SEO Friendly Directories...how do you know?

I see a lot of directories out there saying that they're SEO friendly, but how do you know if they are or not? Some don't even have page rank so what makes them not SEO friendly? If they have the same links spammed or what?

Also how do some websites get 80,000+ backlinks? Is there some automated program that does that because I find it hard to believe it was all done manually.

It's easy to see if directory is SEO strong or not.

Look on these factors

(1) Link pages' titles should have proper keyword (index of directory, category, sub-category - all should have their keywords in the title)

(2) There should be not more than 30 links per page (it's a highly disputable question how many links per page search engines love - but over 50 links per page for a directory is very )

(3) The pages with links should have much content. Now Google *loves* seeing the links wrapped with relevant content (link description is not enough)

(4) Directory structure should be nicely navigable, with links to relevant categories, top sites, etc.

(5) Better if directory has sitemap or RSS feeds - this helps search engines to learn faster about new links, and surely you would like your link to be indexed faster.


These are the tips that can help you to tell the junk from something that can help.

Some of them build links via link baiting (making your site something very worthy so that others jump out of pants to link to you).

Surely the link accepting is automated (tons of automatic reciprocal links exchange scripts/software)

Some purchase links in bulk - for example from blogs.

But to tell the truth, search engines frown upon too fast link growth. My experience is that below 100 links per week is very safe. Otherwise you jump up in rankings but can't be sure that Google will not throw you out of there quickly.

If you have a reputable site, you can fight Google and they (maybe) will put you back. But if you have a tiny forum and over 3 weeks you get 40,000 links pointing to your site without the actual number of members and traffic increasing 100 times, how will you explain the guy from Google when he contacts you? Just luck??

One BIG issue to remember with these as well...

You HAVE to ensure that the URL that your link is on is 3-4 clicks from the home page at most, And that the URL has no more then two variables. As an example, "http://www.directory.com/category/page2.htm" is great... "http://www.directory.com/?cat=category&page=2&start=50&pos=4&catid=43432" will not get indexed well, and your link will suffer.

Need to check that the links are "real".

Some of them link first to another site for a redirect from that site's database, so you don't get the benefit of the link at all. i.e. the link attribute doesn't go to your site.

this is more to be human friendly than SE, because SEs should allow at least 100 links

That is very true.

But, as we all know "should" and "do" are two very different concepts. The main thing behind the amount of links on a page is that when you get up over 50 active links per page, it really looks like a link farm, and that will de-value the links on that page, and the site overall, so it is a big issue to look out for as well.

the best way to get backlinks is to create an article and submit it to article directory, also do directory submission and link exchanges .

Submitting to good relevant directories is good.If they do not have a PR greater than 3 then it is a waste of time as it will have a negative impact on your site.



Lol, one can have more than 80,000 backlinks.
It completely depends on what kind of website you have and how relevant the links are.Along with this it is also important to give importance to content of the website as well.
In Feb 2006 Statcounter had a PR of 10, that's the highest with 1,330,000 backlinks. Do you believe this?
It is almost impossible to use any kind of automated service to get such outstanding PR results. The day on which you succeed using such automated services and achieve a PR 10, Google won't exist.

Agree with posts listed above

one more thing

if u have time, before submitting check

site:directory*.com
link:directory*.com
in google and in yahoo (linkdomain:directory*.com)

also check robots.txt file of that dir :-)

Cheers

Thanks I will check even though I'm not going to use it.

Hi,

Please tell me about SEO Directories and its uses?

Hi,

Please tell me about SEO Directories and its uses?

hi Hollow Cost,

freetraff rightly said about how to know a site is seo friendly. Every directory try to declare themselves as seo friendly, but it becomes your responsibility to know whether the site is seo friendly or not. let me add few points as follows:

1) see the source of the page to see whether the site is using any frame or not(if the site is using lots of frames then think thyat its not seo friendly)
2) see the catche page to see crawler is crawling or not
3) whether the site is using robots.txt file or not. if yes then see whether its using nofollow attributes. if the site is using no foolow attributes then dont submit your site in tthat directory
4) see wheather the site is using any ? mark in the url. if there is ? mark in the url then it can not be a seo friendly site.

I find the lists on the Info Vilesilencer site to be very good. Every month Dan posts a list of the latest directories that are free AND SEO friendly.

Regards.


David