In the spirit of maintaining a high level of quality to directories, I want to start this topic to help promote the idea that some actual thought is going into the links being accepted into directories. As we know, there have been some directories that have been penalized, and there is reason to believe that lack of quality could be behind some of this. I'm curious what criteria you are using to decide if you want to accept a link into your directory. In the list that follows, you can't judge by just one thing. You have to look at everything as a whole. Here are some of the things I consider: Good things: 1) Lots of good content with many pages of original text throughout the site 2) An active community with contributions from many people 3) Unique products for sale 4) Professional design 5) The provided a reciprocal link or paid for a reciprocal link 6) Provided a good title and description. The title provided was the actual title of the site. 7) It is the homepage of the site 8) In general, it is apparent that someone really cares about the site and put a lot of time and effort into it. Not so good things: 1) Advertising is prominently displayed ahead of content 2) The content appears to be in the form of search results or scraped from some other source. 3) The title provided was a spammy keyword rather than the official name of the site. 4) The submitted page seems to be a less important interior page of the site. 5) Site is about a topic that is known for spam such as pharmaceuticals, gambling and sexual enhancement. 6) Site convers a very controversial topic that might not be appropriate for some viewers 7) The title and description were not carefully written, and it is apparent little thought went into the submission itself. 8) They obviously did not search for the best category to submit the link. I'm sure there are more and would look forward to hearing your views.
Great post dvdual, I reject so many websites these days. Loads and loads of people create yet anohter oscommerce site or just any other clone, with no original content. When I review websites for acception into my directory I look at the following things: - design/layout and functionality of the website - topic and content (hopefully original but cannot always check, I'm using copyscape.com to check if I'm not sure) - I don't like if the site is entirely created for adsense with big adsense blocks all over the page - I check how many pages are indexed in google (and even check the whois.sc status if the site is not blacklisted) - point 8 from your good list.. You just know when you visit a website if somebody puts in a lot of time and effort to create a good website. I try to maintain a quality web directory, but I believe you contantly update the directory with topics and be strict who you accept into the directory.
Here are a couple of things I have rejected for: Site is infested with spyware/virus etc Site is a mirror of another site
dvduval - very good list! The only thing I would question was the idea of "professional design" of a site. If the site was very simple HTML with no-frills, but contains useful, unique information then in my opinion it's something which could add value to a directory. When it comes to advertising, I think it comes down to trying to work out what the intent of the site is - if the rest of the content is there purely to drive people to the advertising, then the value of that site would be questionable. If you (mentally) block out the advertising, and the site still has use, then I'd say list it.
Perhaps "clean & functional design" would be better Who was it who said, print out a page from the site, cut out the advertising, and see what what's left looks like?
I recognize sites often need advertising to help fund the continued improvement of the site, but when I feel the site was built with advertising as the first thought, and content second, then I just don't like placing them in my directory. I have done some paid listings that were like this, but I don't like doing those either.
I think it's difficult to come up hard-and-fast rules for stuff like that - it's like the perennial "how much advertising is too much, so I can't get listed?" question that keeps coming up. If I say "50%" is too much, then you can bet you would get a lot of submissions with 49% advertising.... So I defintiely think that the intent is the key to whether the site is valuable or not. Great discussion!
I think this topic is as relevant today as it was in 2005. People who want to have a directory don't always realize that there is an effort involved, and you can't just want for submissions to come to you. And when you do receive submissions you have to do things like rewrite titles and descriptions, and REJECT links that are not meeting a minimal standard.
I lost you right after you said that. What Design, and I mean any design has to do with Content? You will find thousands of Academic and Technical sites made in black on white pages sometimes without any Title and Meta Tags in header higher in SERP than their fancy over-presented cousins, which at least to me says that design is the last, if at all, priority on my list of quality sites. Yes, it's pleasing to look on flashier made site but lets face it, you can't hold plain made design against content and to deny site owner's listing just because there is nothing that caught your eye in ecstatic way. fastreplies
I think design can include the way fonts are used. Often content sites just need to be easy to read. That can be an art.