Online directories were once major names around the internet and now Google is a first stop for some. But online directories have not become as obsolete as some people think. Online directories are listings of websites and their details. If you are looking for a specific website or online business, you can use an online directory in order to find whatever you need.

While Google may be helpful for answering questions or finding local businesses, it can be quite confusing trying to navigate through pages of irrelevant information. That is a major reason directories will never go away. They offer the ability to find websites with no frills attached. You won’t end up seeing multiple results for the same website.

But the ease of finding what you are looking for isn’t the only reason that directory submissions are still relevant. We are going to take a look at some of the other reasons that you still need to consider submission to directories for your websites.

SEO Link Building

Multiple points on this list have search engine optimization benefits. One of the biggest is link building. Every remote site you have your website’s URL listed on is another point that links back to your site. The more links back to your site you have, the more a search engine will trust you and the more important it will think your website is.

Directory submissions have even more importance because online directories are trusted by search engines. The more important and trusted that a site that links back to you is, the more weight the link carries.

SEO Keyword Building

Associating your website with keywords isn’t as important as it once was, but it still has a lot to do with how search engines categorize your website. Your listing on a directory submission comes with two ways to associate your link with keywords. One is through the description of your website. That description should be rich while still including keywords.

Keywords that are put in the meta data or keyword list for the individual page that features your submission can also be associated with your site name and link. This will further improve how Google indexes your site.

Build Reviews

Almost all online directories have a place to leave reviews of businesses. By listing your website on a directory you have a chance to start getting more reviews. These reviews will further add keywords to your website, keywords that your customers associate with your business.

Further, you will find that these reviews will build trust with your website. Trust is important as it allows customers to know that you are real. The internet makes it too easy for fake businesses to appear and thus internet shoppers tend to be less trusting than those who go to physical shows.

It is important that you let there be only legitimate reviews. Fake reviews are easily spotted, especially after the large number of fake reviews made the news. That doesn’t mean you can’t ask customers to leave honest reviews. Just keep them real.

More People Will Your Site In General

In general, with a directory submission, you will get more people to visit your website. Directory listings will get more people through Google to visit your website but your site will get more traffic from users searching for your type of business on the directory. Manual traffic from online marketing such as this is the best kind of traffic. That is because the visitors are actually looking for businesses such as yours offer.

Building Trust With Potential Customers

A lot of online customers like to verify whether an online business is real or not. To do that, they search on web directories because many fake businesses won’t go to the length of posting their websites on directories. Further, fake sites would have negative reviews on such directories. If your website isn’t in a online directory, you might lose on customers who can’t verify that your business is real. Submitting content to an online directory isn’t just still relevant, it is necessary. You get a lot of traffic and search engine optimization from a directory submission. Just a form of that is the traffic boost, the trust is also an important part of directory submissions.