Search Engine Optimisation and Submission – Back to basics

Over the last couple of days there has been an increase in the number of submissions to Irish web directories that I edit.
As each site has to be approved prior to listing I get to read about and view quite a few sites.

The sites themselves vary in quality, but that is not my concern as long as they meet the criteria for listing.
The obvious things that will not get listed are:

• Non-Irish Sites
• Sites that do not have any tangible link to Ireland even if they are actually Irish – if I can’t see it will “Joe Public”?
• Adsense sites (ie no real content)
• DMOZ clones with no original content
• Sites with no description
• Sites submitted to the incorrect category
• Under Construction sites or holding pages

However it’s the actual titles and descriptions that are the most frustrating to deal with.
I see a lot of meaningless descriptions and titles
For example:

“Welcome to the website of Michele Neylon”

Does that tell you anything about the site?
Is it in anyway helpful?
We all know it’s a website so that’s not particularly helpful. And who is this “Michele Neylon” character? (It could just as easily have been Neylon Enterprises Inc)
A better description would be:

Personal website of Irish ICT professional including articles on spam filtering, seo and other topics

It may, or may not, reflect the content of this site, but what it does do is provide the reader with a clear indication of what type of content they are going to find.
Of course from an SEO perspective you should try to get your keywords and phrases into the description in as natural a fashion as possible.
Some people, however, seem to think that repeating the company name is a brilliant idea
Site titles, of course, are source of much amusement and even bemusement:
A common submission:

Welcome to mneylon.com

Great! I feel like the quality of my life has been improved
Other things that will slow down your site being approved on any human edited directory include:

• Submitting to the incorrect category
• Submissions ALL IN CAPS

I know I’m repeating myself, but some people simply don’t get it!