Have you ever seen this ad...?
"We'll put you in 1000's of Directories!
On Webpages that are ALL Indexed by Google!
We'll do it in just Days!
And it doesn't matter that no one ever visits those Directories (which just exist so that we can sell these services to you)!
Then you can visit Google and search for [link:yoursite.com] - you will see those 1000's of IB links we just created for you!"
Again, have you seen that ad? Well, we haven't either.
That's because getting Directory entries (and other IB links) right... which is worth a great deal to your organic results... takes some definite work.
It's worth it, though. Getting listed in just 10 or 20 High-Rank, High Relevancy Directories (or any other Inbound [IB] Source you're considering listing in) is almost always far more valuable to your own Website Rank than getting listed in 100's or even 1000's of Low-Rank, Low Relevance Directories.
When you're listing in High Traffic, High Relevance Directories for the purpose of being actually seen by 'Demand', then you would consider pointing out a 'Human message', or linking to a 'Human-related' Webpage of your Website. In this case, you don't necessarily need to find the most Optimized Webpage of your Website to list there, to get the Highest Relevance a robot would understand. If there are actually Human Visitors (prospects) browsing that Directory - sure, definitely aim to appeal to them.
One way would be to simply tweak your Titles for the better: if you're selling 'Porsche Black Leather Jackets' and so is someone else, and that's what THEY use in the title, then compete with your wording: aim for: 'Porsche Leather Jackets - Sale' or something that makes you stand out more in a line-up of similar offers. This is also true with front page organic results, same as AdWord entries.
But when you list on Directories that won't be seen many human visitors (prospects browsing the listings)... that is, no 'Demand' there, and also the Directory Webpage you list onto doesn't really appear on Google for any searches that deal with the entries you find already on that Directory Webpage (an easy check to make is see whether you can get that page to come up in Google for a business that's already listed there, especially if you have some description text to search for)... if you're listing there, where human visitors don't bother to tread, then absolutely optimize that directory listing by using the best-matching Webpage you have on Keyword Density.
The way to do that is to do a Keyword Density Check on all of your own Webpages at some point, and lay out the 1, 2, and 3-word phrase combinations for each Webpage. See if you can make changes to improve the entries for each webpage you have (if you use 'site' sometimes, and 'website' other times, then probably change all 'site' entries to 'website' to increase the keyword density for 'website' on that page). And sure, check your Titles, Meta Tags, sub-page keyword-rich file-naming conventions (mouthful, n'est pas?), and even write out the most valuable anchor text (your top keywords that have great search volume on Google - especially if you see those terms bringing up main Directories (etc) early in the results! You'll want to get onto THOSE Directories, right...?
Then, you know which of your Webpages are optimized for whichever of the most valuable Keywords. So when you list in 'non-prospect-browsed (to coin a term)' Directories... do the Keyword Density Checks on the very directory webpages you intend to list onto, and if you can list deep links, then aim for best match - regardless of the 'human' message.
Hopefully you found this information useful!
Ok... I hope you found this article inspiring...
Please feel free to comment, disagree, provide feedback - or just say 'hi!'