A search engine uses a robot or spider to crawl and index the content of the pages on your site. Search engines use an unpublished algorithm to determine the position any of your pages will have in their index relative to a given keyword against other sites' competing pages. The position of a page in the index is based on factors of the algorithm and the weight of each factor i.e. link popularity may have more weight than keyword density in your title and body in the algorithm. Again, the position a page holds in the index is relative to the competing pages/sites.

A directory relies on the listings submitted directly to their site to provide search results. Your rank for a given keyword is determined by the keywords in your brief description as well as the category you are in. Some of the most popular directories require annual payment to be listed i.e. Yahoo and Looksmart. You may be able to pay to enhance your position. Yahoo only guarantees your listing will be considered, not necessarily included. Therefore, write your Title and Description very carefully. The Open Directory Project (DMOZ), owned by Netscape, is free, however, inclusion is uncertain. The only reason we feel you would want to be included is because DMOZ is Google's directory. Yahoo uses Google's index to provide world wide web search results. Netscape uses it's own DMOZ directory, but it's web search results are provided by Inktomi, a paid-inclusion search engine index. Yahoo and AOL supplement their directories with Google search engine results. Confused yet? Since directories rely on manual submissions, not all sites on the web are included in their directory. To ensure the directory's popularity by always providing relevant search results, they supplement their directory by providing results from a partner search engine. Default results are from the directory and supplemented by the partner search engine. This way you have all the results at one site.

Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Submission