November 5, 2024
Directory Submission: Automated Vs Manual

Why directory submission:

The main purpose of a website is that the targeted people will browse the site and get the information it provides and then act according to the purpose of the site: either buy something from the webmaster or download something or view the ads if it has any. The more the visitors, the more the sales. If a site does not have visitors, it would be a failure. There are millions of sites on the internet with similar contents. If your site is listed after 50 or 100 pages on the listings, a particular visitor will not come across your site. You have to do a lot of things to promote your site so that it may be found on the first or second page and be visited. To drive traffic to your site as well as get it referred by the search engines takes enough time and efforts. Among the many other techniques creation of inbound links or back links influence search engine rank to a great extent. For creation of links you have to submit your site with contents, title description, keywords and anchor texts to the quality web directories. Web directories catalog links in order for easy user access. Search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing etc. consider links submitted to the quality directories.

Two ways for directory submission:
Web directories exist for the purpose of providing links to web users to various sites under relevant category according to the topics they contain. Directory submission can be done in two separate ways: automatically and manually. Let us discuss both the processes with advantages and disadvantages.

a) Automated submission:
There are different software through which you can submit your site to the web directories. This process is known as automated submission system.

Advantages:
1. The only one advantage of automated submission is time saving. In manual process you will need hours, even days to submit some 50 or 100 articles, whereas, you can do it within minutes or hours through automated system. By using such software you can submit site yourself without the help from some experts.

Disadvantages:
1. Almost each of the web directories has separate norms and forms for article submission. Also the input fields vary from directory to directory. Automated system can not abide by all the norms and guidelines.
2. In automated system, you can not choose the right category for submission. The software chooses everything and does not let you opt.
3. Sometimes the articles may be rejected for grammar, spelling or syntax errors which can not be identified by the automated system. So, there comes the possibility of straight rejection or ban.

b) Manual submission:
In manual submission system, a person visits the directories one by one, chooses the most relevant categories and submits the site.

Advantages:
1. In manual process the submitter looks for the right directory and right category for the site items. The submitter creates an account with the directory and submits the items under most relevant category.

2. The web directories change their norms as per requirements of the search engines. If any change or edit is required afterwards, the submitter can login to the account and make edit to the articles as required by the directory. But in automated system, such edit is not possible.

3. If you implement submission manually, there is more possibility of acceptance by the directories. The submitter is human being and he submits the site abiding all the guidelines and norms without violation of any.

4. The manual submitter follows a list of the best directories and so does not submit site to all the available directories in batches. Automated system may submit sites to wrong directories and under wrong categories. Then again, in automated system, there is possibility of missing out some important directories.

5. Directories favor manual submission more than automated system. Some directories straightly reject automated submission treating them as spam. This rejection may result in being banned on the search engines.

6. In case any change is made to the directories, it is possible for manual process to see the change instantly and respond as required. But automated submission has to do nothing about these things.

Disadvantages:
1. The only one disadvantage of the manual website submission system is that it is very tedious. It takes a lot of time to accomplish the submission work. You have to invest more time than you could do using automated system.

Conclusion:
It may be determined from the above discussion that you should prefer manual submission and better you appoint experts who know directory behavior and norms better than you.