I have compiled a list of just ten pointers that I personally feel helps build a "quality" web directory resource. There are more people that I can name that are creating a directory every day, often forgetting the essentials to get the respect you need to create a quality resource for both webmasters & users benefits. I will write a short description of each point, for those who may not understand my points. ================= HTACCESS REWRITE (301 redirects) ================= I am taking a wild guess and saying that almost all reading will have heard of this. Many things re possible with this smart solution. But one thing many website owners and definately directory owners forget to do is select ONE option for URL rewriting. E.g. Your website is accessible via both http://domain.com and http://www.domain.com. Now why is this important? Having both URLs working without a rewrite can cause confusion, and often lower your chances of getting higher in SERPs as Search Engines will see two different versions of your site, and eventually you'll have duplicate content issues.. You can find a detailed htaccess rewrite tutorial at webconfs here. ================ Unique Content ================ Thousands of directories with the same category structures and often the same links in the similar locations! Unique content is important for any website, so why should it be any different for a web directory? There are a couple of good ways in which you can boost your directories uniqueness; - Creating a blog; Don't bother scraping others content, go ahead and write your own or get some else to write it for you! - Writing unique website descriptions; Maybe takes an extra five minutes per review? - Writing category descriptions; Be precise and on topic ================ Reviewing websites ================ Don't be afraid to decline websites! ================ Your domain ================ Some quick do's and dont's; - Say NO NO to dropped/expired domains; You can spot them from a mile away - Say YES YES to brandable one word domains; Great for branding and building a reputable business - Say NO NO to 301 redirecting domains to your index - Say YES YES to keyword domains, as long as they are on-topic; e.g. healthdirectory.com, not thisisonehealthdirectory.com ================ Empty categories / Filler sites ================ Add links throughout your categories to ensure there are none empty. Find authoritive websitesthat will help the general user when/if they visit that category! Not being able to find what your looking for is quite annoying! You may read the rest of the post here Cheers, Terry
That is really helpful article. Search engines index the site in both ways and there will be duplicate content for your index page. Thanks for the useful tips and guide
Pretty comprehensive guide, well done. Some extremely important points raised such as planning and reviewing each submission along with unique content and exposure. Many will do well to follow some of your tips.
Thanks for the kind words everyone As for the 301 redirects; It's basically the same as buying a dropped domain with Pagerank. But only with this, you redirect your dropped domains to an actual directory and sit till it gains PR. But I believe Google has been hot on this since day one.
No worries. Well sometimes, it's quite hard to spot them... depending on if they put relevant content back onto the domain. But.. Some people often buy a PR domain, and upload PHPLD and expect the money to start rolling the same day, but a few things to look out for; Way back machine (archive.org) Sites cache - Is it a parked domain page? etc Random domain names - mesothelioma-articles.com (for e.g.) running a directory? Doesn't sound right to me! They are three things that you can normally tell that the person is looking for some quick $$$$. Hope that helps..
thanks for sharing, just started my directory couple of days ago. It seems that there are so many directories these days that I dont even know why google would even pay attention to any of them.
Its simple. If directory masters are reviewing sites and doing a reasonable job the links have a value to Google. This is why they are penalising the QBC and trying to normalise the market.
I am having problems with this since installing a wordpress blog on LinkLister. I have tries to edit my htaccess with the 301 rewrite but it hasn't worked. I want to redirect http://linklister.co.uk to http://www.linklister.co.uk. I've tried a few different things but no success yet
Below is the general code to do this; Options +FollowSymlinks RewriteEngine on rewritecond %{http_host} ^domain.com [nc] rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/$1 [r=301,nc] Code (markup): Of course change your domain.com etc, if you'd like me to take a look at your .htaccess file then do let me know.
Great article - I'm planning on using a lot of your tips for my directory I'm working on... (once I get the darn thing installed & working.)