Do Directory Listing Descriptions Matter?

Writing by Nick Stamoulis Tweet

If you’re prone to using directories to help you build back links then you might just think submitting your site and not worrying about what your submission looks like doesn’t matter.
You’d be wrong. It matters a lot.

First, there’s the PR angle. People visit directories and might visit your website from a directory. But if your title and description don’t sell them on the idea of visiting your website then they won’t bother. You do want visitors, don’t you?

But even beyond the visitor question, there are other reasons why you want your description to be well written and, most importantly, well optimized.

The link from the directory to your website should contain your important keyword, but it should include the keyword that relates to the page it points to, not a generic keyword. You are looking for link relevance and the keyword is the single best indicator of that. More than likely, your submission title will be the link from the directory to your website so put some thought into that.

But what about your description? It doesn’t link to your site. Does it matter? Yes, it does. Some directory listings will appear in the SERPs for important keywords. For that reason you want to make sure that you optimize your directory listings. If someone finds the directory listing before they find your website because of a keyword placement then you’ve got one new visitor that you didn’t have before.

But don’t you want your website to rank higher than directory submissions? Yes, of course you do. But you can’t control every search engine’s ranking algorithms. People will visit your site from smaller search engines like DogPile and Mahalo and your directory submission could be the ticket that gets them there so make sure you optimize your directory submissions.