Let’s start with the alphabetical categorization. This method in my opinion makes useless one of the main advantages of directory software site under the enviroment category of my directory because at the time that category was PR6, enough said). In addition to that the alphabetical listings limit the total number of categories by definition which is good for directory owners but bad for submitters since it means that if a directory becomes popular listings will quickly move in page 2 or three and if they want to go back to page one they will have top engage in a bidding war. Also after a while the necessery bid to get a fresh listing in page one for a new site might be really high (it’s easier to add 5$ to your listing to move it to page one than spending 100$ to get your site listed there). In all honesty I will stay away from bid for position directories that use this kind of categorization for the same reason I staid away from tag clouds. No cocitation, or to be more exact bad cocitation, that from my experience can do more bad than good especially for extremely niche sites.

The ones that use categorization by subject are much less in numbers right now and it was one of them that started this craze, BigWebLinks that is owned by the owner of Alive Directory. These are much better in my opinion because they can offer at least some basic cocitation. Of course since they mostly have only top level categories the cocitation won’t be great either. The reason that I don’t believe that they are going to expand their categories structure is simple. The less categories the strongest the bidding wars. However, even if some people get in bidding wars at first I am not sure for how long they will participate until they say “who cares let it sink”. In addition to that I really doubt that they will attract the interest of SEO companies since they usually work with a set budget for each client and in addition to that they will have to spend time monitoring their client positions in various bidding directories and as everyone knows time is money. Generally I believe that these kind of bid for position directories will do better in the long term but I personally decided to wait a bit more before jumping on the bandwagon of buying listings (I definitely don’t plan on creating one).

Directories, most of the time get traffic from long tail keywords so digging in your analytics might be a bit time consuming but in my opinion it is worth it. For example, at some point a couple of months ago I noticed that I was getting traffic for some long tail queries of a main popular query. I just did a simple change, created a category for the main keyword and added about 4 sites to the category manually. The result? About 50 additional uniques per day from such a simple change.

Another important thing with your analytics is to set goals, identify which traffic sources bring conversions and try to increase your traffic from these sources.

Hi Mike, let’s start by getting straight to the point. What was the main reason that made you start the directory contest?

Dimitris, first off thank you for these great questions. Have been seeing your blog around for a while and am happy to add something to it.

The reason for the contest was and is to create the platform to let the search engines build the biggest and best directory of directories. No other url has been listed by as many different directories. Many tools will be developed around this contest. Different search engine marketers will use different criteria to find the directories they want to submit to. Some will use the link domain feature, some will add keywords to it. You name it, everything is right there and ready to be used. I have seen many directories of directories, and frankly, none of them has impressed me. Including my own.

A few people (including me) have expressed concerns that since backlinks are allowed this is just another SEO contest. What in your opinion differentiates it from other SEO contests.

I don´t believe that those links are that helpful. What matters most is how much the search engines like your directory, which depends on many more factors. If you have credibility in Google, you won´t need backlinks. Some of the directories in the top 3 pages don´t use any. You can do the research yourself. This contest is not perfect, but if you know what to look for, you will find the directories which more or less shot themselves out there, as well as the ones that Google just threw to the top, without the directory owners really doing anything. Those IMO are the directories worth submitting to and they are the ones that pass on credibility to every website listed.

What do you think is the main motive of the people participating, $money$ or the brand recognition?

The excitement, the fun, the competitive spirit. And of course the money. Also: the forerunners have experienced a huge increase in submissions.

I have watched the results for a while and analyzed the backlinks of a lot of the directories participating. The amount of backlinks that a lot of directory owners have pointed to their entries is amazing, 5000+ in a lot of cases. Do you think that this can hurt these directories in the long term and get them penalized since this a highly unnatural linking pattern.

Not unless you have no other backlinks into any part of the directory. No, I actually do believe that deeplinks like those are very, very helpful and will strengthen the domain name which those directories are hosted on. And also, the common keyword denominator is ¨directories¨. I don´t see penalties, I only see benefits, huge ones from whichever angle you want to look at it.

There has been quite a bit of discussion about the rules, have you disqualified any directories up to this point?

At this point and time I will no longer comment publically about who is in violation and who isn´t. I have gone back to the basics and specified the rules as being ¨treat the listing like any other¨. If you have a script that creates meta tags for every listing, more power to you, if your featured listings get featured on the homepage with the right anchor … more power to you. Just don´t do anything that other listings don´t get.

Do you believe that the results of the contest will be valuable for the average webmaster trying to decide which directories to use?

Yes, I do. And the more time goes by and the more Google settles in, the clearer the results will be. I´m sure that there will be a lot more talk about it regarding which way the results should be used for the best benefit. Like everyone watching, I am learning as well and it´s fun and very interesting to say the least!

Thank you for answering my questions Mike. If there is anything else that you would like to mention about the contest feel free to share it with us.

I want people to have fun. The directory business is stale and boring. It needs life and creativity. This is only the beginning, I´m planning to keep things alive and kicking and am already on the next page when it comes to taking things to the next level. Anyone who has any input, bring it. Thank you for the interview, hope that everyone reading this has gotten a little bit more of an insight on what is about to happen here.

Now, back to our topic. As I gain more and more experience running a directory, I find that the most important thing when it comes to link building is sustainability which basically means natural, organic links. At first I thought that getting natural, permanent links for a directory is really hard. However, I must admit that I was wrong. What do I mean? Generally speaking the natural links that a directory can get are limited and they are links that all other directories already have. So what can you do and what more can you offer to attract links? Let’s take a look first at what is a directory or at least what it should be, a collection of useful links and resources. Are collection of links linkable? Yes they are!! Here is an example, I was searching big G for free icons. At least at the datacentre I am hitting result number three is this list. No original content but nonetheless, really useful content that has attracted over 4000 natural, permanent, free backlinks and I would guess a fair amount of traffic as well.
Of course, the problem with a directory is that people will not link as easily to a directory’s category, let’s face it blogs and even simple pages are more linkable than a category of a directory. A simple solution to that problem would be to add a blog to the directory, create your fabulous and useful categories filled with links and then blog about it and promote the blog story instead of the category. Obviously, the blog story will have a link to the category page or you may also use other ways to funnel traffic and link love to the directory but that’s your call.

Edit to add: A subject that I haven’t covered is how to promote your list of resources, here are a few simple ways (and an opportunity for me to test how my new theme handles lists :))

1. Social Bookmarking
2. Pinging high profile bloggers that blog about subjects related to your list
3. Doing a search “list theme resources” +site:.edu (or .gov) and sending a few polite emails notifying the webmasters that maintain the .edu and ,gov pages that you identify as potential link targets

Anyway I am mostly an observer for now, we will see what happens during the ending stages of the contest

The other thing is is that the results might be a bit skewed for a simple reason. From my experience directories can get quite a bit of traffic for specific queries. This is of course due to the fact that some categories of a directory (for one reason or another) rank good, while others don’t. It would be better in my opinion to have at least five sites submitted in each directory at different categories and then rank the directories based on the average position for five different search queries. This would also make it harder for people to try and manipulate the results by getting external backlinks.

Now, the real question is will I enter the competition? I just did, however, I have decided that I will not do any offsite optimization, I will not even link to the listing page of my entry from this post.

Good luck to everyone (you are going to need it to beat me lol)

Other noteworthy changes include that two of the most heavily marketed directories Alive Directory and Aviva Directory are finally getting the PR that everyone was expecting (PR7).

I suppose it would better to let things settle a bit more before I post my thought about this PR update and how it will affect new and established directories (like it or not it does affect them).

I have posted previously that in most cases we are missing the obvious. I believe that this is the case when most directory owners are promoting their directories in order to get paid submissions. Let’s look a bit at the potential clients of a directory.

1. Webmasters (Obviously), that in most cases have quite a few websites and are mainly making money from from CPC, CPM, affiliate programs etc

2. SEOs that are are offering directory submissions for their clients, either as part of the complete SEO service they are offering or as a standalone service.

3. Brick and Mortar Business Owners that are working on their sites themselves.

Most directory owners are going almost exclusively after the first group and completely forget the third one, which in my opinion is a mistake.

Let’s see why.
The first group, (webmasters) are submitting their sites mainly because of the potential SEO benefits, since even if the directory sends them traffic it’s highly unlikely that they will get a direct positive ROI out of that traffic through PPC, CPM etc.
On the other hand a brick and mortar company can have a positive ROI with just one visitor if it is the right visitor and as a result it is much easier for them to justify the expense of a paid submission.

The difference of course is that these people will submit one site and that’s it while webmasters will probably submit several if they like the directory. Yes, that’s true, I am not saying that webmasters isn’t an important target group, I am saying that we shouldn’t forget about the small business owners.

Of course, you might argue that these business owners that are working on their own on their sites will probably visit webmaster related sites as well. I may be totally wrong about this but I would say that the majority of them don’t. At least this is what I have seen the last few days that I was searching for potential sites where I could advertise and that have traffic from small business owners.