctuation).
   
   Keywords
   Not all Directories require these, but a good number do. Some require the list to be comma-separated, while others want them space-separated. Thus the 2 lists in the spreadsheet.
   
   Only enter each keyword once in each list.
   
   Each Keywords list should be a maximum of 200 characters (including spaces or punctuation).
   
   URL
   This is your top level web address. Very few directories will accept submissions of individual pages from your site, so stick to submitting your top level web address unless you are certain they will accept lower level page submissions.
   
   Your web address should be submitted in the format: http://www_·yoursite_·com_·au/
   (of course replace “yoursite” with your domain name)
   Make sure you begin the address with http:// and also include the end forward slash - this is actually the proper format for a web address.
   Also it is a good idea to copy and paste the address you intend to use into a web browser (eg Internet Explorer) and check that it works. It would be a shame to find you have a typo after doing 20 or 30 submissions!
   
   Email
   Most Directories will require an email address, and many require an email address with domain name same as that of the site being submitted.
   
   There is the danger that a few unscrupulous directory owners will misuse your email address and spam you. Actually from our experience the incidence of this has dropped off markedly in recent years and is now fairly rare. However, if you wish to be cautious, set up a email account using your domain name which you only use for directory submissions – something like publicity@yoursite_·com_·au. Should you find you are being spammed, you can then delete the email account and no damage is done!
   
   Username & Password
   So sites require you to create a user account before you can submit. It’s unlikely you’ll ever use it to log in again in the future, but to be on the safe side it’s best to keep a record of it.
   
   We use the same username and password for all Directory submissions for a particular site. Make each 8 characters long, and a mixture of letters and numbers – this should meet the requirements of all directories.
   
   NB: do not use a username and password combination that you use for other purposes such as Internet Banking or Membership sites to which you belong – you do not know who you are sending this information to!
   
   Address
   Some business orientated Directories require this information.
   
   Long Description
   The occasional Directory will allow a long version of your description. These tend to be the legitimate business directories and hence will possibly also send your site some worthwhile traffic. So, it is probably worth the trouble to write this – we usually aim at about 1,200 characters in length (including spaces and punctuation).
   
   Email Request
   This is a sample email used for personalised link requests.
   
4. Submit to each directory in the Vilesilencer spreadsheet, working your way down from the top. We record the date and the category to which the site was submitted in a spare column to the right on the Vilesilencer spreadsheet.
5. Submit to about 20 Directories a week.

Directory Submission Software

Submission Services

If you are pressed for time, you may find it simpler to outsource the process. While we have not used it, vilesilencer's directory submission service looks very good.

Their "Behemoth Plus" package submits manually to 500 directories over a 3 month period, thus helping to make the gain in backlinks look natural to the search engines. At the end of the submission process you are sent a report of which directories to which your site was submitted. At US $449 per site, this package is very reasonable priced.