Well, I am a owner of several web directories and I would like to share with you some of the tips which website submitters can use when they submit websites to directories. I have seen a lot of websites being submitted and to tell you the truth, a lot of people submit sites without thinking or even any consideration. A lot of these are SEOers and paid submitters, who spend hours and hours submitting websites to directories. The problem is that a lot of these “SEOers” are just kids without any knowledge of SEO. Hence, for a serious web directory, these sites are usually rejected immediately. And these directories are ones which you would want to be in. So, I would recommend everyone not to use such services. And if you don’t have the time to do the submissions yourself, I would recommend you to engage a professional instead of those “US$10 for 1000 submissions” kind.

Okay, here are some of the tips:

1. Submit to the correct category. That’s pretty important. Note that some directories get a lot of submissions and it’s frustrating for the editors to spend time to change categories for you. Don’t piss off the editors.

2. A proper description for your site. Ensure that you don’t try to “sell” your site or make it a marketing slogan. Just tell the readers what your site is about. And make sure your spelling is correct. It’s embarrassing to have spelling mistakes as it looks unprofessional. Seriously, would you approve a site with a lot of spelling and grammar mistakes?

3. Have a proper title. Yes, this is very important as the first thing the editor sees is the title. Do not have long winding titles or titles with too many repetitive words. It looks very spammy to the editors. In fact, the title should be the title of your website. Some directories allow you to have keywords in your title, but some don’t.

4. Avoid submitting your site’s subdirectories or inner pages. A lot of directories don’t allow this. This helps build some sort of trust between you and the editor. For me, I won’t be approving any website with long URLs, URLs with huge number of keywords and those with very deep URLs too.

5. Read the FAQs or any terms and conditions first. Some directories will allow certain criterias while others do not. Although it can be very tedious, but it can really help to get your site approved. If you get rejected once, perhaps you can read the terms and conditions again to see what went wrong.

 Hope these tips will improve your chances of getting approved. Do note that some directories are just not meant to be, so you shouldn’t waste a lot of time trying again and again to get approved. You will never know what the owners are thinking.