Hi, I am happy to announce the interview with Interview with Bruce Stone owner of WoW Directory. Enjoy Interview done by Directory-Owners.com Q. Are you able to give us a short insight into your background? It’s tough to give you a short insight into my background; I’ve been in this business for quite a few years now in one capacity or another. I got my start with directories in the very early days of DMOZ. I left DMOZ and went on the Go.com Directory and worked my way up to a senior editor. When the Go.com directory went under in the .com crash a group of us editors started Goguides.org and another group went on and started Joeant. From Goguides.org myself and a few good friends and partners went on to start Skaffe.com. I had a project I had been dreaming of for a good many years developing the world’s largest local and regional directory but, until my health forced me to an early retirement never had time to do. When I retired I started working on WoW Directory. A year later I announced WoW Directory to the public. Q. How did the idea of WoW Directory come to you? I always hated how directories categorized sites from all over the world in the same topic unless the product or service was only for a specific region. In my mind it made for crowded and somewhat disorganized topics. I felt that a well done local and regional directory made for a much better web resource. When I discovered a good cross-referencing script that gave local and regional and general world directory listings to all submissions I knew my dream for the worlds largest local and regional directory could be achieved. Q. What was your biggest challenge getting the WoW Directory to where it is now? I think money to fund WoW was the initial largest challenge, now it seems to be talented manpower. Q. What promotion methods do you use? I use a variety of marketing mostly geared towards the small business and a few webmaster resources. Q. What are the main points that make WoW Directory stand out from all the rest? Wow has a base topic structure of 17,140 categories and 17,118 localities. The base topic structure of the world directory is carried over to every locality giving WoW a total topic stricture of 293,402,520 cross referenced topics. It’s a massive directory that takes an equally massive server to operate it. The cross-referencing makes it highly unique. For example a submission placed in Albany, NY will be in the Albany Directory, New York Directory, the United States Directory and the General World Directory. We also accept free submissions submitted correctly on Fridays, Saturdays and Sunday until 5 PM Q. With many website owners now placing high level's of attention to SEO, do you think that directories will have to evolve to keep up with the changes on the internet? A well operated directory is under continual development to keep up with the constant changes of the internet and the demands of the webmaster community. Q. Do you own any other sites or scripts? I own WoW Directory and WoW Yellow Pages and I am a partner in Skaffe.com Directory and Sporge Directory. My partners and I will be opening a cross referencing version of Skaffe sometime next month. Skaffe and WoW also have a variety of other services including blog hosting, website hosting, article directories and classified advertising services. Q. Who do you think is your direct rival in the directory sector? I don’t think major directories have rivalries. The webmasters who submit to my directories also submit to the other major directories and frequently call our customer service and ask where else they should submit. Q. Do you have any future plans to expand WoW Directory features? WoW and Skaffe are in constant development. We have been doing a lot of trial and error in the past two years with a variety of services. The new Skaffe cross-referencing directory is almost ready to launch and we recently opened free article directories on Skaffe and WoW that have gone over very well. Q. With WoW Directory when could you tell that you were on to a “winner?†My goal is to get people to use the directory. Few people actually browse directories topics but when the search is getting a lot of use and the users are showing a lot of page views I consider it a winner. A winner for me and a winner for my submitters. Q. What inspired you to create such an inspirational design for your directory? WoW is a uniquely different directory and I wanted it to look different. I put the unique design up as a 3 month trial. I had so much positive feedback and so many webmasters that linked to us because they liked the directory and looks we decided to keep it. Q.When you first started WoW Directory it was quite heavily promoted, nowadays it is not. Do you believe WoW Directory to have reached it panicle? Actually we spend more on promotion now then we ever did three years ago. We just don’t promote on webmaster forums and other areas where all the amateur directory operators spar for a limited business. Last weeks Google campaign alone was over $1,000 plus we were advertising in webmaster and small business news letters. I probably spend more in a month on advertising then the majority of these new so called directories spend in a year providing they even last that long. Q. In your view what are the benefits (or disadvantages) of running a directory? I love the customer service end of a directory. I answer the 800 number myself as frequently as possible and get to talk to a lot of new web masters just venturing out into the world of online marketing and advertising. Most are really great folks who have a lot of questions and I enjoy being able to help them. Probably one of the largest disadvantages is dealing with all the fraud and scams unscrupulous folks try to pull on directories. Ever time I think I’ve seen it all something new pops up. Taxes and bookkeeping used to be the largest disadvantage but I turned that over to an accounting firm and my wife. Q. What do you think are the main key points to a successful directory? First and foremost is good search engine concentration. If your topics are not cached well you can’t offer your submitters link value. Secondly good customer service and fast submission. Thirdly is integrity. You have to be able to turn down deals for thousands of dollars that do not meet your submissions guidelines. Q. With so many directories, what do you see for the future of the industry? I honestly don’t consider these so called directories with few or no cached pages and topics that don’t exceed three pages deep directories. They are just a modern day link farm. As for actual professionally operated directories there are not that many but I see a long future for them and an ever stronger directory search engine relationship. A quality human edited directory is the number one source for good quality search engine content and they know it. The search engines have gotten very good at crawling directories and can easily distinguish a real directory from a link farm. Q. In your view what is the biggest challenge for directory owners in this day-an-age? I would say the biggest challenge is keeping up with the demands of search engines and what they expect from us. Q. In the history of WoW Directory which days stand out most? That day has to be in early January this year when I received a bulk submission order for $5,000 in submissions from a large SEO service. We get bulk submission orders for one or two thousand frequently but a $5,000 order is not easy to forget and required working around the clock to process. Q Are you able to run a very successful directory and still have a personal life? I almost sold WoW because of the hours it took to operate it and the other directories and what it was doing to my family. I backed out of the sale due to the terms of sale and having a long discussion with my wife about our future. My wife has stopped working and now works with me full time as well as one of my son’s working part time. Now we are a family operation with reasonable and set working hours. So my family life problems were resolved, as far as a personal life I’m a miserable old gimp and never had one to start with. Q. How do you relax at the end of the day? I grab a cold draft beer and head for a big screen TV with surround sound. I also enjoy fine dining and gourmet food. It’s worn off on my son who is a culinary arts student. Q. What are your thoughts on SEO friendly links that are used within directories? Are they beneficial in your view or not? You can’t compromise the quality of a directory but you do need to make reasonable compromises, especially if it helps target market the directory topic. I allow reasonable anchor text after the full and complete business or service title in the title line. Anybody who does not want it that way is given and refund. As for being beneficial, anchor text done correctly is highly beneficial to the submitter and I have found it helps the topic in search engine results. It has to be done in a way that does not turn your directory into a link farm however. Q. What are your top 5 SEO tips for directory owners? I’m not an SEO expert just a directory developer and operator so I’m not qualified to give out SEO advice. If we have problems I hire an SEO service. A bit of advice I feel I can give out is that every page in a directory can be a target marketed marketing resource for your submitter. It takes years of trial and error script development. If one page is ranking better than another find out why and work on improving it. http://www.directory-owners.com/showthread.php?t=615
w0w definately wins me over for the hands-down best in originality and custom themed directory. thanks for that interview podman. you rock. Rob
The best design I have ever seen with a directory! I was very happy when he said he would be able to do an interview -Dan .
See how much it choked me up? all those type O's. The damn reply is almost incorherant hahaha. had to edited that one lol
This is another amazing interview Dan. Through these types of interview we learn a lot. Once again thanks for sharing it with us.
It is a very attractive directory. Kudos to whoever designed it. I find this comment interesting: That's intimidating/inspiring. It raises the bar for anyone who is just starting out with a directory.
/me shrugs shoulders. no biggie. time is what i have. and in time, my phpld directories will only get bigger, brighter and even more advanced. I did like the attitude he took. blunt and to the point, just like i am. bwahaha
He is right that SOME of the directories launched on the web are link farms, why there are only 500 SEO Friendly directories in Dan's List? And on others guys personnal or public lists (like mine) there are more than 1500 directories lol? Thats true, some directories are link farms, but in the way he said it, we could think its all of the new directories that are link farms and its not true . Not everybody can create a wowdirectory! Great interview podman , once again! Keep it up dude its fascinating