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!

Twitter, the service that lets you publicize what you are doing in 140 characters or less, has become a phenonmenon in blogging and social media circles. It is a great way to stay in touch with friends, and stay up to date with different services around the web. You will also find Twitter as the subject of various articles within WebProNews, especially within the social media tag.

To help find friends on this fast-growing service, the WebProNews team has created a directory service called Twellow (as mentioned in previous posts). This service allows you to browse through various categories to find people who share similar interests as you (e.g. Automotive, Entertainment, Media, Retailing, and much more.)

WebProNews also provides you with another service… its own Twitter account. This allows you to keep up to date with WPN stories, video clips, and happenings as they are made available. This is great if you are a Twitterer on the go and like to get your WPN news stories on the fly.

Chat With Other WebProNews Directory Submitters

Are you into forums? This week, to help get to know you better, and to get acquainted with our directory submitters involved with the WebProNews eBusiness Directory, I have created a thread on the iEntry Directory Portal Forum dedicated solely for this purpose.

The iEntry Directory Portal is a place to get in-the-know about various happenings of the directories within the iEntry network (which includes Directory.WebProNews).

The two questions that I have posted are:

How has the WebProNews eBusiness Directory helped your business’s website(s)?

and

What would you like to see added to the WebProNews eBusiness Directory to help better serve you?

If you have any answers to these questions, please do not hestitate to participate in this thread. I would be happy to answer any questions that you may have.