At the risk of being tarred and feathered on the forum, I have had a nagging question about what makes a directory SEF? While I understand the concept of passing PR's importance as part of a "SEF directory", I still don't know why a directory like mine using cgi is considered "NOT SEF"? While my directory does not apparently pass on PR, it is almost completely indexed and the inner pages are seeing toolbar PR and the listings are showing up as the description. So, Is a directory not considered SEF just because it does not pass on PR? or is there more to it? I'd really appreciate some solid explainations on this, as I'm sure I'm not the only person who wants to know. Thanks gang!
It is not just that it doesn't pass PR but also the fact that it won't help the sites listed with their SE rankings. A directory can have mod rewritten SEF URLs but that doesn't mean that it is SEF for it's listings. We could probably divide the SEF definition in two categories. SEF for itself SEF for the sites listed A combination of both imho is the best way to go.
SE friendly directories are generally considered as those that provide some type of (seo) benefit to the submitter; the listings are search engine friendly and will provide the the usual benefits such as link popularity, anchor text and PR. Links that are redirected are not considered search engine friendly and may only provide the submitter with the possibility of some traffic depending on the directory structure. URLs such as http://www.listmyniche.com/cgi/search/go.cgi?id=xxxx provide no seo benefit to the site listed.
A good way to tell if a directory link will be of value is to look at the Google Cache date of the page your link would end up on. If it is more than a month or two old, skip it.
In order for a site to be sef it needs to have at least the following. 1. Direct Link to your site. 2. Category pages should be optimized with the proper title tags, meta description, and alt tags h1's and a few other things. 3. url's pages should be static pages. but as long as they are getting indexed then it really does not matter. 4. Able to provide your site with the anchor text of your choice. 5. Have good backlinks from all major search engines. 6. Recached and reindexed on a regular basis. Directories that have these will be a great place to list your site.
What needs to be done at your directory is this: Look at this page: http://www.listmyniche.com/directory/Games/Online_Games/ The first listing there has a title of Free Flash Games (look familiar for some reason ). The Free Flash Games part should be a direct link to http://www.gamecapacity.com instead of a redirect. Do that, and you're all set.
Thanks Chris! Ok, I've made some changes and I believe List My Niche is now 100% SEF. All the links are live and link directly to the listings. I really appreciate everyones friendly advice. I'm getting over 100 submissions a day before it was SEF, I guess I'll be really busy now...