Is Your Site Ready for Prime Time?
By: Chris CrumThis is more advice than it is an update on our directory, but feel free to use it as a tip for submitting to ours.
When you decide to submit your site to a directory, any directory, you would do well to make sure your site is ready for prime time. As I’ve been going through submissions, some of them have been placeholder pages announcing that a site will be launching in the future. That’s all fine and good, but don’t expect to be approved in the directory before we can even see what the site has to offer. Submit it when it’s ready to go.
Some submissions will be a blog with one post on it, or one that hasn’t been updated in months (or even years…yes, I’ve had a few that hadn’t been updated since 2006 or better). We and other human-edited directories are not likely to approve something that hasn’t been updated in so long.
Some submissions turn up a “page not found”. Obviously these won’t make the cut. Try to make sure your site is up and running when you submit it to a directory.
One more thing for now. When submitting a site, try to single out the most narrow category your site can fit in. This will ultimately make the directory more useful for users.
For example if you are submitting a site that offers an eCommerce shopping cart software, it would be a better fit for the eCommerce Shopping Carts category than simply the eCommerce category which is more broad. It makes it easier for both the end-user to find what they are looking for, and the editor (me in this case 
) to approve.
June 13th, 2008 at 10:19 am
[...] gotten. There is no shortage of web designers out there, let me tell you. All the more reason to have your site ready for prime time when submitting your sites to [...]
June 13th, 2008 at 10:21 am
Hello, Chris. I enjoy and learn from your articles. Thank you for giving your knowledge!
Regarding the submission to directories: I just read that the Title part of the submission is not supposed to be the website store name. What kinds of things should I use instead, since I have several pages and can’t submit for all of them. I have submitted to many directories already using our site name. Should I resubmit with a new Title? And the glitch… we are changing our product line to another drop ship- same product types. Should I wait to submit more, resubmit the others, write articles or blogs until the line is changed over? This will take a while as I don’t want to close the site and loose the time it’s been open. I’m keeping the “new” pages out of the index and hidden until I am ready to delete the first line and then open the second. Thanks for any help- I hope all this made sense!
June 13th, 2008 at 12:08 pm
Hi Donna,
Thank you for the kind words and for your interest in our directory. And congratulations, you have left the first real comment on this blog!
Regarding your concerns, I’m not sure where you read that bit about the title, but as far as our directory goes, I have no problem with using a store name as the title. Another option would be the kind of service you are offering, but that is really what the description is for, and we like to keep the titles relatively short.
Honestly, I’ve never run into any problems on other directories either where the store/site name was the title. I don’t want to invalidate the information you have read. Perhaps there is something to it that I am just not familiar with. I’d be interested in reading about it though, if you’ve got a link.
As for your product change, if you’re creating a whole new site for it, then definitely submit it to the directories again once it is ready, but not prematurely. If you are changing the info on the same site, I would re-submit it only if it falls into a new category, and perhaps even contact the directory editors when possible to remove it from the no-longer-relevant category.
June 16th, 2008 at 5:15 am
HI CHRIS,
CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR LAUNCH OF “IS YOUR SITE READY FOR PRIME TIME”.I THINK IT IS VERY INSIGHTFUL BUT THE MUGSHOT.
…………..
LAURA GREEN
June 17th, 2008 at 11:07 am
Thanks Laura, I included that photo because it is of Deion Sanders who’s nickname is “Prime Time”. I searched for him and found that almost immediately, and couldn’t resist.
June 24th, 2008 at 12:51 pm
I read similar article also named Is Your Site Ready for Prime Time?, and it was completely different. Personally, I agree with you more, because this article makes a little bit more sense for me
July 7th, 2008 at 7:47 pm
submit to directory…
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