Search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, and MSN have different criterions for awarding rank to a website. The most important of all is link building; it has been apparently proved that the more and better links you have the better ranking you will receive from the search engines. This is where site promotion via web directories such as DMOZ, Yahoo! Directory, and others come into the picture.

Before we read about web directories, let us first understand meaning of a web directory and usefulness of these “guides” to online businesses striving for visibility and profits.

A web directory can easily be classified as a directory on the World Wide Web that links to other sites and categorizes these links on the basis of some predefined standards. Now let us move our focus to benefits of web directories. One-way links from trustworthy sites command a great respect from search engine spiders and algorithms. It is important to note here that web directories can do the trick for your site in this regard. Since most of them are human edited directories and have some standards, every site occupying a link on these sites (directories) is better positioned to enjoy good rankings.

Let us understand this all with the help of an example. Suppose, you are running a business named Wilson Brothers Inc. and have a website with the name www.wilsonbrothers.com. There is one more similar business with the name Jefferson Inc. with its site name as www.jefferson.com. Both sites were launched on the same date and have a similar site appearance and cater to the same audience. However, your site finds great admiration among web directories after some time due to its relevance and uniqueness while the other site is nowhere on the directory maps. Your site would be able to absorb organic traffic from directories leading to enhanced levels of visibility, recognition, awareness, credibility, and search engines would offer high ranking to your site and the counterpart would be clueless about why visitors are not coming to his site. Moreover, your site would be able to generate qualified leads and create demand & awareness about the offered products and services and this obviously means improved customer satisfaction, reduced costs, and enhanced sales and profits.

Now ask yourself, are these benefits attained via web directories not the same (if not more than) what you expected when you first launched your site? You’re right, you have got more than what you have expected courtesy links on quality web directories.

In order to reap benefits from SEO (search engine optimization), an online business needs to understand and remember that optimization decisions must be influenced by type, nature, and preferences of visitors (existing and potential) of the concerned web site. This means that too much of tweaking for gaining organic result rankings is of no use.

• It is important to make sure that the site to be optimized with search engine optimization is returning a 200 OK (HTTP Status code) suggesting to the search engine spiders that it is ready to be crawled. It is important to note that in case a page location is changed, a “301″ permanent redirect must be used for instructing search engine crawlers to spider the newly designated location.
• It is important to remember that a good website should not have lots of images or flashy content. This not only results in more loading time but is also not recognized or valued by crawlers. Moreover, the use of JavaScript or FLASH navigation must be avoided, to say the least.
• Link building, a process of sharing links with other sites, should not be ignored. Do not forget during link building and search engine optimization that search engine spiders look for quality, quantity, and relevance of links pointing to a website. This means that your website can gain a lot if complemented with a good number of quality and related links and suffer losses in a reverse case. Once the site has been designed and hosted, it should be submitted to directories and search engines but submissions should not look like being done by a robot.

These small tips of search engine optimization can surely take your online business to new heights without any troubles or competition.