Basically google implented a new tweak to its algo  and a lot of directories were severly hit. The best way to see this was to actually do a search for the directory using its name. Many now do not appear on the first page of googles serp´s.

Anyway, there was lots of shouting about it, and eventually people then decided to get back on with there lives.

My opinion on what happened:

the directories that triggered the tweaked algo were all clearly agressively buying links from pretty much any source to pump up there inner page pr. Sitewide footers, forum signiture links …. and I suspect that the algo tweak has been an attempt by google to clean up a little on the link selling mess thats really causing there algo some problems.

I’m now passing the 10,000 submissions mark for directory submissions I’ve done. Let me tell you; I have seen a lot of these “seo friendly” directories: and many of them really aren’t what they state they are. If you advertise yourself as seo friendly, then by George you should maintain that with the way your directory works and functions. If there’s little or no benefit of being listed in your directory: why would anyone want to be?

Some common things that make a directory not seo friendly:

• Broken Pagination: If a user cannot correctly navigate throughout your website without running into 404 errors or 500 errors, then search engines can’t either.
• Poor Category Structure: If you have 700 websites listed under the “internet” category; yet the topics range from free banner advertising to dialup internet service – where is the relevancy? In my opinion, these “seo friendly directories” are simply glorified FFA pages.
• Nofollow Attribute: If you even want to consider your directory seo friendly, then this should be a curse word in your vocabulary. However, I am seeing more an more directories using this as a ploy to get people to pay exorbitant fees for their weakly ranked directories.
• Super restrictive submission guidelines: Understandably there must be rules and guidelines for submissions or every directory would look like they were running an ad farm. However, in my opinion, directories should give submitters some leeway during submission so that they can build their link popularity using relevant anchor text and descriptions. Every directory cannot be like dmoz, and shouldn’t be.

These are a few of the problems I’ve encountered with so called seo friendly directories; likely there are others that have other findings as well. Feel free to post your thoughts on this.

Likely if you have one or two websites you are submitting you will not run into this issue.  It seems to me, based on my experiences anyway, that when you get into submitting 5 or 10 or even 20 websites: some directory owners have a fit.  In all honesty, I don’t see what the issue is, I own a directory and I don’t ban IP addresses even if I get 20 submissions a day from the same person: as long as the sites conform to my guidelines.

Now, in all fairness, directory owners can do whatever they want with their directories.  SEO’s don’t have privilege to instruct these owners on how to run or maintain their directories.  However, to be frank, a lot of these directories would not be what they are today without the help of people like me, the people submitting a great deal of varied websites to these directories.

What can be done?  Just an occupational hazard I suppose.

I would love to write one myself, and very well could. . . but the server side coding language flavor of choice is php, and I code in perl/cgi. Of course, almost any paid web host supports cgi scripts, but php has a larger support base and is usually easier for a novice webmaster to install.

Getting back to the point; anyone else feel this way?

The problem with “auto submission” software regarding directories is this: A script or program, at least at this point in time; cannot compete with good, old fashioned common sense. Beneficial directory submissions require about 5% physical work and 95% common sense application.

Where does the common sense come in?  Well – it’s in the category placement.  No matter how smart your submission script or program is, it can never compete with a human directory submitter that has a good grasp of the language (the language of the website being submitted and the language of the directory) and also has at least a decent dose of common sense.

The auto submission software cannot guage if one category is going to be more suitable over the other, and the auto submission software cannot tell if it is submitting to the completely wrong category.  Most directory owners are not in favor of this directory submission software simply because of the mis-categorization of websites, not to mention the very frequent placement of wrong data into the submission fields.  For instance, a semi-common occurrence with auto directory submission software is that the website owners name is submitted in the title field for the website.  This, of course, would not happen with hand submission with a competent submitter.

If you want to get the most out of directory submissions, simply say “no” to directory auto submission software.  You will more than get your moneys worth with a good directory list and a competent human submitter.

That’s just my 2 cents, anyway.

 

I’m going to go into what some of the common, standard beliefs are as well as a little bit of my own thoughts regarding these “SEO Friendly” directories.

A SEO friendly directory should:

• Provide a static, one way link back to the original website (no redirects, funky javascript, or cloaking going on)
• Use the anchor text that was input by the submitter of the website to the directory

In addition to this, a seo friendly directory should not employ the use of the rel=nofollow attribute to the submitted websites nor use meta tags or the robots.txt file to otherwise hinder the crawling of links by search engine robots for submitted websites to these directories.

My own personal flair: when I am submitting a personal website to a directory I tend to look at the overall quality of the directory.  At least quality in my opinion.

• Do they accept submissions from junk websites?
• Do they keep related websites grouped together, or do they dump a bunch of non-related links together?

Something that makes me consider a directory as not search engine friendly are the two questions above.  If I visit a directory and I see a link for a made for adsense pharmacy website in the same category as a webmaster forum: I immediately know that this is not the type of directory where I want my website endorsed.  This is a personal decision, and may not reflect the people that think along the lines of “it’s about quantity of backlinks, not quality”.  To me, these “directories” are not much different than a FFA pages, and hold very little value for the search engine optimization process. 

Undoubtedly others will feel different about this, and I’d love to hear some opinions about it.

“Why should I submit my website to directories?”

While others may have their own ideas as to exactly what these submission do and how important they are, here are a couple of benefits explicitly derived from getting a static, one way link to your website from a high ranking web directory.

1. Search engine robots love high ranking directories.  These robots visit high ranking directories frequently and actively follow the links placed within them. Namely; your website.  The benefit here: your website will get crawled, or visited, by search engine robots quickly.  This is probably one of the biggest benefits to directory submissions, in my opinion anyway.  You’re getting fast exposure for your website to the major search engines; something that will not happen with manual submission of your website directly to search engines themselves.

2. You’re building Page Rank with these directory submissions.  While the true value of Page Rank lies in the eyes of the beholder, in the right hands a high Page Rank website wields a great deal of power, and it is considered by many to be a sign of authority.  Having a high Page Rank website also helps you to charge a nice amount of cash if you’re willing to sell link space. . . and that doesn’t hurt, either.

This list of benefits is by no means exhaustive, but does give a simple introduction for those that question exactly what the benefits of directory submissions are. 

For those of you that know of more benefits, feel free to share them here.

Here are what I consider to be the 2 key core parameters that should be measured:

1. the qualified traffic a listing would directly provide your site with.

2. the qualified traffic that a listing would provide indirectly through better search engine ranking thanks to the back link.

Everyone will agree with what I have said so far! The disagreements start to come as we try to drill down and work out how to quantify these 2 parameters. The first is reasonably simple. Future traffic is not measurable today. It’s a guess, and the directory owner will not tell you how much traffic the directory is sending out in a particular category or subcategory. So this first parameter can only be measured after spending time and or money on submitting your site.

What is useful is if you have more than one site, try a directory, and if you see traffic coming your way thanks to the submission remember that directory!

Since the first parameter is not quantifiable it’s the second parameter were all the action is at. PR of the linking page, quality of the surrounding sites, quality of the directory as a whole, number of inbound links, …. there are a lot of possible factors to measure. That’s why toolbar PR is the way at the moment to classify directories.

Any other way is a LOT of work. So not having the time nor inclination to spend so much time on this I went to my bookmarks and pulled out the following site:

http://www.seomoz.org/tools/page-strength.php

It would be great if someone decided to use this tool for measuring directories.

I have to do some submitting shortly for this site, and I may do it for a limited list.

 

1. Published editorial/submission guidelines.
2. Editors that stick to these published guidelines (aka editorial integrity).
3. Unique category structure (clearly if your a geographic directory thats near impossible)
4. Quality sites in the directory (whether submitted by site owners or included by an editor)*
5. Quality unique descriptions that help a visitor to understand what the site offers without having to click on the link.

Ok these five seem to me to me the most important. There are more, but I believe that by complying with these five indicators, the directory is firmly on the road to achieving quality status.

I can hear the clamour of voices claiming that I have forgotten the 3 most important factors, namely:

1. SEO friendly back-link to the included site
2. Google PR
3. Unique design But these are not mission critical for any directory.

SHOCK HORROR, this guy is talking cr@p, I can hear most of you thinking. No its not cr@p, its just I am trying to focus on the end user. The end user is not the owner of the web site that is included in your directory. The end user is the visitor that is looking for a helping hand in finding information and has come across your directory.

I do believe that a unique design helps set the directory apart visually from others, but the key concept is content. Quality content and not that’s its pretty. Quality content attracts organic back links. Quality content is good for the user, and that visitor will come back to your directory.

So for the moment that’s what I think. I suppose those with more experience than I will be able to show me the error of my ways!

*Its hard to define a quality site, but for the moment I would say a site with unique authoritative content would pass this filter.

What future do nearly all the SEO friendly type of directories have?

Very limited. Those back links will in the future become completely degraded.

Why?

Well as we said before the only value is a SEO link for the website owner. I foresee the day that the major search engines decide that they do not wont there SERP´s been manipulated by these types of sites, and start to consider directories to be link farms. And link farms ended up like the Dodo.

If I was Matt Cutts (scary thought I know, but a mans got to do what a mans got to do!) I would simple stop all these sites from been able to pass PR. Simple. 

Why would I do this?

No new directories would be created with the sole purpose of offering a SEO link, because that has been corrected. And any new directory would have to offer some other value apart from been able to distort my ranking system.