Highlight HEALTH

The Highlight HEALTH Web Directory is my endeavor to catalog and make available health-related websites I find to be informative and useful. The response thus far has been fantastic. Presently, there are 250 listings in over 40 categories. My thanks to everyone who submitted their blog or website.

For those of you who haven’t listed your website in the Highlight HEALTH Web Directory, here’s 10 reasons why you should:

1. Gain exposure for your website.

   Your website’s visibility increases and its prominence is enhanced when it’s listed in a specific category along with related top-quality sites.



2. Make your website a quality resource for information.

   The Highlight HEALTH Web Directory is human-edited and spam free. Each and every submission, free or paid, is evaluated for content and quality prior to directory inclusion.

3. The directory listing is free.

   All regular listings with a link back to the directory are free cost only $5.00.

4. All bloggers like buttons.

   Once you submit your site, you can add the Highlight HEALTH Web Directory badge to your site:

   

   Simply copy and paste this code wherever you want the button:

   <a href=”http://www.highlighthealth.info/”><img src=”http://www.highlighthealth.info/images/highlighthealth.png” border=”0” alt=”Highlight HEALTH Web Directory” title=”Highlight HEALTH Web Directory” /></a>

5. Receive an incoming link to your website from a trusted, reputable source.

   The Highlight HEALTH Web Directory complies with the HONcode standard for trustworthy health information. The mission of the Highlight HEALTH Web Directory is to compile a select, quality database of online health resources that is free for everyone to use.

6. Free advertising.

   Every day, two random links and their descriptions from the directory are featured on the homepage.

7. Increase website traffic.

   Who doesn’t want more visitors? A link to your site from the Highlight HEALTH Web Directory can help with traffic. Importantly, it’s targeted traffic, meaning the reader is already interested in what you’re writing about when they click on your link.

8. Improve your website’s search engine rankings.

   The Highlight HEALTH Web Directory offers regular and featured listings that don’t require a reciprocal link. These one-way links are beneficial from a search engine optimization (SEO) aspect and are important, especially for niche sites such as health and medicine. Search engines give importance to the number of links pointing to your site when ranking it for position during search. The better your ranking, the higher up your website appears on the search engine results page (SERP).

9. Get your website indexed by search engines.

   Search engines like Google, Yahoo! and MSN use crawlers or spiders to search the web for new sites. If you want search engines to find your site, there couldn’t be an easier way than having them find your site through a listing in the Highlight HEALTH Web Directory.

10. Contribute to the conversation.

    Be part of a larger community discussing health and medicine by listing your website with the Highlight HEALTH Web Directory.

List your site in the Highlight HEALTH Web Directory today!

I’ve written previously about the Highlight HEALTH Web Directory and my effort to catalog and make available health-related websites I find to be informative and useful.

I’m very pleased to announce that, similar to Highlight HEALTH, the Highlight HEALTH Web Directory is now an HONcode accredited website.

The Health On the Net (HON) Foundation is a non-profit organization that is attempting to guide the growing community of healthcare providers and consumers on the World Wide Web to sound, reliable medical information and expertise through quality assessment and systematic and stringent peer review. HON is the largest voluntary accreditation network on the Web with over 4,700 HONcode accredited websites that honor the standards for disclosure and responsibility in online medical publishing [1].

There are 8 principles of the HON Code of Conduct (HONcode):

1. Authority - Indicate the qualifications of the author(s).
2. Complementarity - Information should support, not replace, the doctor-patient relationship, which is the desired means of contact.
3. Privacy - Respect the privacy and confidentiality of personal data submitted to the site by the visitor.
4. Attribution - Cite the source(s) of published information, date and medical and health pages.
5. Justifiability - The website must back up claims relating to benefits and performance.
6. Transparency - Accessible presentation, accurate email contact of authors.
7. Financial disclosure - Sponsorship should be transparent and funding sources identified.
8. Advertising policy - Clearly distinguish advertising from editorial content.

Below is a list of HONcode accredited websites in a number of categories from the Highlight HEALTH Web Directory that I recommend. Hint: click on the category title to see all the websites currently listed.

Is your site listed in the Highlight HEALTH Web Directory?
Send me an email if you would like to be included!

References

1. Boyer and Geissbuhler. A decade devoted to improving online health information quality. Stud Health Technol Inform. 2005;116:891-6.
   View abstract

The Highlight HEALTH Web Directory, a companion site of Highlight HEALTH, is a searchable categorized directory of quality health-related websites, including health & medical blogs, research journals, personalized medicine and health 2.0 resources.

What is a Web Directory?

Web directories or as they are also known, search directories, existed before the popularity of search engines. A web directory is not a search engine nor does it display a list of web pages based on keywords. Instead, it displays a list of web sites by category. Web directories are large collections of links to websites, arranged in different categories.

Although many web directories offer a search function, they are fundamentally different than search engines in two ways. First, most directories do not collect website addresses automatically using web crawlers. Instead, site owners submit their links directly to the directory. Second, most directories are edited by real people. The primary advantage of a web directory is that each website is reviewed by a real person prior to inclusion and, because of this review, the chance of being placed in the wrong category is small. For end users, this means better focused content and fewer clicks to find what you’re looking for. The review also serves to filter less desirable websites from the directory.

A web directory is very useful resource if high quality, informative websites are listed.

The Highlight HEALTH Web Directory is my endeavor to catalog and make available health-related websites I find to be informative and useful. The links from every article I’ve written on Highlight HEALTH are cataloged there. While I strive to write meaningful, informative articles, I know there are many other resources out there for people interested in health. The focus of the Highlight HEALTH Web Directory is to provide those resources to the readers of Highlight HEALTH. The directory does allow for paid regular and featured listings. However, payment does not guarantee directory inclusion. Many sites have been rejected based on poor quality and/or content.

The directory offers the following features:

• Organization - websites are arranged by category to facilitate easy browsing.
• Review - each website in the directory has been reviewed prior to inclusion.
• Search - a sidebar search allows you to search by keyword or phrase.
• RSS - each category has a web feed, making it easy to monitor for new content.
• Top Hits - the most popular sites viewed by users.
• Latest Links - the latest links added to the directory.

The right-most grey menu button at the top of every page on Highlight HEALTH takes you directly to the Highlight HEALTH Web Directory. Once there, the “Directory” button becomes the “Blog” button and allows you to navigate back to Highlight HEALTH.

Is your site listed in the Highlight HEALTH Web Directory?