DirectoryBlog.WebProNews.com

This past week, the WebProNews eBusiness Directory was mentioned in two different newsletters. One of these newsletters was Jayde Listing Notes, a publication that is sent out by iEntry’s well-known B2B search engine Jayde.com, and also Directory Listing Notes, a publication that is sent out to all iEntry directory participants. So, you could say that our directory has had some excellent exposure.

Along with the various submissions that have been submitted lately, I have been noticing a trend of erroneous submissions, so I thought I would share some tips that would better your inclusion in our quality directory.

• Be eBusiness Specific – Try and keep your submissions as close to our directory’s categories as possible. I have been seeing some submissions about jewelry and fashion stores, and unfortunately our directory does not have any related categories specific to that niche and have to reject them. Please submit sites relating to eBusiness content or anything that is talked about on our parent site WebProNews. If your site is eBusiness related, and you do not see a category in our directory that would best fit your website, please feel free to contact me with your business’ category suggestion.
• Your Site is Live – I have been seeing submissions where the website is either under construction or a landing page. With this in mind, I am unable to successfully pinpoint the product and/or company that you want to advertise. This will also be frustrating to people browsing our directory and want to view your company and can find nothing there. This helps keep the WebProNews eBusiness Directory filled with quality site listings.
• No Shortened URLs – There have been several URLs submitted lately that have been shortened with a random URL generator, such as TinyURL.com or Bit.Ly that redirects the person viewing the website to a longer URL. From an SEO standpoint, this will not help the visiblity of your website in search engines and directories because of the hidden and permanent redirect; therefore, I am unable to accept these URLs. These types of URLs also do not look attractive in directory listings because the URL does not fully describe the company or the product advertised.
• Meta Description Tags – A while back, I mentioned the use of meta tags prior to the submission of your site to our directory. This helps me compile the description of your listing to help better describe your site within our directory.

If you have any questions regarding your directory listing, please feel free to contact me via our directory’s contact form, or if you have account on the iEntry Directory Portal Forum, I can be contacted there as well.

Happy Submitting!

This past week, Chris Crum, the previous directory editor of the WebProNews eBusiness Directory, wrote an article on WebProNews on how web-video giant YouTube is moving up to the next level and is offering new tiers to the site dedicated to television shows and movies. This lets competition emerge with the well-known, full-length movie site Hulu.com which has specialized in this area for a long time. You can read the full-length article of this story here.

The reason why I mention this is because I would bring your attention to the WebProNews eBusiness Directory’s Video Sharing Sites subcategory (found here) under the Social Media category. This category is dedicated to listing sites such as YouTube.com and Hulu.com.

If you are the owner of a video-sharing site and would like to have it indexed within our directory listings, please feel free to use our quick-and-easy submission form. All you have to do is to provide the URL of the video-sharing site that you would like listed with us, along with your e-mail address for notification, and your video-sharing site will be be submitted for pending inclusion into our directory listings.

Happy Surfing!

I have been observing that more and more people are submitting their own directories to the
WebProNews eBusiness Directory’s “Web Directories” section under Search > Search Engines. With this in mind, I would like to bring the following site to the attention of the various directory owners out there.

This site is phpLDMe.com — a great blog-based resource that relates to a very common directory software named phpLD (PHP Link Directory). This directory software is what our very own WebProNews Business Directory is based on. It is a great site for:

• Staying current with various PHP Link Directory announcements and updates!
• Viewing great templates for download to give your directory a theme!

If you have a web/niche or bidding directory that you would like to see visible in the WebProNews Business Directory, please feel free to submit your directory for inclusion on our quick-and-easy submission page. All that you have to do is to provide the URL of your directory, your e-mail address, and choose the Web Directories from the category list. Once this has been done, your site will be processed for review to be included in our quality directory.

Happy Surfing!

Twellow, the directory of Twitter users, is also a service of WebProNews, and has been exploding with new categories to organize users by their niches. These categories and subcategories that are added are not your everyday directory categories (e.g. Arts & Humanities, Education, Health, etc.). These are categories to group users together by more specific niches. Here are some recent categories that have been added to Twellow:

• Recruiting – Under Business Services > Human Resources
• Swimming – Under Sports
• Book Clubs – Under Media > Books
• Property Development – Under Real Estate

If you can think of a category, you can be pretty sure that Twellow has it and that there are various Twitter users included in it. If you cannot find an area of interest on this service and would like to see the Twitter users relating to this interest, please feel free to suggest a category via the quick-and-easy Twellow contact form and select “Category Suggestion” from the subject drop-down menu.

If you are on Twitter and want to keep updated with the various category additions happening on Twellow, please be sure to add and follow @twellowup (http://www.twitter.com/twellowup) since it is always being updated with new
category additions.

Have fun with Twellow and find users by common niches today!