My name is Jamie, or at least that's what it say's on my birth certificate. I wasn't commenting to pick a fight swedal, I was pointing out on some areas where you or whoever's site this is was going wrong, or at least to my view, we're all entitled to one. Actually I did go through pretty much every link on site: yourdomain, I didn't want to comment on something without checking, most of your indexed links have the same description I commented on, google's fault more than yours, if they indexed better they would pick up keyword content within your site instead of the bog standard one they have. Yahoo's is years out of date swedal, that was the only reason I commented on that. Google aren't. hope that helps.
At the risk of shocking Jamie, I happen to agree with him/her when it comes to empty categories. My directories are strong niche sites. When a great site submits and there's simply not a place they fit, I create a new category; even if that site might end up being the only site to be ever listed in it. Fast forward 6 months or a year. That great site is no longer online. I delete the listing. The category page has been fully indexed and may or may not have any measurable page rank. Why would I delete it? Leaving it in hopes that someone finds it and submits is a much better option then deleting it. When you make a blanket statement like "empty categories" are a mark of a bad directory, you are making a generalization that simply does not stand up to logic and common sense. Is a brand new directory bad simply because it doesn't have listings in every category? Is the inverse true, directories that have no empty categories are good directories? Overall, you make good points, but consider that broad generalizations can and will be questioned by others.
I agree with that and many times we will get submits in one or a few directories where a category had to be made for their sites and they either die out 1 year later or never submitted to the others. Many times im thankful that RSS feeds or articles are their to support those categories that have yet to be submitted too and allow visiters to have something to view.. thx malcolm
I think I might need to clarify my statement a bit. There's a big difference when an established directory has a few empty categories here and there, but when a directory has been online for a number of years and has a large number of both parent and interior categories that have never had a listing - that could indeed be the sign of a poorly run directory or at minimum one that could use a tad more advertising.
It's a good topic Getagrip, good topics with good discussion go for a good forum, makes a refreshing change to see this happening here.
This has more to do with the way any directory links to you, than it does to issues of PR and directory quality. This page explains more about the issue of redirects: http://info.vilesilencer.com/main.php?rock=redirects.php Basically, you don't need to worry about a directory hijacking your ranking so long as it provides you with a simple link, and that's one of the criteria for inclusion on the SEO-friendly lists.
usually a directory with a higher pr will help your site more. Just make sure that it doesn't have too many links per page.
I don't know about PR juice but I remember reading somewhere in my early days that 100 links per page was just about the max.
Right on. I can even tell you where you have read it. The magic number of 100 appears on the GG Webmaster guidelines. Speaking about which Dirs are good and which are bad, you can only tell it by your own experience or by a tip-off. If you have captured programming basics, you can tell the value of the dir by looking at the way it was built. For example, searchsight. Although it has PR5 (PR6 a year ago, if you know what I mean) it is a waste of time unless you pay for featured links. I submitted 2 sites a while ago just to test it. Oh my, these backlinks doesn't appear in neither Siteexplorer nor Webmaster Tools. And traffic-wise it is a 0, zero, nada!