lately , i am working on adding sites to many directories, some are free, some cost money, etc. Very important to look at directory not only at front page, but in to inner pages. I really don't like, when link are placed on 3rd level, where you almost has no value to search engine. 2nd level will be your best bet for your money. another issue, i see, in some directories, main page has PR 6 or Pr5, and 2nd level page has nothing, and so on. That tells me , that something wrong with this directory, it can be, that structure not really good or just front page fake, or something. It's very rare, that if you have main page Pr 6 and next level is zero. In reality it should be around PR4 anyway , happy to get replies and your view on same issue.
To me it says how little you understand how PR works. In order for inner page to have PR there must be a dozens of backlinks pointing to that page. The question you must ask yourself and then answer is: to how many inner pages people are willing to link to give them high PR and if anyone ever bothers to do that? So, there is nothing wrong with directories but with people who never bother to link to their own sources in these directories. One small example of what I'm talking about. AMRAY Web Directory offers users to place "Vote for Us" box in their pages which will help them to move to the Top of the Page if people Vote for them directly from their sites. That will benefit their sites and us because that Vote Box will give us backlink and of course good PR, but guess what, only few hundreds from thousands of listed sites are using that option. I hope now you got some idea how PR works. fastreplies
Sadly, it's a common practice that many people use dropped domains with high PR to establish directories, just in order to make some quick money with link sales. If directory url is not related with directories/links in any way, it could be a good sign of dropped domain directory.
fast, i do understand about PR, and how its not the most important thing, you are wrong , that only inner pages getting PR, if i have link point to them from outside. It's just impossible, i have thousand pages in my e store, and as u will understand, that i have only most important pages are point links to it. A lot of my individual product pages have Pr2 or Pr1, etc.
If we follow your logic then every page in this forum should have at least some PR but it doesn't. Why? Because nobody are linking to them and in spite of DP has high PR other pages ranked 0. If only 50 people will link to your thread, then Google, based on it mambo jumbo formula, will rank this page at least PR1 but without backlinks... according to you, this page with your thread is useless. Does it helps you to understand how PR work now? fastreplies
I have quite a few pages across my sites that have visible PR and no reported off-site backlinks. For the most part, any single forum thread has a single link from the category page and a pagination link or 2. It quickly sinks within the category to archive pages with few, if any backlinks and no PR; so it makes perfect sense that the average thread has no PR. From what I've seen, off-site backlinks AND on-site linking impacts PR. It seems that if the only off-site links are going to the homepage, it's highly unlikely that anything other than the homepage has visible PR. It seems to take a goodly number of backlinks to the homepage AND to a number of internal pages before the internal pages show PR. I agree with the OP. A directory with a high PR homepage and no PR on internal pages usually indicates one of two things... 1. It's a dropped domain and the internal pages have no rank because they were not part of the original site. 2. The site owner is only working on getting links to the homepage and is doing little to no promotion of the individual categories. Either way, it's unlikely that the listings will see any boost in SERPs or PR. Generally, I don't pay much attention to a directory's PR when I'm submitting but I do tend to not submit in this case.
I find it harder to rank my inner pages, but I am trying and will continue to try. Especially reading what others think about PR on a directories inner pages. However, I have noticed a few directories for sale on flippa that i know were dropped domains with high PR and these were sold for over $600! I cam across these by accident when I was looking for a decent directory for a friend. It just surprised me that they were even allowed to sell these as an "aged, high pr directory". Anyways, please excuse the rant
1. Are you saying that AMRAY is based on dropped domain? or 2. Did you miss my post about how we're promoting internal pages? http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=2116322&p=15906661#post15906661 fastreplies
First off, you left off part of my point...A directory with a high PR homepage and no PR on internal pages usually indicates one of two things... I took several top categories at your directory and put them in Yahoo!'s Site Explorer, none had off-site backlinks. Granted, I might have just found the few that you haven't gotten to yet. The conversations might have pre-dated your membership here but there was a member who created a directory that would not accept homepage listings - every submission had to be to inner pages. (I think it was Old Welsh Guy.) It seemed crazy to many at the time but it got me thinking that he might be on to something. Conversations here and in the SEO forums (DP and elsewhere) made me realize that any multi-category informational site is in some ways a collection of micro-niche sites. With directories, each category and sub-category are the micro-niches. Once I realized that and started working on promoting my entire directory instead of just the homepage, I saw more non-submitting search engine traffic and PR started to be assigned to inner pages. Both you and the OP have done me a favor with this conversation. It would seem a number of backlinks to my categories are gone and no longer showing in Yahoo!. Guess it's time to do an audit and see what's what.
First it is wrong that people use droped domain for directories, may be 5 to 10 % but not more then that, second that the main page has high pr and inner pages are all zero, this doesnt mean that the pr is fake, you can check pr with some good tools, I thing that most of directories have thousands of inner page and all of them cant be have high pr, but if some directories have some inner pages of high pr it means that they have stronge back links.
I think putting your site on a few directories is okay. But I would imagine you would be way better off spending time to create actual content. Just MHO. But to each his own.... By the way, I still do some directories, just the few that I can actually see give me a marginal benefit.
well, i am appreciate to all your replies, and its very interesting to read all of them. There is a lot of directories are putting links to 3rd level , not even on 2nd. I would think , its just waste of link, not sure, but as far as i understand, 2nd level or inner pages would be the best ( after 1st ) , 3 rd one it's almost waste of money and time.
Couldn't agree more. I'd rather have content that attracted links than continuously chasing low value links. What's the problem with a listing on a category 5 or 6 levels deep if the category is cached and indexed on a fairly regular basis? I'd rather be listed there than on any page that isn't indexed. I know of several directories that are well indexed that Google will not show PR on it's inner pages, but they are well indexed and crawled frequently enough to keep my interest.
A well-run directory should eventually have categories several levels deep. Think about any given topic, as an example let's consider a fictitious site about Siamese cats. A listing in the top tier of a General Directory, assuming they have Pets that high in their structure, would probably include sites with info about snakes, dogs, birds, rabbits and cats. If the directory owner has broken down the pet category to include a sub-category on cats, the Siamese site would be listed with cat image sharing sites, cat forums, cat rescue organizations and a whole host of other topics. If however, the directory owner has created a 3rd, 4th or 5th tier for Siamese cat sites, now our fictitious site will be posted on a page that only talks about Siamese cats and thereby gains a much more powerful link. I'd take a strong topical link like that over a PR-driven one every time. Sure that deep category might not have any visible PR, but the link now comes from a directory page with a very tight topic. What's the point of getting a listing on the 50th or even 1st page of a generic category full of unrelated sites anyway? While it's unrealistic to expect all directory owners to go to that level of detail from the get go, once a category starts getting 4-5 pages deep, they should certainly consider adding more specific sub-categories to their site.
well, good reply YMC, but i run e store, where every category and pages for individual product will be placed on 2nd level only, this e-commerce package does not have 3rd or 4th or 5th levels, only second level. there is a reason for that. I will disagree, that 5 and 6nd levels are same value as 2nd and def. gets less power as link and not that often get indexed as 2nd level.
You see, topexnews problem, he believes in PR without realizing that the name of the game is being cached by SE and having pages ranked rather on merits generated by content and not by amount of backlinks. We're playing for the highest position in SERP, he's playing for the highest PR. fastreplies
fast, i am not playing for anything, PR is important, not 100%, but some percent, otherwise would be there. Whole issue i has with PR6 main page and zeros other pages, if it would be PR2 and other pages zeros, i would even care. That's all
I wasn't referring to a store going that deep. My comments were regarding directory structure. That said, there are plenty of stores with 4, 5 and 6 layers. The granddaddy of all online stores Amazon doesn't seem to have any problem with going that deep. A quick and random looksee led me to Books › Professional & Technical › Accounting & Finance › Accounting › Kindle Books › Last 30 days › 3 Stars & Up. You have to think about how people search for things, not just PR and SEO if you want to be successful online and sometimes that means what seems like a crazy amount of categorization. In reference to your original question, how a directory is assigned PR has a lot to do with the category structure - how well is each category indexed, how are they inter-linked and how many backlinks they each have. Making my previous answer more concise, a high PR directory with no visible PR on the interior pages is most likely a sign of an issue with categorization. As to running an eStore, I'll give you the same advice that I've been giving Etsians for years - Promote All of Your eStore.