In a fluke, I was able to notice something about the way Google indexes content from web directories. Excluding your template, the most important line of code is the first title you add to your main body.
Search through Google and see for yourself!
Try searching for "something" in "yourcity","province/state" and look for a web business directory that you recognize. Once you find a directory, take a good look at the description of that particular listing (not the title). It may be a good idea to write it down. Once complete, click on the "cache" of that page within Google to highlight the content and view the web directory page.
9 out of 10 times the description of your website listing within Google is partly taken from the first line of code you have within your main body of content (excluding your header, footer, & sidebar). You will notice that this only applies for a web directory. Any personal or business related website gets indexed differently. If you take a look at the Google directory, we find the same thing: Take a look here:
http://www.google.com/dirhp?hl=enBrowse to any sub-category and look at the first line of text. You will find that the title within the main body of content before anything else, is within an H1 tag.
H1 tags & H2 tags are nothing new to the development community but, there may still be many directories online that can increase their search engine rankings by changing a few things.
Here's an example we see very often online; (I am also guilty of this)
You have just developed an impressive web directory and you are very proud of your creation. In the process of organizing your massive directory you were faced with a problem on how to allow people to browse your website and how to let search engines browse through your categories with ease. So with that in mind, you create the "alphabetical solution".
THE ALPHABETICAL SOLUTION IS THIS:
Search Categories By Alphabetical Order:
A,B,C,D,E,F,G,H,I,J,K,L,M,N,O,P,Q,R,S,T,U,V,W,X,Y,Z
The problem with this alphabetical solution (I am also guilty as charged) is that we tend to add this development solution to the top of our page so that our visitors and possibly search engines can find these extra categories easily.
