Submitting to Directories: A Comprehensive Guide - How to tell which directories are better traffic generators?
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Don't take their word for it
Traditionally, Directories do not publish traffic generated by them. What little data is published suffers from two main problems:
- It is NOT independently verified
- It relates only to traffic the directory has received - not traffic it has generated
While the first point is self-explanatory, the second needs further clarification. To illustrate, one often hears Directories declaring that they has so and so many thousands or millions of searches. Even if it is true, which we cannot verify, what does it mean in terms of clicks? If the search results are particularly bad, only a small fraction of the searches will result in a click to a listed site.
If not PPC based, there is little incentive for the Directory to develop the elaborate and time consuming programs and database structures that will allow it to correctly record all outgoing traffic. Thus, even if they were willing to publish such data - they may simply not have it available! In short, the Directories themselves cannot be relied on for relevant and independently verified information.
Alexa ranking
Site owners and webmasters have therefore no alternative but to resort to second hand inference. The widely cited Alexa index is the most notable attempt to measure 'traffic level'. Alexa 'knows' about user's activity only if the user has downloaded and installed the Alexa toolbar. The 'self selecting' nature of the user population sample, which uses the toolbar, led many people to argue that the results are biased. Although Alexa registered many millions of downloads of its toolbar, there is no way of knowing how many of them are being used. It is also fairly easy to show that some of the sites that rank very high cannot possibly be truly that popular. (See list of top 100 sites here.)
It is worth noting that Alexa provides historical data too, of up to 2 years back. You may wish to consult that information, as it can be a real eye opener. For example, you may discover that a low ranking site is simply very new -- and the last month shows a remarkable increase in traffic. On the other hand, you may also find sites that while still ranking high have lost market share in the last few months, and may be on the decline slope. As an illustration, see the DMOZ graph.
It is common knowledge that it takes very little effort to pull a site into the 100,000 and better ranking range. It is also acknowledged that it is practically impossible to artificially boost a site's ranking below the 1000 mark. To make it easy, we'll divide the Alexa rank to 'bands'. Please remember that a 'high rank' is represented by lower numbers, and vice versa!
- 1 - 1000: Heavy weight, highly visible and influential, with excellent traffic generating potential.
- 1,001 - 10,000: Solid presence and good traffic generating potential.
- 10,001 - 100,000: Site has some presence, but is relatively a minor player.
- 100,001 and lower: Site is virtually an unknown. Unlikely to generate any traffic at all.
Please note - those bands are artificial. It is imperative not to be 'mesmerized' by the Alexa ranking and to attach too much significance to what may be, in reality, just a reflection of 'sampling error'. To overcome this 'myopic' view of the Alexa ranking, you are highly advised to use 25% as the margins of error. In other words, a site with an Alexa rank of 10,000 is indistinguishable from sites ranking from 7,500 to 12,500 and a site which ranks 5,000 is effectively equivalent to a site anywhere in the 3,750 to 6,250 rank range.
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