Human edited SEO (Search Engine Optimized) friendly web directories are becoming very popular among webmasters to get some much needed backlinks which are so important for websites to improve their ranking on search engines. On the other hand, internet surfers are finding it convenient to find their required web resources by browsing through these attractive looking and sophisticated local search engines.

Web directories are of two types in general – Paid Directories and Free Directories. Besides they can also be categorized into general and niche category directories. General directories contain all the categories in general and are quite large. On the other hand niche directories list web resources that fall into a particular category – for example Business, Webmasters, Hosting, Blog or Blogging etc.

The Directory industry has come a long way since the establishment of DMOZ or ODP (Open Directory Project) in 1999. Since then hundreds of directories have come up and most of them are run by entrepreneurial webmasters who run these directories. With web-hosting becoming cheap, webmasters can easily provide links to webmasters and localized quality search results to the surfers.

Normally, it is seen that Paid directories (directories which offer listing for a fee) are very strong and very widely promoted. Naturally, listing in them helps a lot for the SERPs (Search Engine Ranking Page) of websites as most of these directories rank very high themselves in SERPs.

There are lots of high quality Free Directories too. These directories can earn a lot of revenue by way of attracting huge traffic and therefore Google’s AdSense and other PPC advertisements are very good earning avenues for them. They can also sell preferential advertising spaces by way of banner space sale, featured listing and footer or site-wide and other premiere ad-space sales.

These days there is another group of Information web directories which are coming up to provide internet surfers a targetted experienced that makes their searching job much more easier. They are the Niche Directories which cater to specific fields such as Webmaster Directory - to cater to webmaster resources, Travel Web Directory to cater to travel related websites and many more. This targetted genre of web directories give a whole new experience to surfers and makes search engine optimization for niche sites more easier.

The growth of the directory industry has led to the development of an ancillary industry revolving around it that is facilitating good income for many individuals and SEO companies by way of directory submission service. As webmasters are busy creating quality contents for their sites, they find it convenient to hire professionals to submit their sites to directories for link building which is win-win for both webmasters and professional directory submitters or submission services. Most of these trades take place on big webmasters forum like Digital point, Site point, V7N etc.

By Colin Tsui

Based upon what SEO has become in recent years, it may be surprising to some that search engine optimization can trace its roots back to beginning of the internet when the world wide web was nothing more than a relatively small collection of research pages.

At this time was when many of the pioneers of internet development and “optimization” were makes the first strides at creating a viable search engine so that the birth of SEO goes hand in hand with the birth of the search engine.

In 1990, university student Alan Emtage’s search system Archie was introduced and followed by Gopher. Three years, later, the development of search engines was well underway with Mathew Gray’s World Wide Web Wanderer. By 1994, modern search engines emerged with the appearance of Lycos, Galaxy and Yahoo. At every step, some form of SEO was tagging along, but it wasn’t until 1994 that many companies were beginning to experiment with different techniques of search engine optimization as search engines were becoming the backbone of online traffic and advertisement.

These early attempts could be summarized by the usage of the submission process as the sole criteria for search engine placement. Yet, this very narrow emphasis was quickly abandoned once automated programs were developed to submit material on the web.

It was at this same time that spam first appeared. Many of the webmasters realized very quickly at the time that they could manipulate the early search engine parameters simply by inundating the search results pages by over-submission of duplicate content.

Early on, Yahoo, more than many other search engines, began to use SEO techniques but multiple providers followed suit. The growth of the SEO industry was largely unforeseen at the time. In a short time, independent optimizers and search engines began a competitive relationship that remains strong even today. The gist of this contest was based upon the development of newer and better ranking techniques as the responses of search engine to these approaches through the creation of new algorithms.

The webmaster of the major search engines understood in short order that SEO consultancy was not a fleeting idea. Thus, a general acceptance of search engine optimization resulted, although the extent of this varied from one search engine to another.

They understood well that in order to keep their indexes relevant and useful that they would have to form alliances with SEO companies. Outside of the established businesses that operated SEO services, many more entrepreneurs began to compile and distribute do-it-yourself SEO programs. This has continued to expand and diversify the entire realm of search engine optimization, making it a big money-maker.

SEO Beginners Guide is available at http://www.colintsui.com/seo-beginners-guide, written by Colin Tsui. You may found it useful if you are new to SEO.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Colin_Tsui

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Welcome to the BLOG! The aim of this BLOG is to provide some extraordinary resources to our visitors (from health tips to SEO tips, study abroad educational tips to many more).

Best Internet Resource is  part of a well maintained and cleverly promoted Directory network that consists of  dBest Directory , Page Rank Directory  , and the newest in the stable Net Catalog .  We also have plans to bring out two more niche Directories in the near future to give webmasters a strong platform to kickstart the promotion of their websites as well as provide visitors with the best available online resources.

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John for BIR Network.