Stuart McHenry - My Internet World

People often ask me what makes a good directory and want to know what directories we submit our sites to. So instead of just giving a list of the sites we submit to… I thought I would post a few of my thoughts on what I consider a good directory.

1) Must be cached in all three major search engines

I expect my sites to get crawled from the major three search engines and the same from a directory listing. If a page isn’t crawled how do you expect to get traffic.

2) Must have a substantial number of backlinks

You know you have seen them… the PR5 directories with a few backlinks from one site. I also tend to look at where the backlinks are coming from. It’s nice to see a few authority links in there some where.

3) Must get cached by Google frequently

Ideally a website that gets cached every 0-14 days. If it’s longer the directory might have issues and you risk no getting crawled.

4) Must be a top level directory

In the past six months too many people have decided to put a directory on an already existent website. (i.e. www.domain.com/directory/ ) I want a directory where the main business of that site is being a directory and not software or cialis website.

5) Fast submission review time

If it takes longer than a week then they won’t get my money. There is no reason for a service business to take longer than a week to review a website.

6) Is the directory ran well?

I look at the other sites listed in the categories I’m looking at. It’s nice to see a good theme going on. Some directories are too general and some categories have a few different themes going on. I also look for spammy sites… I don’t want my sites listed with spam.

7) No site-wide links

Site-wide links ruin the quality of a directory in more ways than one. If I’m going to spend money I want a directory that doesn’t have ROS (run of site) text links.

8) PR

We don’t focus on PR and there are a few websites that have low PR that we submit to but it is nice to see a little green.