One of the best signs of quality is whether a directory is found in search results. If it is, especially on Google, take it as a good sign. It’s usually worth the money to buy a link from that directory.

• Don’t submit to too many directories too fast. Space it out over several months.

• Avoid free directories.

Directory Description and Anchor Text  

Search engines are well aware that SEOs use directories to promote websites, so they’ve developed technology to spot directory submissions designed to manipulate search results. One of the biggest clues is the use of similar anchor text and descriptions on many directory listings. Some SEOs simply copy and paste a paragraph from the website, which is never good. Try varying your anchors and descriptions.  

Directories also watch for SEO submissions, so if your URL is whitehorse.com and your anchor is “real estate agent,” then there’s a problem. Try varying that anchor to something like “white horse real estate agent” or “white horse real estate,” something that still has targeted keywords but is not as obvious.  

Watch competing websites in a directory and see what behavior is accepted. If competing sites are pretty aggressive, it’s a sign that you can be aggressive as well.  

Number of Links in a Category 

The more links are on a page, the less PR is passed, so look for the number of links in each category. If the ”real estate” section has 150 links and “real estate agents” has 25 links, then the second section can pass more page rank. Watch for the inbounds to each section to judge whether or not the link is valuable. If “real estate agents” has 25 outbounds and 5 internal links, but the “real estate” section has 150 outbounds, but 50 internal links and 20 inbounds, then the latter link is better.  

Also watch to see if the site fits in a specific category topically.  

Directories used to be an easy and fast way to get Google rankings, so Google had to diffuse this manipulation issue. The problem with generic directories is they might have a high page rank, but no content or real value from the user’s perspective. If all a directory does is sell page rank for the sole purpose of manipulating search results, then the search engines will want to discount it.  

It the past, it was pretty simple. For example, Bob the SEO dude got into SEO, and then realized he could make money from directories by charging for submission. He got directory scripts, built a database and rolled out a new directory. Then Bob ran into a problem…no one submitted.

"What’s going on?" Bob thought. Then he realized that he needed page rank, so he reciprocated, did free-for-all links and bought listings. Bob got his directory’s PR to 6 and started selling links for $40 apiece.  

The problem with Bob’s model is that his directory is built solely for PR manipulation, without any value to the end user. Obviously Google does not like those tricks; it wants to provide its searchers with real value. It’s only natural that search engines want to reduce low quality directory link effects.  

Many directory owners build multiple directories for nothing but SEO, which reduce their value.  

Determining Quality of a Directory  

A good way to determine the quality of a directory is to look at whether there are any good sites in that directory. If its listings lead mostly to low PR, low quality sites, then it’s not worth bothering to submit your site to it.  

Also, if most listings are empty, this means that the directory is either new or abandoned. A new directory may become good later on, so submitting to it may be worth the effort. Save the link somewhere and come back a few months later.  

Check the crawl date of the index page and of a specific page in a directory. If it’s over a month old, chances are the search engines don’t trust it. Google also makes a lot of manual adjustments, which can hit spammy directories. 

General high quality directories like DMOZ and Yahoo Directory still pass value to websites. Yahoo costs $299, but it’s still a good buy.  

• DMOZ

• Yahoo Directory

• Librarians Internet Index

• Business.com

• GoGuides

• JoeAnt

• Skaffe

DMOZ Directory

The Open Directory project is a free directory run by volunteers and enthusiasts. No editor is obliged to submit or review your website. DMOZ is one of the highest quality directories on the web, so make sure you build up your site a little before submitting, because it will go easier for you if you do.  

Though DMOZ is free, there are some editors who accept “bribes” and may list a site for a fee. The danger is that the site may be removed by other, more authoritative members, so several hundred bucks can go to waste. If you intend to do this, watch out for quality flags. 

Become an editor  

You can also become a DMOZ editor. Make sure to state that you’re interested in helping and have no commercial relations in the industry, nor SEO (this last point is very important).  

DMOZ is valued by all search engines.  

Trust Rank and DMOZ 

Google’s Trust Rank is an algorithm that helps Google fix some PR holes. Seed pages are high quality pages with links to other websites. A link from a seed page passes a trust score to the linked page, and then that trust score follows a pattern similar pattern to page rank. DMOZ is considered to be one of the seed pages (or more precisely a seed site), hence their link is valuable. Do not get upset, though, if you cannot get a link from there. There are many sites that rank high without DMOZ.  

Yahoo Directory 

The Yahoo Directory costs $299 per year. You don’t need to submit to it to show up in Yahoo search results, but your ranking will go up on Yahoo if you do. Google also trusts the Yahoo Directory.  

Some websites may get accepted for free, but those have to be non-commercial.  

Yahoo sorts its listings by link popularity instead of alphabetically. If a category has 200 sites, then the ones with the most links will show up at the top. If you have few links, it will take some time before your site shows up at the top.  

Yahoo Directory editors have a reputation for being picky as to whom they submit, but with recent Yahoo financial troubles they may loosen up and accept anyone who pays. Also keep in mind that Yahoo may still end up being purchased by Microsoft, despite all the drama over the past year and more, so a link from the Yahoo Directory is worth the price.  

You can search for a niche directory by using the format “keywords + directory” or “keywords + add URL.” Please note that some directories prevent the "add URL" part from being crawled.  

• Also check out business partners, distributors and affiliates. Sometimes they have directories or a partners page.

• The Chamber of Commerce is a directory from which it is worth your while to get a link.

Auto Forms and Submission Software

At all costs, stay away from submission software. It has no value and you will end up penalized by the search engines. Also stay away from submission schemes priced at $1 per listing (or similar). Those hurt instead of helping.  

If you do use an auto form filler, make sure to vary your information slightly and remove any trails that may indicate software was used. It’s generally a good idea to create different descriptions, but if you’re extra lazy at least vary them a bit.  

On the topic of software, stay away from applications that claim they can help you gain top rankings on search engines. Those go for few hundred bucks, but never get you promised results. Search is a billion-dollar game. A $300 program from Joe the garage guru will not beat it.

On the other hand, there are plenty of useful apps that help with overall SEO tasks. Many can be found for free or at moderate prices.  

Quality Game 

If you have a quality site, with high PR, but few editorial links, the site may be lacking in trust and get flagged for review. Internally leaked Quality Rater guidelines showed that despite Google’s war on spam, it may tolerate some degree of spam as long as there’s quality content, aka the formula “quality site + PR only links (non-editorial) = Google tolerance.” I won’t suggest you follow this formula, since going for PR links can get a site penalized by algorithms first, before human raters, but it’s good to know.  

Directories are good sources of links, but they are not the core of SEO rankings. You can still make a site rank on directories alone for relatively competitive terms, but it’s better to mix these with more editorial links.   

Don’t make directory buys your primary link building strategy; it’s a risky game that can backfire. Focus more on editorial links through content development, and then submit to directories. 

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IvanStrouchliak

The post Submitting to Directories appeared first on SEO Chat.

In this article I hope to give you a thorough and succinct brief on how to submit to directories, when to submit to directories and which directories deserve your submissions. I have been hanging out with several pieces of directory software (which i will talk about briefly) and a great directory submissions and linking expert, Dave Fuentes. I will be drawing on our work together to write an explanatory piece about directory submissions.

Directory submission is one of the most important things to do when you are link building. It is an assured way to get solid one way links back to your desired domain or sub domain.

Before we go into the details

This next item is a major issue. I discovered that several of my clients waited until the last moment to renew their URLs, and the URLs had been back ordered by domain name resellers. These resellers are currently selling us our domains, which thanks to my clients’ inaction are longer ours, for an extremely ridiculous price, which we have little choice but to pay. Now why have these URLs become so dear? It is because the web sites were great resources.

As you embark on your linking program, please remember to make sure your hold on your URL is extremely tight. Now I pay enough for domain names to cover several years in advance. This is important; fail in this area and you will find that after submitting your URL to 800-1000 directories (free and paid) you have no control over that URL anymore. Now we can go into the details.

The biggest directory project is the open directory project. If you didn’t know about it…well, now you do. Its also called ODP or the "Google directory." It is supposed to be hard to get approval but if you follow the basic steps you should never have a problem with the ODP (or any other directory for that matter). Other big directories include the Yahoo Directory; we will go into the hundreds of others later. 

Most directories have human editors and frown severely on multiple submissions, however if you have a big site with multiple categories, you can place your subcategories as sub domains and submit in different sections of the directory. For example, if you have a web site that has one category on Windows programming (software) and another on networking (hardware), if you divide both into different sub domains, you can put one sub domain under "software, Windows programming" and the other under "hardware, networking." It will not be considered spam since the two URLs cover separate topics. Note however that for branding purposes it is always best to have one web site which covers one topic, and in case you run into an overly strict "volunteer" editor (most of them are overworked and not paid anyway), it is sometimes better to submit just one URL to a directory from your site.

Directories want to offer a service. If they are good at listing, they get traffic; if they are bad, they don’t. They need relevant listings. This is why some people find it hard to get listed; a lot of sites try to get listed on unpaid directories without being relevant. This will definitely make directory submission hard.

Your directory submission should be done when your website is fully functional and ready for viewing. Some advise that it should be done once your domain name is registered, but then there will be nothing for the humans to review. You must have finished building the basics of your site before you submit your URL for approval.

Before submitting  a website to be listed, your site has to be complete. All the pages should have content and all the links should be live. Even if it is only a one page site, everything should work. Once the site actually has content on it, even if it is drab copy, it will almost always get listed.

Note that the content on the site should be "relevant" to the section you are listing under. Check and double check, and if you can’t find a category that explicitly describes you, go for the nearest descriptive terms.

Once your site actually exists (and not just the domain name) and the content is relevant to the category you picked, all that is left is for you to use the right forms for describing your site and the right titles and voila! YOU ARE IN.

How to write descriptions

It is best to keep descriptions brief, cold and detached — no superlatives, no "best Windows programming site in the world!" Try instead: "offers Windows programming information, tutorials, and resources for beginners to advanced." This is a pretty good description. You are not selling on the directory (well at least not in SEO).

The point is that you are generating one way back links. And the editor looking through your application may not feel inclined to list you if you stuff spammy keywords into your description. The absolute best thing to do is read the guidelines of the very strictest directories out there and model ALL your work after that. 

Note that it is a good idea to have several different descriptions and titles (anchor text) for the various directories to which you submit. If you do not want to overwork your imagination you could write five different descriptions and anchor texts; this could help with the amount of key words on which you are competing.

This is all general advice on submitting to a large volume of directories quickly. If you are interested in submitting to just one (like www.dmoz.org) there are a few tutorials here on seochat. There is a list of other articles concerning directories here.

Linking is basic; you get as many people as possible to link to you, and you link to whoever you want to link to. You can never have enough one way links. The more directories that link to you, the better it is for you. Most SEO consultants submit to hundreds of directories, and there are free resources that can help you (in a semi automated fashion) submit to thousands of websites. Any software that guarantees full automation is probably lying, since most directories now use graphical images (captcha) to verify whether the entries are being made by humans.

Most submission software offer great lists (all free). I use www.submithelper.com however there is some very good software that gets great reviews over at the Seochat forums. It is called submiteaze and it ranks number one for "directory submission software." Here is the discussion thread. Submit helper ranks number two for the same keyword phrase. Both applications work great but submit helper is free. It is similar to Roboform in that it auto completes specific fields in forms.

Submit helper also has lists of niche directories and paid directories. If your budget covers it, submit to every single directory that will have you (including any niche directory in your specialty). Niche directories are especially good at bringing in targeted traffic. This is good because it ensures that only traffic which has been searching for your site via going through the directories will get there. Some good directories for sites that sell online medications include www.rxlist.com and www.drugs.com. These are the biggest directories for this niches; there are dozens of others.

You should always keep it in mind that you are submitting to directories in order to increase your back link count. Note that search engines consider links from directories to be very good, since the links have been vetted by the human editors on the directory. A great list for some of the other top directories can be fond here at Blue Pearl.

Note that you don’t have to use the software to help you submit links to hundreds of sites, but it is far more convenient than just searching for directories and adding your URL to them. However some of the directories listed on the software listings (especially Submithelper) are somewhat obscure, so here a list of top directories that should juice up your PR when you get them to link to you.

Yahoo Directory Express is found at http://add.yahoo.com/fast/add?+Business. They charge an exorbitant $299 a year, and there is no guarantee that you will rank highly on Yahoo’s SERPs anyway. I believe this directory should be done last (if you want to be listed on it at all). This is a paid directory, as are most top directories apart from DMOZ. Others are www.business.com, www.joeant.com, www.goguides.com (these are all paid directories); also check out www.sevenseek.com, www.zeal.com, and www.looksmart.com.

Paid versus free

When it comes to links, I will take volume over quality any day. Get all the free links you can, then start paying for paid directories from highest to lowest cost. You always have to look at it from a cost benefit basis, and a lot depends on the size of your budget. A few hundred directories charge less than $15 a year, while several others charge almost $300. However you look at it, it pays to "go with the free."

Directory submission

Submitting your URL to directories is the beginning of your linking program. It is the easiest way to start and an assured way of getting non-reciprocal one way links. After this you can start actively link trading (which is like dating). Hopefully you would have a backbone of several hundred backlinks and an appreciable PR before you start reciprocal linking.

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AkinolaAkintomide

The post Directory Submissions appeared first on SEO Chat.

Web directories have been around for some time now. In fact this is how the ever growing Yahoo! began life on the Internet, as one the biggest and best organized web directories at the time (and even now too).  Web directories were the de facto method that many people used to find the information and websites they were looking for before the search engines because so big, powerful, and popular, and while the directories have been a lot less popular in comparison to fully fledged search engines in recent years, they are still the next best thing to searching and can have an important effect on increasing your search engine results pages (SERPs) ranking. While some webmasters may question the relevancy of directory listings in today’s web, suggesting that they receive very little direct traffic in the form of surfers coming from directories, you have to remember that the web is used by crawlers and indexing bots too, and they love well-organized directories!

Directories are not search engines; directories do not send out spiders that index individual pages and nothing is added to the directory autonomously. Directories rely on websites being submitted to them; then a team of actual people looks at the site to categorize it and check its quality and relevancy before adding it to the directory in the appropriate categories and sub-categories. Web pages in directories are not found using keywords (although some directory sites, like Yahoo! and DMOZ will let you search the directory and Yahoo! also proves directory listings at the top of its search results pages), but by drilling down through relevant categories until they find the category that the site resides in.

Because humans check the relevancy and informational “worth” of a site before adding it to the directory, search engines can rely on this process being carried out for them and that the sites have been described correctly. Directories don’t contain any of your site’s content; they won’t pick out information from META tags or page content or cache your pages. All they provide is a link to your site and sometimes a very brief description that you as the submitting webmaster would write. But it’s this link that can be used to improve your SERPs listing. 

Link popularity is still very much a big part of SEO, especially in the early days after a site goes live, and using web directories is an excellent way to build link popularity and increase your site’s SERPs listing, provided you steer clear of link farms, or directories that prevent the indexing of their links for some reason.  While everyday people will generally not use overly generalized web directories (but will still use specialist or niche directories if necessary) to find specific web sites, spiders will still regularly index them and the links they contain (unless they are blocked from doing this by the directory they happen to be indexing). 

The more directories your site is listed in, the more inbound links your site will be seen as having, which in turn will improve your link popularity. Link popularity isn’t the only thing to consider for SEO. It’s not even the single most important thing to consider. But it is still a highly contributing factor and should not be overlooked.

One of the best known and biggest directories in existence is probably the Open Directory Project (ODP), sometimes (most times in fact) known as DMOZ. This directory has been around for years and now lists over four million organized and categorized web sites. DMOZ has also been around for a very long time (in web terms). This directory is maintained by a huge number of volunteer editors that add new URLs of submitted sites to the relevant categories. 

Many other directories on the Internet take content from the ODP, including Google, so getting your site into it can reap huge benefits as your URL will be shared with many other directories, which means that your site will have many more inbound links and therefore greater link popularity. There have been concerns in the past about volunteer editors maliciously not adding your site to the directory if it is in direct competition with a site of their own, but this was some time ago now and generally, as long as you’re not a reseller, florist or have a site that is in some way illegal, you should now get into the directory once you’ve submitted your site. 

There are other rules and guidelines of course, but the DMOZ site lists these in full, so familiarize yourself with the submission process prior to actual submission.  As the directory is maintained by humans (it is one of the biggest, most distributed human edited databases in existence), getting your site listed can take anything from a couple of weeks to several months, and filtering through to the hundreds of other sites will take even longer.  But don’t let that put you off.

Another way of ensuring that you get into the directory could be to become a volunteer editor yourself in order to add your own site. While this may initially seem like a desirable scheme, don’t forget that as a volunteer editor you will be required to spend time researching sites and adding them to the directory, so unless you’re serious about being part of the DMOZ project, don’t waste your SEO time doing something else.  Also, if you just add your own sites to the directory and nothing else, your activities may well become known and any listings you’ve added may be removed. Directories, just like search engines, don’t like being deceived! As with any form of SEO, honesty is always the best policy.

Another of the bigger directories that you should submit to if you can is of course the Yahoo! Directory. Yahoo! doesn’t feed other directories, but because of the way its search results can tie in with its directory listings (especially in its paid services), inclusion in the directory is still advisable. Yahoo is one of the easiest major directories to get listed in, and it actually guarantees that you’ll be in the directory within seven days (provided you meet its submission criteria of course).

Remember that commercial sites do have to pay a yearly fee for the privilege of being in the Yahoo! Directory, to the tune of $299 ($600 if you’re submitting a site that offers adult content and/or services). Whether or not this is worth it really depends on the search engine for which you are optimizing. If it’s just your ranking in the Google SERPs then forget about it, but if you are especially keen on rising to the top of Yahoo!’s results pages it may be something to consider. One way around paying the fee may be to submit the URL of a non-commercial page of your site, but whether this will work will probably depend on the editor reviewing your submission.

When submitting to directories, your choice of description of your site can have a huge effect on whether you even get added to the directory at all. Try to describe your site and service as honestly and descriptively as possible. Directory submission is not advertising!  Do not try to promote yourself in the directory submission form, just describe yourself. 

As I already said, DMOZ particularly feeds into a huge number of other smaller directories, so going around the web trying to find as many directories as you can to submit to will be a waste of time because theoretically you will already have indirectly submitted to most of them. What you can do is look for niche directories that describe your site or service very well. If these do not take information from DMOZ, think about submitting to these smaller directories also. Don’t waste money paying to be listed though; money can be better used in pay-per-click or paid submission listings than on paid directory submission.

One thing that webmasters have been noticing recently is that when searching for particular things, sites like Wikipedia will often be higher in the SERPs that directory sites.  You can make use of the popularity of the wiki by adding an article describing your site or service and providing a link back to your site. Like submitting directories, this will provide spiders and crawlers with another route to your site, reinforcing link popularity. Because of the popularity of Wikipedia, you may also get increased traffic to your site. Again, try not to make it look like an advert; an honest description will go much further in the eyes of anyone viewing the wiki article.

So as you can see, the small amount of time and money that you will spend submitting your site to be added to directories, and the fact that for non-commercial sites this is free, make directory listings perhaps the easiest form of increasing link popularity.  It’s a bit like link trading, without the hassle of negotiating with other webmasters or worrying about adding links to other sites in return.

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DanWellman

The post Increasing Your Traffic with Web Directories appeared first on SEO Chat.

If you aren’t up to date on the news,  read this report on it.

It is my professional opinion that the link directory has been dying a slow and painful death for many, many months now, as if it was inoculated with some terrible and terminal disease.  Actually, I’ve been saying it for about a year, and like my opinion of reality TV shows, enough is enough!  I understand that I might anger a few with this article, but because I feel strongly enough about what I am going to say, I am willing to risk angering some in order to hopefully enlighten others.

First of all, one has to initially wonder what made the link directory such a hot commodity in the first place.  It was my honest opinion that the issues of link trading were vastly different than they are right now at this moment in time, and at one point the link directory was an important aspect of the Web.  Gone are the days where one webmaster emailed another and said, “Hey, give me a link on your site, and I’ll give you a link on mine.”  But then someone figured out that this was just taking way too long, and decided to automate the entire process, and spawned the dreaded link farms.

It didn’t take search engines like Google and Yahoo to figure out the main reason behind link farms was to inflate their link numbers and propel them to the top of the SERPs, so this practice was curbed pretty quickly.  It soon became necessary for folks to then find another way around the link farm.  But in the process of this, people forgot why they were doing it in the first place.

Let me pause here in my rhetoric to assure you that I don’t think all link directories are semblances of link farms, as I do not; nor do I believe that all link directories are evil creatures that deserve to die.  However, the few of you out there that created link directories to give the web surfer many options to find what they are looking for are, unfortunately, unnecessary anymore.  Let’s look at a few reasons why.

First, we have better search technology.  Link directories were originally formulated online in order to give people a better way of finding what they needed on the web.  But given that the technology of search algorithms has greatly improved, and is still improving nearly daily, it is no small thing that the directory would become one of the casualties of better search engines.

Second, people are far better at surfing the web than they used to be.  Web users are more educated about the usefulness of the internet search engine, and most people with internet access use them. People who said they would never use the internet are now not only emailing their grandchildren in Nova Scotia, but are participating in discussion boards and chat rooms and playing Mah Jongg online; it is those same people that have found the usefulness of search engines delivering exactly what they need to find.

Third, it is getting easier for people to find what they need online through a search engine, because dial up connections are the fastest they’ve ever been, and with more and more people moving to broadband internet, people get to spend more time searching and less time waiting.

Perhaps you are following me up to this point and can see where my logic comes from; perhaps you can even understand that the link directory is fading away as a natural result of not being necessary anymore.  So why am I calling it “Link Directory Genocide” if it seems to just be dying of natural causes?

While genocide is technically “the systematic and planned extermination of an entire national, racial, political, or ethnic group,” I apply it to the link directory loosely because, well, it is being euthanized, so to speak.  I certainly do not wish to offend anyone, so bear with me during my analogy.

In the last Google update, many link directories got hit hard; hard enough where any traffic was essentially…well, killed off.  In fact, it is my strong belief that Google terminated many of these non-essential directories in the SERPs with the latest filter purposely.  For the most part, directories contain no content, many contain only a myriad of links for sites that in turn link to more sites, and basically take the visitor on a wild goose chase.  Certainly, this is not what was intended for the Internet.  And, unfortunately, link directories as an entire culture are going to find themselves wiped out and at the bottom of the dung-heap before too long.  So why is Google fed up enough with the link directories to want to exterminate them?

Let’s try to think of this in perspective as Google perhaps may very well view it.  The Internet is like a great big road map, with links being the roads, and websites being the towns, cities, landmarks, and great historical places to visit.  Let’s say you decide you want to learn about the “women of World War II”, and you ask Google for directions by doing a search, because you want to be taken down the best road that will take you directly to the place these women reside so that you may hear their story.  You click on a link that has been returned in the SERPs; you may find this link like a set of directions, and set out to find these heroic women you want to know so much about.

You would be exceedingly frustrated and irritated, however, to find that the place to where you had been directed not only doesn’t have what you are looking for, but also has a completely new set of directions for you to follow, like getting a scrap of paper found during a scavenger hunt with nothing more than a clue.  This forces you to set out on the road again.  Imagine your dismay when you finally reach your destination again only to find a sign that tells you that you’ll have to take another exasperating new course to your destination.  It’s enough to make you throw your hands in the air in disgust and just give up and go home. 

This is how people feel when they search the web only to find a set of sites with nothing more than a bunch of links.  Then they have to scour around for the entirely new set of directions, which may in turn lead to a whole new site of nothing more than just more links.  In Google’s eyes, this makes a site not relevant to what the searcher had in mind when they clicked on that link in Google’s SERPs, even though   some might consider their collection a set of useful links.  And who will the searcher blame when he or she cannot find what they are looking for in the SERPs?  Why the person who gave them the original set of directions, of course.

It is those sites that have been getting the axe, burned at the stake and otherwise dispatched in the SERPs rather regularly, reminiscent of the Dark Ages, complete with morbid executions that seem nothing short of barbaric.  Perhaps Google hoped they would simply fade away in the face of newer and better search technology, and when that didn’t work, felt they had no choice but to take a far more aggressive stance.  I think that many of these link directories had been steadily losing ground for many months.  Some of those webmasters had enough sense to evaluate why their sites were on the decline, and change their sites into something redeeming that may be what searchers really want.  Those people are not to whom I am speaking.

It is to those KinderStarts of the Internet to whom I refer.  You cannot expect to forever keep your 10 million viewers and never update your site, or not provide content for your visitors and still expect to be a valuable resource for long.  If anyone is to blame, it is your selves.  So while I can argue that Google may be performing Link Directory Genocide, it is really you, O Link Bearer, who is actually committing Link Directory Suicide.  And the only crime here, ladies and gentlemen, is resting on your laurels in the Internet world.  It is almost shameful to blame Google for your own lack of foresight. 

“So now what should I do?” you ask.  Well, that’s a difficult question to answer, and it would certainly depend on what you intend to offer to your audience.  If you are truly about helping to collect information that will be valuable to surfers, then by all means do so, but make sure you add quality (and relevant) content to your pages, and not just a bunch of meaningless links.  Further, concentrate heavily on achieving high quality inbound links from reputable websites.  For those of you who have tried to get those precious links, then you know exactly how hard it is to do so.  No one ever said it would be easy, and anything worth achieving usually isn’t.

I want to pause once again to give you a word of advice: this article is not intended to scare you away from sharing outbound links, or to keep you away from linking to other websites.  After all, with the great roadmap of the internet, if you take away your ability to link to other relevant sites, then you remove the opportunity for a search engine spider to crawl among sites effectively.  Search engine spiders need to be able to not only easily crawl from page to page on one website, but also from one website to another.  (In another article, I will talk about why I feel being stingy with links may end up hurting you in the long run.)

I find it important to emphasize again and again how crucial it is to provide your website to people, and not try to please the search engines, or exist solely for the purpose of PageRank.  Ultimately, Google is as fickle as my cat, and no one knows what Google wants next or which way it will choose to swing the Reaper’s sickle.  You could spend your time running in circles, chasing your tail whenever Google makes a major change, or you can sit back, learn, and understand what Google really wants for the web: relevant sites with valuable content that will make people WANT to search for your site.  My advice is not to try to please Google, but rather to please your audience instead.  This is what divides the good marketers from those who haven’t a clue, and by catering to your audience you will keep your website away from the executioner’s axe.

These words may seem especially harsh to those who have great directories of great links to great sites, but there comes a time when the horse and buggy must be replaced by the automobile.  Times are a-changin’, and either we roll with the punches, or we will get left behind; battered, broken, and trampled on the mat.  My suggestion to you is to have valuable and unique content so that not only Google stays the execution, but so that your site visitors actually have something to read, and want to keep coming back to it.  After all, it is the content to be read that makes the Internet a useful tool at all.

For information about Jennifer Sullivan Cassidy’s professional search engine optimization services, please visit her site at First Class SEO.

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In a time when it seems you cannot escape web spam, spammers are finding more and better ways at creating the unwanted junk.  Search engine engineers work hard to filter out such garbage, so that the search engine results are relevant to a user’s query.  And while spammers seem to always be either one step ahead of the search engines, or able to exploit holes in algorithms, search engines work hard at fixing these things so that we have a better search experience.  However, we are still bombarded on every side with it.  We get it in our email, in our blogs, in our forums, and even in our link exchanges.  I want to examine a particular aspect of linking strategies that seems to be the target of spam filters lately: the link directory.

A link farm is a large group of web pages created that contain hyperlinks to one another or a specific other page. Link farms are normally created by programs, rather than by human beings.  They can also be defined as sites created solely for search engine ranking purposes that consist almost entirely of a long list of unrelated links. These types of pages are penalized by almost all search engines.

While “link farm” is an older term used to describe those types of sites; the term can certainly apply to link directories. Some of these programs are nothing more than random links on a page and really do not help one’s popularity or backlink value. These most definitely can be considered spamming.

Many webmasters understand the importance of having backlinks.  Yet some do not understand the difference between high quality links and poor quality links.  I have to caution many clients about the importance of being able to decline a link exchange request.  Why?  There are several reasons for my caution.

1.  You can receive penalties for linking to a site that is considered spam.

Think of it in terms of reputation.  Google uses the Hilltop algorithmic principle.  Hilltop emphasizes the voting power of what it considers “authority sites”; this involves analyzing the links between pages on the web on the assumption that pages on the topic link to each other, and authoritative pages tend to point to other authoritative pages.  In order to build your good, you must not have associations with shady characters.  Being linked with spam sites, or other sites that use black-hat SEO would probably inflict negative results upon your reputation. 

The same can be true for websites.  If your website is associated with poorly reputed sites, then their bad reputation can certainly reflect on you, and your search engine positioning.

2.  Linking to irrelevant sites does not help you in any way, and in fact may hurt you.

No one is exactly sure how a search engine ranks relevancy, but you certainly don’t want to give them a reason to consider your site irrelevant.  In an extreme case, linking to too many irrelevant sites might give search engines the impressions that your directory is nothing more than a link farm.  The consequences of this are not worth the risk of being banned in the search engines, all for mere hope that it might bring you a little questionable value.

3.  There seems to be little value in creating a link exchange with some websites.

There is much controversy among SEOs, webmasters, and designers over whether there is any value at all in reciprocal linking.  It’s a lot of work and effort to maintain a link exchange, especially in a directory form, as well as trying to find good websites to link with.  Some webmasters simply do not participate in reciprocal linking programs at all; instead focusing on receiving one-way links only.  I think the jury is still out on this one, however.  Still, the theory may be sound: creating link exchanges with blogs or forums (sites which are particularly open to spamming techniques) retain little value at all.

4.  Too many irrelevant links can be seen as spam. 

While you don’t see many link farms anymore, they do still exist.  In fact, they can take the form of a link directory.  If you don’t have organized, clear, and distinct categories of links, then your directory can easily be determined to be a link farm, especially if you have more than 50 links already on a page.  Having a link farm on your website will be one of the fastest ways to get your website banned in the search engines.

5.  You can lose PageRank or even be black-listed for linking to a spam site.

The consequences of linking to black-hat websites can be severe.  “TrustRank” is a term recently trademarked by Google.  In talking about TrustRank, Google says, “Web spam pages use various techniques to achieve higher-than-deserved rankings in a search engine’s results. While human experts can identify spam, it is too expensive to manually evaluate a large number of pages. Instead, we propose techniques to semi-automatically separate reputable, good pages from spam. We first select a small set of seed pages to be evaluated by an expert. Once we manually identify the reputable seed pages, we use the link structure of the web to discover other pages that are likely to be good. In this paper we discuss possible ways to implement the seed selection and the discovery of good pages. We present results of experiments run on the World Wide Web indexed by AltaVista and evaluate the performance of our techniques. Our results show that we can effectively filter out spam from a significant fraction of the web, based on a good seed set of less than 200 sites.”

In essence, TrustRank is a way to cut down on spam and filter out content that is not relevant to the searcher in order to bring them results they really want.  What this could mean to you in the near future is that linking to a non-trusted site would deem your site untrustworthy as well.  It is so important to be careful to whom you link.  Even without TrustRank, which has yet to be used by Google, your PageRank can still be affected.

A company called Traffic Power was a notorious SEO firm that employed various black-hat SEO techniques, like doorway pages and JavaScript spam; so much so that the company and almost all of their clients were banned from the search engines.  We have also seen sites that have linked to such banned sites lose their PageRank and positions in the results pages.

Directory Tips

There would be several instances where you might have a good reason to incorporate a link directory into your website.  You should never have more than 50 outbound links on a page, as this dilutes the page’s value.  If you have a variety of links and they are not all related, you will need to categorize them together so they are relevant to each other.  A link directory might be the solution.  Another reason you might have a directory on your website is to generate revenue.  In these cases, it would be advisable for you to have a link directory, but there are some tips you should be aware of.

1.  Use clear, concise titles and descriptions for your categories.  This will not only help those who wish to submit their links to a category know exactly where they should suggest their URL; it also gives search engine spiders a fair understanding what that particular category is about, and how to measure the relevancy of the links in it. Use a directory script that utilizes title and description meta tags, or breadcrumb navigation.

2.  Research sites that ask you for a link exchange.  It is becoming more and more important to know just who you are linking to.  Take note of the location of your reciprocal link, the site’s and the page’s PageRank, and scan the source code of the page to spot possible spam practices that could get the site into trouble in the future.

3.  Be able to say “NO” to a link exchange request.  If you cannot see the relevance of the site requesting the exchange to your site or you feel the site would not be a good representation of your values, then it is recommended that you decline the request. 

4.  Try to keep links and categories relevant to the content of your website.  If your website is about race cars, then it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to have a category for bridal accessories in your link directory.

5.  You can’t be all things to everyone.  Don’t try to include a broad spectrum of categories in your directory.  It is one thing for a directory like DMOZ’s Open Directory to have categories ranging from kids toys to barbecue supplies to furnace repair companies, because they’ve built their reputation as an all-encompassing type of directory: that’s all they are.  If you have a website about the care of kittens, you can’t be DMOZ and try to keep your site relevant to kittens.

6.  Clean out your link directory on occasion.  Even if you’ve already approved a link exchange with a website in the past, it never hurts to follow up on these links.  Many times, you’ll find that a site seems to be a good choice for a link exchange, only to find out in a few months that the site is no longer found in the search engines because they’ve been banned due to black-hat SEO practices.  The site might have gone under, or moved, so it’s a good idea for you to remove these dead links as well.

As search engines implement more filters, there is greater risk that even links from legitimate directories are being filtered out, or not being credited to your backlink score.  Many directories are link farms and additionally some search engines may even be filtering out some of the links from some of the legitimate directories, because those links appear random, and there is no way for a search engine to tell the difference between this new form of link farm and the old.  There is no substitute for relevant, quality one-way links from well reputed sites.

Do I think the link farm has been replaced by the link directory?  Yes and no.  There are many great directories out there.  The Open Directory, or DMOZ, is a good example of a directory that carries fairly heavy weight in the search engines.  Google, especially, pulls a lot of information from the Open Directory.  But even a link from this directory doesn’t carry as much weight as it used to.

Most search engines, which include Google, Yahoo, and MSN, use backlinks to calculate a website’s relevance.  It makes complete sense that if links are that important, that you should be cautious about which sites you link to and which sites you choose to have linking to you.  The link farm may look obsolete, but in many respects it has only changed its façade.  The link directories are not bad things in all respects, but I think they are being more closely watched to make sure they don’t present opportunities for spam.  All it takes is a few bad apples, and the search engines will throw out the whole bunch: yours included.   Keep your links relevant, and be picky about who you link to, and your link directory may just hold some value; if not for search engines, then to bring qualified traffic to your website.

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Traffic from some mainstream directories is often low and seldom considered as part of the equation. The potential of the directory listings as a source of potential link partners is rarely thought of as a strategy at all.

Directories have far more possibilities hidden within their listings than is generally thought. Many webmasters, and even some search engine optimization experts, ignore the less obvious value residing in the various categories.

By looking beyond the obvious single link and search capabilities of an Internet directory, a website owner has a wealth of potential link partners, waiting to be added. They are easily found in the leading Internet directories and in the many specialized minor directory listings as well.

Some of the very useful directories for link research include the Open Directory Project, better known as DMOZ; the Yahoo! Directory; the Google Directory; and the many specialty directories directly related to the searcher’s area of business.

By utilizing the appropriate strategies, directories are a gold mine of linking partners. They are simply begging to be mined by an enterprising and prospecting webmaster.

The most obvious Internet directory to start with when beginning a comprehensive link search is the well known DMOZ directory. With its complete category and sub-category classification system, any website owner can find numerous sites within their area of business.

If your website is already listed in the DMOZ directory, the first step is to go directly to your own site’s category. Within those pages of listings, whether you are in the global or regional category, will be some of your direct competitors.

There is no need to contact them for link exchanges if you are concerned about loss of visitor traffic to their sites. If you are not listed in the DMOZ directory, find the category where your site would probably be included. The process remains the same for finding link partners, whether your site is listed or not.

On the other hand, if your goal is to build what Google considers a “hub site”, link exchanges with competitors are a positive. For purposes of this discussion, however, the goal will be more straightforward link exchanges. We will focus on gaining additional incoming links for their search engine benefit, and on links for attracting extra visitor traffic.

Within the selected category, the listed websites are placed in alphabetical order, and the listings may include one, two, or even more than ten pages of sites. The important thing to remember is all of the listed sites are theme and topic related to yours.

The same concept can be used in the sub-categories and the higher categories in the same subject area. The listings are generally all related sites thematically. The same procedure can be used for businesses that are related and complementary to yours, like flowers are part of weddings, and therefore make sense for wedding dress sales.

The Yahoo! Directory provides a similar opportunity for the website owner. The Yahoo! Directory has many of the same sites listed as DMOZ. That is a given. There are, however, many more sites listed in Yahoo! that are not part of the Open Directory Project. That fact opens up many more possibilities for the webmaster.

When you go to the Yahoo! Directory, as with DMOZ, go first to your category if you are already listed. Select the most probable one, if your site is not included. Note that the listings are also in alphabetical order, and may have somewhat different descriptions than the DMOZ directory employs. Use the same procedure as before, and your list of potential linking partners will grow larger.

A third important Internet directory is the Google Directory. Using listings supplied by the Open Directory Project, the listings are very similar to those found in DMOZ. Google offers a major and important difference, however. Google orders the results from the highest PageRank listing to the lowest, making your sorting that much easier. Keep in mind that some of the PageRanks on display are possibly out of date, and may not reflect the site’s current PageRank.

If exchanges, for higher PageRank purposes are important to your site, then the Google directory offers what you seek. As a general rule, don’t let PageRank determine your linking partners. It is far more important to make your site helpful for your visitors and customers.

The major Internet directories are not the only game in town. In fact, because of their widespread popularity, they might not be the idea link partner hunting ground for everyone. A powerful alternative source of directory link leads is found in the sometimes overlooked specialty directories.

Often only representing one industry segment, these directories are populated with businesses possibly interested in links. In fact, many of the included companies might not have been contacted for link partnerships at all. The highly specialized directories for your industry and some small general ones might have the link partners your business seeks.

The first step is to search for the specialty and minor directories in the search engines. Enter combinations of “directories” and “your industry” and lists will appear. It won’t matter if the directories are paid or free for inclusion, as you are searching for link exchanges. If one of the newly discovered directories is free, however, be certain to get your own website included. After all, a directory is a valuable incoming link too.

Be cautious of possible link farms. Whatever you do, make sure your business is not part of one of them. Link farms and other so-called bad neighborhoods are specifically against the guidelines for the search engines. For inclusion of your site, choose only respectable directories. One way to determine a link farm is it will usually require many return links, and links for other sites. Don’t participate in such linking schemes.

Simply click on the links, one by one, and examine the sites carefully. Know something about the site. Look for contact information and find the webmaster’s name if possible. In your e-mail to the prospective exchange partner, be certain to offer some strong indication that you have actually visited the site in question.

Tell your prospective partner that you have already linked their site and you feel your site would be beneficial to their site visitors as well. A really good idea is to tell the webmaster of a part of their site that you found especially interesting and informative.

Place a link on your own site to the sites you have decided to contact first, prior to any requests. That is simply proper linking etiquette. It also displays your professionalism to the recipient who is probably tired of link exchange spam.

Be sure to always visit the site as well. It is never a good idea to link partner with a site you wouldn’t feel comfortable recommending to all of your customers. Your business and personal reputations are at stake.

Don’t threaten to remove the link to their site if they fail to reciprocate. If the site was interesting and helpful enough to offer a link partnership, it should be one you intend to keep, as a permanent link. Be sure to know your potential partner sites well.

As an additional policy, maintain a chart of all of the sites contacted for exchanges, and the dates and e-mail details of those requests and the results. Good records will also prevent you from constantly contacting the same webmaster, over and over, as a result of having forgotten their response.

Far too many people send e-mails without having visited the site at all. Don’t be part of that group. Know your potential partnership sites and their benefits to both your business and that of your visitor traffic.

The use of directories for finding linking partners will benefit your website and your online business more than employing the commonly used random approach. Most website owners do not have a plan for finding link exchanges that make sense for their site. A link only has real value to your visitors, if it has something in common with the overall theme and interest of your website.

The search engines, especially Google, reward incoming links more highly if they are related to the topic of the receiving web page. Links from similarly themed pages carry more weight with Google’s algorithm, than those which have little in common with the landing page.

Specialty directories that include your site within their listings are already themed for your topics. The other sites listed there will also be themed for your site. For more bang for the link buck, keep your links related to your web page’s topics and themes.

The page will receive a bit of a Google PageRank boost and a much higher level of incoming link popularity. Combined with a strong and properly focused anchor link text program, the added links will help to boost a site higher in the search engine rankings.

Conclusion

Directories are an excellent source of theme related link partners for any website. If the directory used for the search is a major one such as DMOZ, the Yahoo! Directory, or the Google Directory, sites with your main topics are readily categorized. Finding potential linking partners is very easy, using the major directories.

The smaller specialized directories provide unique link partnership opportunities, available mainly to those in your industry. Their included links are very closely themed to your site.

While searching the various directories, don’t forget to get your site included in their listings as well. And by using the many Internet directories, combined with professional link exchange requests, you can vastly increase the number of links to your website.

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Teoma’s History and Background

Teoma’s founder and vice president of research and development, Apostolos Gerasoulis, Ph.D, is a Professor of computer science from Rutgers University. Professor Gerasoulis, along with his team of computer scientists founded Teoma in April of 2000. Their single goal was to build a search engine that looked “at the Web in terms of subject-specific communities.” Teoma had the advantage of joining the search engine wars late in the game. This allowed the Teoma team to look at what the current engines did right and – more importantly – what they. Teoma.com was not officially launched until a year later, in April 2001.

On September 18, 2001, Ask Jeeves, Inc. acquired Teoma, paying over USD $1.5 million. On January 9, 2002, Ask Jeeves announced its successful integration of the Teoma search technology into Ask Jeeves. Ask Jeeves reported an increase user satisfaction of 25% and a site abandonment rate of 15% less after this integration. In 2002 Nielsen/NetRatings reported that Teoma had grown 175%, making Teoma the third most popular search engine in the United States.

Teoma 2.0 was released on January 21, 2003. The new version boasts improvements to overall search result relevancy, additions to search tools, and more advanced search functions.  Teoma currently powers Ask Jeeves’s primary organic results, and receives its paid search results from Google AdWords.

Teoma adds a new layer of “authority” to search results through something they call “Subject-Specific Popularity.” Google’s PageRank, simply explained, ranks pages based on the quality and the number of inbound links to a site. Teoma ranks sites based on related communities of sites that are “organically organized” and link to each other. It then determines which sites are most relevant based an authority factored, that is where Subject-Specific Popularity comes into play. Subject-Specific Popularity determines the authority of a site based on the number of pages that link to a page within the same subject. Teoma provides a nice analogy to why this is important. They write, “picture yourself in your garage, in front of the opened hood of your severely out-of-commission pick-up truck. You need help with this major repair, and you can either ask your uncle, who owns two cars but has never held a wrench in his life and happens to be visiting (similar to using other leading search technologies) or you could phone your best friend, who has a degree in applied mechanics and builds automobiles from the ground up in his spare time (similar to Subject-Specific Popularity). The choice is quite clear.”

When Teoma 2.0 was released it provided improved relevancy, more accurate communities, spell checking, “Dynamic Descriptions”, more advanced search tools and an expanded index. Ask Jeeves reports an increased “user pick-rate” of 22% and a site abandonment decrease of 28% since the upgrade. In addition, Teoma received a relevancy grade of “A” from Search Engine Watch, adding them to the elite group of search engines, which includes the likes of such others as Google, Yahoo, and MSN. By improving Teoma’s analysis of “Communities” they were able to increase the relevancy of pages by better evaluating authoritative pages. In addition, the “refine” search option found on Teoma.com enables searchers to easily narrow down their search results. Many search engines have Web-based spell check, and Teoma added this in its 2.0 version. Teoma 2.0 added other enhancements and features, as well as increasing its index by over 500 million URLs.

Teoma provides numerous methods to both refine your search and locate subject specific resources. Conduct a search on search technology and you will find on the right side a “Refine” option that presents you with useful “refinements” to your search query.  In addition, you will find a collection of “Resources” directly below the refinements option that easily allows you to locate “expert” sites on search technology. You will also see that Search Engine Watch is one of those results. You will also see the sponsored listings at the top, provided by Google, and you will find the Web page results directly below. Google is the first result for that keyword (and we all know why).

In addition, Ask.com allows you to search for anything and it attempts to provide exactly what you are looking for without the use of any “tabs.”  For example, I did a search on “picture of chair” at Ask Jeeves, and – guess what? It gave me actual pictures of chairs! Ask Jeeves calles this technology Natural Language Processing (NLP).  For a complete listing of technologies and features provided by Ask Jeeves, please visit: http://sp.ask.com/docs/about/tech.html.  For advanced search tips from Teoma, please visit: http://sp.teoma.com/docs/teoma/about/advsearchtips.html.

Conclusion

Teoma has come a long way since April 2000, and has achieved the rank of number three search technology.  Its unique method of providing relevant and accurate results makes Teoma and its partners stand apart from the other search engine technologies. As the features and index improve, Teoma will continue to succeed by adding partners and a more satisfied user base. It will be interesting to follow Teoma and Ask Jeeves over this coming year, seeing how they compete with the other major search engines.

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