Category Archive

Back in July, we submitted a site to DMOZ. We walked through the steps of selecting a category, writing a title and description that might be accepted and submitting.

From looking at the last update date at the bottom of the Home - Home Improvement - Furniture category, our suggested site was accepted within a month of submission:

Furniture Care Tips - Short articles on care and maintenance for various types of furniture.

The title was accepted as submitted, and the description was edited. While I may feel that my suggested description was the better of the two, the listed description offers a brief overview about the sites content.

Did following the guidelines expedite our listing? Probably not. At best, we submitted the site at the right time. Just before an editor took an interest in reviewing the submissions within the category we submitted to.

Are we seeing an improvement in the search engine rankings or traffic as a result? Hardly, I’m not seeing a single referral from DMOZ for the month of November so far.

Do we still recommend that you submit your sites to DMOZ? Sure. Just don’t have any expectations when you do. Best of luck with your submissions.

The Open Directory Project, aka DMOZ is a directory that has intrigued webmasters from the very beginning.

Claims that a listing within this directory is a must if you want to rank well in the search engines is still being perpetuated, and the less someone knows, the more important this really seems.

After you’ve been around for awhile, you soon realize that getting into DMOZ is not what it was touted to be, nor have you sky-rocketed in the search engines as a result of it.

It’s just another link. It might have some authority factor - the listing is human edited prior to inclusion and the search engines to take this into account. How much emphasis is placed on this is relatively unknown, but most feel it’s diminishing as search engine algorithms evolve and they become less reliant on the human factor.

It doesn’t hurt to submit a site for inclusion and may actually help your site a little. So let’s look at the process and submit a site to the Open Directory Project.

The site we’ve chosen to submit is Furniture Care Tips (furniturecaretips.com) and from reviewing their submission guidelines, it appears that this site meets the standards for inclusion. It’s not an affiliate site or over-run with advertising and it provides rich, unique content that’s generally not found on other sites (we don’t know about the scrapers so we tend to generalize).

Read the rest of this entry »

Jeff Behrendt recently offered some great advice over at Search Engine Journal in 7 Costly Mistakes Webmasters Make About Web Directories.

One of the points that really should be emphasized is the mistake of not varying your anchor text and descriptions:

Costly Mistake #5 - Not varying anchor text and descriptions. From what I’ve seen, a lot of submitters seem to use the same anchor text and description for all of their directory submissions. My editors spend a large amount of time re-writing this. A good way to set up a red flag with Google is suddenly to gain a lot of links to your site with the exact same anchor text and the exact same surrounding text. Ideally, all of your directory submissions should use unique wording. At the very least, have several versions of anchor text and descriptions that you use when submitting to directories.

Consider the possible consequence of replicating the same listing hundreds of times over (think duplicate content/supplemental results) and it’s easy to see how you’re contributing to the probability that the listing/link will provide you with little if any benefit.

Many complain that submitting to free directories is a waste of time as they don’t provide any boost or juice, yet they don’t try to maximize the potential when submitting.

Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s another web directory that’s of interest to me; Trincas.org Web Directory. I was checking the search results recently for the term web directory and noticed that Trincas.org is slowly moving on up, and is now on the second page, usually in the 12th or 13th spot.

It has a nice new design and is well categorized, with approximately 425 listings in their data base. I’ve noticed that several listings were added by the directory administrators, which to me is a good sign that the directory will not become just another link farm.

It’s a fairly new directory, just under a year old. It should be around for some time to come and is definitely worth a look if you’re wanting to gain a quality directory listing.

PageRank 5
SEOmoz PageStrength 5
Alexa 99K
Yahoo Backlinks 40K
Pages Indexed 1390

Pretty good statistics that are likely to improve as I’ve started to notice directory listings, new links, and blog posts with positive comments about Trincas Web Directory.

Submission fees range from $20.00 for a permanent Standard Listing with 4 additional links to $35.00 annually for a Featured Listing which includes 10 additional links to your product pages or other important or popular site resources.

With the current pricing I’ve been noticing, this one is definitely a gem as we consider it under priced. Submissions are processed promptly; our listing was approved in less than a day.

Our overall experience was positive and we definitely recommend that you consider submitting now before the submission fee increases.

To follow up on my previous post about picking the right directories I thought I would provide a good example of a paid business web directory that you should consider.

Biz-Dir.co.uk is a Business Directory started in November 2006 and currently has approximately 368 listings, of which 40 are Featured Listings. These listings appear in 134 well focused business related categories covering topics ranging from Advertising to Wholesale.

The manually reviewed listings appear in relevant categories and are provided with an individual details page such as the one for eWebPages, and it’s easy to see that besides a quality listing you’re likely to receive a few visitors as well.

Checking their Latest Links you’ll find some quality additions with seo friendly titles and descriptions. It’s easy to determine who and what from the listings and the descriptions provided are for the directory visitors and not search engine spiders.

It’s also easy to see that the site is promoted and maintained by checking some basic stats:

PageRank 6
SEOmoz PageStrength 5.5
Alexa 98K
Yahoo Backlinks 28K
Pages Indexed 644

The individual details pages were updated a short while back and now provide optional links for added exposure of your important internal pages. A regular listing has the option of including 3 deeplinks and the featured listing has the option of including up to 5 deeplinks.

Reasonable annual pricing ranging from $15.00 for a basic reciprocated listing to $50.00 for a featured listing with 5 deeplinks should fit most web site owners budgets and not break the bank for a quality listing.

I suggest that you give them a look - I’m off to see if I can upgrade our basic listing to a Featured listing. 

Seems that with the scramble for inbound links little if any regard is given to the quality of a general web directory where the link is coming from. Submitting blindly may not be in your best interest.

I personally think the quality and calibre of a directory listing is more important than quantity. So how can you determine if a directory has the potential to become a quality Internet resource and not end up as just another hyperlink landfill?

There are a few easy steps you can take to judge the quality, or lack of in the smaller general web directories available today. It’s all about editorial integrity.

Most directories offer a site search function. Try searching for keywords associated with sites that you’d prefer to not be listed with. Pharmacy and gaming affiliates, adult entertainment, illegal products and services; you get the general idea.

Search for individual words such as pharmacy or popular prescription drug names, online gambling phrases and games, adult entertainment terms and phrases to see what kind of results are returned.

Look at the latest links or new additions. Review the listing titles and descriptions. Keyword titles and lists of keyword phrases in place of proper descriptions like the example below is a clear indication that anything and everything goes. You can almost count on one hand how many seconds it took for the editor to review this submission; if it was a paid listing I’ll bet the directory owner spent more time verifying the payment.

Bad Credit Car Loan
Bad Credit Car Loan, car loan for people with bad credit, car loans, car credit, vehicle financing, instant credit approval, car loan bad credit, get bad credit car loans, subprime loans, bankruptcy, slowpays, bad credit, no credit, bad credit car loans, automobile loans for people with bad credit, bad credit car financing, car financing bad credit, car lenders, poor credit loans, bad credit auto loans, auto loans for bad credit, auto loans

Listings such as the one above are pretty useless; you have to wonder how much traffic a listing such as this generates. It’s also a reflection on the quality of a directory.

Do yourself a favor; avoid the temptation of a free link when you know that the quality of the link is not the best. It’ll improve your inbound link profile.

Yeah, I’ve about had my fill of the crappy link exchange offers and the webmasters looking to get over on others for a link.

It’s seems some are so desperate for a link they’re willing to defraud others to promote their garbage sites. Here’s a typical example from today:

From: Richard Bean
Date: June 01, 2007 9:02am
To: Us
Subject: Get quality PR 4 home page link (Link Exchange request)

Dear WebMaster,
We are looking quality link partners for our site and your site http://www.linkbook.org  is ideal for the purpose.

We will add your link on the home page of http://www.ucepnepal.org/ (Page Rank 4)

Please add our link at home page or a good Page Rank internal page (not a link page) of your site.

Here is our link information:

Title: Richard Bean

URL: http://www.beautyfeast.com/makeup-tools/makeup-tools-main.htm

Descriptions:
Makeup tools assists in applying the makeup in the correct and precise form.

Or copy paste the following code:

a href=”http://www.beautyfeast.com/makeup-tools/makeup-tools-main.htm” mce_href=”http://www.beautyfeast.com/makeup-tools/makeup-tools-main.htm”
 target=”_blank”> Makeup Tools  looks shabby, funky and rough and has cool cuts and is very popular among young guys and girls in the present world.

Please let me know once our link is up and and we will add your link back in 24 hours.

Regards

Richard Bean P.S.: If you want us to link to your site first please reply to this email with add first in the subject and place where you will place our link.

Wow! They’re offering to place our link on the homepage of a PageRank 4 site for a link to another site. Some webmasters must think that others are idiots.

For one, ucepnepal.org is a dropped domain with toolbar PageRank. You can look at Archive.org and see what this site used to look like when it was set up for the Underprivileged Children’s Educational Programs  (UCEP) Nepal.

So now some webmaster/promoter has grabbed up a dropped domain to use to obtain links to a crappy made for AdSense site at BeautyFeast.com. Either for a client or themselves.

You can look at the Whois to see that the owner of the dropped domain is not the same person owning the MFA site.

Registrant Name:Vaibhav Kakkar
Registrant Street1:H. No. 709
Registrant Street2:Sector 31
Registrant City:Gurgaon
Registrant State/Province:Haryana
Registrant Postal Code:122001
Registrant Country:IN
email: vaibhavkakkar@gmail.com

vijayowl@gmail.com is the email address that “Richard Bean” used to send us this crappy link exchange offer; maybe he thought by using a made up name we’d have more interest?

The suggested title makes no sense and the code is incomplete.

What’s really sad is that the owner of the MFA site is likely paying for link development. Hey buddy, you get what you pay for.

I was reading a discussion over at Digital Point Forums today regarding the maturity of the directory maket.

I don’t think the directory market has reached “maturity” as much as it has attained saturation, especially within the webmaster/seo community. The majority of web directories I’m familiar with are relatively unknown outside of these small circles. It’s not surprising, given that the majority of those directories are targeting webmasters/seo’s within such communities.

It’s likely that there could be a downside if directory owners don’t remove their blinders and get outside the box.

I’m willing to guess that the majority of those directories share a common footprint that may be easily distinguishable to SE’s. Free script, free template, free category dump - you’ve struck out your first at bat.

Add to that forum announcements as the primary extent of promotion which leads to a database that’s all too common with those preceding it. Think about how many directories you’ve submitted to where you see the same listings over and over again. The majority of these directories rely exclusively on user submissions and to me, it’s doubtful that these indexes will provide any useful benefit to those listed or for their real visitors, if any.

It’s not surprising that some SEOs consider directories to be crap or find directory marketing to be boring.  The future of directories is still not that bright for most.

As a web directory owner, I guess it’s helpful for me to keep in mind that reputation and trust are earned, not mimiced.

Are no more for the time being as they have decided to disable a few of the advanced operators such as link:, linkdomain:, and inurl:.

For the time being, you can still access the results via HotBot.com if you are interested.

We are flattered, but…
For those of you who use some of the advanced query syntax in our search engine such as link:, linkdomain: and inurl:, you may have noticed that this functionality has been recently turned off. We have been seeing broad use of these features by legitimate users but unfortunately also what appears to be mass automated usage for data mining. So for now, we have made the tough call to block all queries with these operators.

We are doing our best to get this back online as soon as possible in a manner that allows folks that use this functionality for real queries. We have a few good ideas up our sleeve on how to enable this, but want to make sure we are making the right changes that will give you the functionality you want and all of our customers the experience they deserve. Our apologies and thank you for being patient. Keep an eye on our blog for updates.

Eytan Seidman

Lead Program Manager, Live Search

A new project we’re overseeing in an attempt to improve the overall quality of the index as well as it’s visibility and interest is the Link Book Web Directory.

It’s a general topic web directory which currently utilizes a popular directory script and a free template. Starting out as a free web directory had its pitfalls, and one of the most noticeable problems we’ve encountered is webmasters trying to take advantage of a fresh index by submitting anything and everything anywhere and everywhere.

The number of multiple submissions of the same URL utilizing a different title or description is interesting, and has given me a different view of some of the webmasters I’m acquainted with. We’re running some simple SQL queries to locate and delete the multiple listings; the worse offender has had almost 40 listings for his site(s).

Sites with little content such as eBay and Amazon stores, one page eBook sites, affiliate driven sites, pharmaceutical sales and adult entertainment affiliates are being removed. MFA sites are slowly getting weeded out as well, as these sites offer little useful original content.

I don’t see that this may have been a problem as I seriously doubt there was any harm to having those sites listed. We hope that we’re able to have the majority  of these sites removed before the new pages are fully indexed.

Anyway, a new logo is in the works to go with a customized template from Shabu Anower at OSDesigner.net. It’s a variation of the StoneFlash template, which is simple and functional. We’re looking to place the emphasis on our content - your listing.

URL rewrite wasn’t in use, so that was one of the first changes, and we’re renaming the category paths and hope these new pages get indexed and the old pages drop out within a reasonable amount of time.

Some titles and descriptions will be updated to conform to basic guidelines, some of the titles and descriptions are nothing but hype and of little use to some one browsing the directory. If anyone is unhappy after we edit their listing, please feel free to contact us and we’ll have it permanently removed from the index.

We will be manually adding quality sites in categories to provide our visitors with a positive experience, I know how much I dislike using a directory with few or poor quality listings.

We’re also accepting user submitted sites which are subject to a nominal review fee. Featured Listings are available for web sites owners who want the maximum exposure that a directory listing can provide.

Please feel free to stop by to check out Link Book Web Directory. We hope you notice the positive changes we’re making.

We all have a list of favorite directories we use to jump start our latest projects or clients sites; established web directories such as DMOZ, Yahoo!, BOTW and Business.com are usually at the top of any serious marketer’s campaign.

A number of popular second tier directories that come to mind include Wow Directory, Skaffe and GoGuides, these directories provide quality indexes consisting of manually reviewed and edited web sites, and confer some measure of trust.

While we’re all impressed with or have some respect for the directories mentioned above, one other directory has really caught my attention: Aviva Directory. Aviva is a rapidly growing quality directory, and in my opinion will move ahead of some of the well known second tier directories by years end.

Besides accepting user submitted sites for a nominal annual fee, Aviva also adds quality, authoritative listings and will provide a positive user experience as the size of their index grows, which has just passed 9K listings across a little over 1100 categories.

A small editorial staff is now onboard building out new and existing categories and their hard work is being noticed. Just take a look at their Latest Additions. Good job, folks!

Many directory owners whom rely strictly on user submissions to build their directories may eventually find themselves behind the eight ball, with Aviva on the other side chalking up for another round. Recruiting an editorial staff was a positive move that will pay dividends in the future.

Many self taught webmasters are too easily influenced by PageRank™, and unknowingly equate a directory listing’s value primarily on an outdated graphical display of a browser add on. While they may be easily entertained, I’m more impressed with the growth of Aviva in a manner that will provide a permanent benefit to the Internet community.

For example, eWebPages.org was recently voted as the PHPLD directory with the best content for the month of February, but it’s quite evident that if Aviva was eligible, they wouldn’t have had a chance.

Aviva definitely provides a quality link and citation for listed sites, and should be a consideration for your link development

While those familiar with Aviva’s history are impressed with the ongoing marketing campaign and accomplishments thus far, it’s hard to not see the bigger picture and the true meaning of “Aviva Delivers!”

It’s all in the details.

If you haven’t heard of Directory Dump Web Directory,  I’m sure it won’t be much longer before you do. While the average Internet directory is satisfied with offering a categorized data base of annotated listings, Directory Dump is continually refining the way they present their content.

The owner is always looking for ways to set Directory Dump apart from the average directory, and has succeeded in several ways.

The LIVE! Stats displayed in the R/H column give you a clear indication of the traffic they receive; both daily and monthly. Below the LIVE! stats are the categories most recently visited.

The Popular Categories listed in the L/H column show the most visited categories, and there are related live news feeds for each category.

All of the category listings display a thumbnail image of the site when you mouse over the listing which gives their visitors a nice preview before visiting the site.

The submission form has some unique features not found on most directories utilizing a similar script; each listing type provides a preview and the option to list a RSS feed is also available for Featured listings.

The newest upgrade provides Website Statistics for each listing on the details page; you can see how many citations a listed web site has from .edu and .gov sites, Technorati links and del.icio.us links.

Also included are DMOZ and the Yahoo! Directory listings, and some Google statistics; the number of indexed pages, links, related pages and cache status. There are also categories for Wikipedia citations and the current Alexa ranking. 

A good example of the details pages is seen here for a new Internet Resource Guide, eWebPages.

Setting themselves ahead of your average phpLD directory has paid off, as they were recently included in DMOZ’s Web Directories category. 

Google has recently updated their webmaster tools to allow you to see a larger sample of your Google backlinks beyond what the link: operator listed. The data is much more comprehensive and you can sort and even download the information.

The links are currently divided into 2 categories, external and internal links. External links are links on pages other than your site or domain. Internal links are those within your own site or domain.

Google will not reveal all of the external links indexed for your site, but they will reveal a much larger total than the link: operator reveals:

Google knows about more links than the total we show, but the overall fraction of links we show is much, much larger than the link: command currently offers.

For more information you can visit Google’s Webmaster Central Blog and check out Discover your links. Vanessa Fox offers a post about Who links to your site at the official Google blog also.

I’ve a feeling this one will keep webmasters busy for awhile.

You tell me.

Directory Ranking is supposedly an attempt to rank or grade the quality or importance of links from general web directories based on advanced search operator results (back link commands) at the primary search engines; Google, Yahoo! and MSN.

In the opening post on a popular webmaster forum where this project was announced, it’s stated that participating directories should list this neutral site as they would any other normal listing:

“Every directory that participates must list this site as they would do for normal listings. Then using these backlink commands at google, yahoo and msn we sort the links ordered by descending link power.

If you do not agree with any of this metrics you can use your own, the objective of this site is to create a neutral resource that enables you to do that.”

At best, this appears to be classic link bait to transfer link juice to their main site; which, predictably, is a web directory. Why else would you need to link from the neutral resource back to your own directory which is participating?

“If you have a directory you only have to list this site as you would list a regular submission using this information, ideally the listing will be at level 2 and 1 click of the homepage, if you have more than one page ideally the listing would be featured to insure you don’t lose ranking.”

I like this next one.

“If there is more than one page of listings in your directory category, it’s suggested that you list this neutral resource as a Featured Listing so that you don’t lose ranking.”

If there’s more than one page of listings, adding this site as a Featured Listing would place it on multiple pages - and it’s no longer listed as other normal listings.

Are we participating? We have an interest in seeing how the search engines currently index and score nofollow links, so we added a nofollow listing to DirectoryRanking.com in the Web Directories category at eWebPages Directory to see for ourselves.