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Submit to Directories
Getting your website listed in Internet directories is also a must-do of free promotion of your website.
Having your website listed in directories serves the same two purposes as obtaining external links to your website - it brings traffic and improves your website ranking. There is a large number of directories on the Web today - big, small, global, local, general and specific. You need to identify directories that can be advantageous for promoting your website.
There are two factors that determine how advantageous a particulardirectory can be for your website. One is whether or not this directory content and traffic are related to your website content. Second is popularity of the directory - i.e. how much traffic it generates directly and whether or resources of any particular directory are used by other directories, websites and search engines. You can identify a dozen of directories that are specific to your website content, but there are two that concern all sites alike and you should consider submitting to them - DMOZ and Yahoo! Directory.
DMOZ
One of the musts is DMOZ (Open Directory Project dmoz.org). Having your website listed in DMOZ is important for several reasons. First, you will automatically receive a lot "derivative" links to your website as many other directories on the web are using DMOZ database and will publish links to sites that are listed in DMOZ. DMOZ database is also used by some of the major search engines. According to information from DMOZ their listings are used by AOL Search, AltaVista, HotBot, Google, Lycos and Netscape Search. Website listings from DMOZ are considered "reputable" amongsnt search engines and other sites, which means links that are published at DMOZ are treated with higher importance than a similar link at some other website. In my case, having my sites listed in DMOZ has not resulted in much traffic directly, but it has drastically improved my website rankings on search engines.
One thing to keep in mind when submitting your site in DMOZ is that DMOZ is a human-edited directory. There are actual human editors who review submissions and decide whether or not the site is worth listing. For this reason the directory is able to maintain a high quality of listings. But as with any human it can take some time and there is a chance of human mistakes, prejudice, lack of attention and such. That said, submit your site (carefully following instructions provided at DMOZ), follow up with your submission but don't lose your sleep over it if your site doesn't get listed or approval process is taking a long time. One of my sites (for whatever reason) was not accepted into the directory but with promotional techniques described on this website it maintains a very good search engine rankings (top 5) in a very competitive field (business cards) and actually generates majority of my online revenue.
Yahoo! Directory
Yahoo! Directory is another directory to consider, however if it is a commercial site you should expect to lay out some $$ to get a listing. What is deemed a commercial website - read the guidelines, as "commercial" can be a stretchy term. Selling a product a service directly is commercial for sure but having a hobby website that lists some banners and third-party ads - I couldn't tell for sure.. Read up their guidelines.