Skateboarding Myspace Layouts » A Short History Of Skateboarding

Well, it certainly seems that way sometimes, yes. And could the internet survive with just the search engines? Most likely. But...don't you find it interesting that Google has a directory in addition to their search engine function? And Yahoo does, too. In fact, Yahoo was just a big directory long before they ever had a search function.

It might well be argued that search engines are better at getting you to what you need than directories can ever be. Search engine spiders can find and gobble up pretty much all the content on the web. They do an amazing job. Honestly. It's simply mind-boggling. But they have limitations as well.

Were you aware that, if a webmaster build a site in Flash, but neglects to properly label the site with titles and tags...the search engine spiders have NO CLUE what's on that site? So, how can we expect them to properly categorize and rank it? They can't...unless they have a human come take a look.

Or what about a site filled with pictures or digital art images that are titled only whatever the photographer/artist wanted to call them, rather than properly tagging them? What do you suppose a search engine is going to do with a bunch of images with titles like "Skirmish", "Dusk" or "Legs"? That's right...not too much!

And yet, if the webmaster comes to a directory and submit his site with a description like "Pictures of war, sunsets and beautiful women...", at the very least, he/she gets categorized alongside other photography web sites. That's more than the search engines can do for him/her.

You may argue that that's the fault of the webmaster. "If they'd only used titles and tags...". True, but they didn't. Maybe they didn't know how to. Maybe they just didn't want to. Artsy people can be that way sometimes, ya know. ;-)

Or what about someone who has an absolutely GREAT site dealing with skateboarding tips and tricks? There are probably about a million good skateboarding sites out there. This poor guy might end up getting ranked around #250 on Google, especially if it's a smaller site. How many skateboard enthusiasts are going to search 25 pages deep in Google's search results?

And yet, he has a decent chance of sitting on equal footing in a web directory with all the other sites...and many skateboarding site webmasters may not have submitted to that directory. After all, they are probably busy testing out that new halfpipe at the skate park!

So, directories can have a lot of value. Especially to webmasters with smaller sites and no advertising budget. Finding a good directory (or a few) to submit your site to can help bring in traffic, as well as those inbound links that can help your site rank higher in the search engines as well.

Take note the next time you come across a decent-looking, human-edited web directory. Take a few minutes to poke around and see what they have to offer in categories that interest you. You're almost sure to discover some cool sites you've never seen before!

Chuck Brown is the father of two and husband of one, and makes his living primarily as a male voice talent. He also enjoys developing web sites on topics in which he has a personal interest, including two web directories: Columbus Web Directory, featuring business and organization web sites in the Central Ohio area...and the Be Seen Directory, a general-interest directory focusing on sites offering unique, valuable content.

Source: www.articlesphere.com