7 Steps on how to spot a Good Web Directory
One of the links building strategies webmasters use, is to submit their sites to general and niche directories. In this article i will teach you how to spot a good web directory, and i will also provide you my list:)
Updated on February 2010
Due to premium directories popularity and their income, everybody and their moms, started to create directories sites a few years ago. At first look it wasn’t a bad thing, but at the second look we had, we observed tons of trash directories, run by people that have no idea about SEO, so it won’t do you any good, actually bad things in some cases. 88 millions directories in Google search for “Directories”, in English language, and i bet 1 million of these are decent, or good.
There are tons of directories lists and promotions services offered by clueless people to submit your sites to 1 mil directories, and you will rank in TOP 10 Google. That’s a lie, don’t buy that please( they are rare exceptions, yes) . Do it your self. But first understand that only a few directories have high authority, the rest have medium, or low, or none at all.
To promote my sites, I searched a few lists, and browsed a few directories, and from like 1000 directories i choosed around 50 as free quality directories, yes, there is much trash on the net, but lately Google is taking care of them.
Remember submitting to web directories is just a part of promoting your site, but not the only one. Of course if you get a link in Dmoz and Yahoo Dir (paid), it will help a lot, because those are most important to Google and probably other search engines too.
So how you spot a quality directory? You need to do a little researching for this.
1. First find out when the website was last time Google indexed the site, look at the latest links added on the directory and on read more option look for the date to see the latest activity.
2. Check how many indexed pages, the directory has. If we have a domain from 2001, and he has only 2000 indexed pages, that directory is either penalized by Google, or we have a inactive site, or it only accepts quality sites, but from 2001 to 2008 he should have at least 5k to 10k pages indexed, in my humble opinion.
3. Check if he has a listing on DMOZ, and Yahoo Dir. (that’s a big plus)
4. Check the domain age, another factor in authority algorithm.
5. Check how many backlinks the Directory has and their quality with http://search.yahoo.com
6. ~ Optional ~ Check his Alexa rank, a rank on 10k-200k is a good rank for a site with nice traffic, but this only applies to those visitors with Alexa installed, so it not that accurate as it should.
7. See if he ranks for his primary title, on Google, for example if the directory is named “Best Web Directory” this is the title of the directory, so search exact this title on Google, and if you don’t find on the first places, usually the first should be, that directory is penalized by Google for some reason.
8. Check if the site has .wiki and .edu, .gov links, those ads juice to the page strength, authority, because search engines find these some more valuable then the links coming from .com, .net etc.
7. Check his Google Page Rank, though it not that important, cause it wont help you much, it helps the directory, by a better frequency on crawling and other factors, but don’t go crazy for page rank, it wont help you in ranking, only just a little, it a part of it, and remember only a few directories will give you page rank. Ranking well (top 10) with your keywords it more important then having pagerank 10 or w/e.
I hope this articles helps all the webmasters out there, and if it does, drop by my blog and give me a shout, comment, on improving, or whatever.
Below there is a link with a lits i made recently on free web directories choosed according to the factors above and other things:
Have a great web promotion day!
Tags: alexa, backlinks, free web directories, good web directories, google, quality directory, ranking, serps
