The Secret seven steps, don’t tell anyone. When we register at a directory it’s a great “White Hat†statement to say the reason we are doing it is because people will use this directory and find our site and traffic / conversions are the goal. I have no issue with this goal however……. It is true that by registering at various directories we may get come click troughs of legitimate interested prospects. We may as well cut to the chase. We are all friends here, right? So let’s be honest with each other. What we want is a live link, no redirect trickery, we want it on a page that Google crawls and keeps in the Google cache and we want to choose the anchor text. We also want it on a page as high up in the hierarchy as possible. Why do we want this? So when someone goes to Google.com or the other search engines and types in our keywords we rank as high as possible in the results. So what do you look for when you are doing your directory registering? Here is what I look for: #1) It needs to be FREE #2) It needs to offer one way linking. No reciprocal link required. You do not need to add a link back to the directory at your site. #3) It needs to be fast and easy. If you need to register, wait for a verification email then come back I can register at 4 other directories in that amount of time. #4) It needs to not use HTML codes like NOFOLLOW. Code like this prevents the Googlebot from following the link form this site to yours. How can you tell? Go to a page in the directory. In Explorer click on View then Source. In this box click on Edit then Find. Type nofollow and hit enter. If the find box finds the nofollow code next to the URLs to the target site, www.siteurl.com the site is telling the googlebot to not follow this link. #5) It needs to be a live link, not use scripts or redirects. Put your pointer over a link. Right click. Go down to properties. If the address is something other then http://theurlofthesite.com then its some sort of redirect or script. Most often the googlebot can not follow this link. #6) It needs to be in the Google cache. If you have downloaded and installed the google toolbar, go to the page and on the google toolbar click on the i then select “Cached snapshot of page†If the page has not even made it into the google cache at least at this moment the link on this page does you no good at all. #7) Oh, and its really good if when you go to the directory the Google toolbar has at least some part that is green. This means it has some PR rank. I know PR means less then it once did but at least I know the directory is doing something right. Unless its one of the major directories like DMOZ, Yahoo or Business.com I do the above as fast as I possibly can. If the directory meets this list of requirements I register. I try to do this as quick as possible by keeping Word open on one tab with all the typical things like Site URL, Title, Description and so on so I can copy and paste then I open about a half dozen directories at a time, tab through them filling in the form then move on. Well, that’s about it. That is what I do. What do you do? If you liked these suggestions you could click on the little “Rate†link in the top right corner just above this box and leave me a positive comment in the text box.
Whats the incentive for the directory programmer if everything is free? I'd think a directory like that would be pay only.
I think you pretty much hit the nail on the head there Presentationrentals. Generally, I look for the same as you do. Sometime I will pay for a premium listing depending on the directory and the PR on that page etc. Paid directoires have their place as well. Some of the bigger dirs get huge amounts of traffic so paying 50 bucks a year for a listing can be worth it.
I don't mind if it has been crawled by Google or not, or it has PR. I don't spend time checking that, it's a waste of time for me. I can't know if a page will be cached or if it will have PR in the future.
I only worry about that if Im paying. In most cases if the dir has no pr it's because it's new. And unless it does something to p$ss googs off, it will get spidered and indexed eventually
I do much of the same. I have paid for a few however i have found many Free directories that give me more then the paid so it does take some research.
Similar topic here: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=41426 I also don't worry too much about 6/7 as long as there is nothing preventing the SEs from eventually indexing the page(s) and the directory looks serious (like it will be around for a while). I don't worry too much with directories that have obviously done a lot of work camaflouging AdSense amongst the listings.
Read some more tips about web directories here: http://www.stuartmchenry.com/category/web-directories/
Unfortunately running through your list of what to look for in a directory can take some time. Pages with PR are nice, but as stated above you never know about the future. That page with no PR now may have a PR of 5 or 6 in a few months, and vice versa. I usually just check for the redirects and nofollow. If I hover my cursor and get something other www.domain.com then I move on.
Great post.Not knowing much about SEO this has put my mind at rest. My directory conforms to all of the above except 6 and 7....but then it is only 4 weeks old.The main page is in the cache though so thats a start Thankyou for the info.
the best tme to get into any directories is when they're new, or the pages have no PRs. New directories have much higher approval rates than established directories. Directory links won't help much for SERPs, it doesn't make sense to check individual directories. The point is to get some directory links from a 100 or 200 submissions to statistically make sense.