Major
web directories quality review
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Major web
directories quality review
What's
the difference between the major internet directories?
Some directories, such as the Yahoo Directory
(dir.yahoo.com) or The
Open Directory
(Dmoz:
www.dmoz.org) can get your site boosted more than dozens of weaker
directories. Dmoz
and the
Yahoo Directory are the
directories with the highest importance. Google puts accent on Dmoz listings,
Yahoo puts accent on sites listed in its directory when it comes to
displaying listings. Basically both Yahoo and Google credit the websites
that are listed in their directory, considering them more important than
others that are not.
Dmoz
is a free
web directory,
while the Yahoo Directory is not.
Submitting a site to Dmoz is
very easy, but most sites won't get listed, because the Open Directory
has very strict rules regarding submission. For small grammatical errors
or if your site is not compatible with multiple browsers, you get be
refused.
Very few websites are accepted into the Open Directory.
And sites that are accepted get much better positions on Google (because
Google uses the database of Dmoz to evaluate the
quality of sites).
It's commonly known that most websites won't even get reviewed by Dmoz.
If you submit your website to Dmoz,
they'll tell you that it can take months to get listed, if you're accepted
and there's no guarantee that your site will be listed. Many webmasters
complain that their sites don't even get reviewed by Dmoz,
various scripts and visitor counter programs can detect if anyone came Dmoz to your
site.
Unfortunately, if sites are not accepted, the Dmoz
staff will never let you know why they didn't accept you.
The Yahoo
Directory costs a lot, they charge roughly 300 $/year, which is a large
sum, most small businesses can't even afford this type of advertisement.
Being listed in the Yahoo Directory
pays off well to many online businesses. First of all: the Yahoo search
engine considers your site highly important if it finds a backlink
from the
Yahoo Directory.
The 300 $/year
sum is a recurring annual fee, this means that your credit card or debit
card will be charged periodically, without you having any control over it.
However, you can cancel your Yahoo Directory membership at any time,
theoretically this should stop the sums being charged every year.
Yahoo "reserves"
itself the "right" to refuse any site and there is not refund at all. The
submission guidelines states it clearly that the sum charged is only for
the review, therefore we recommend you to carefully check every corner of
your site if you want to submit it. 300 $ is a lot of money and if Yahoo
finds any small mistake at all, it will charge your card and won't list
you.
The Yahoo
Directory still remains the most important paid web directory, so if you
have a well built-up website with great design, compatible with multiple
browsers, then you should consider listing it there.
It's a proven fact that sites get high boost on Yahoo.com's search results
if they are listed in the directory.
Other major web directories, except the 2 giants (Dmoz
and the
Yahoo Directory)
are: Site
Sift, the Microsoft
Small Business Directory
(BCentral), Best Of
The Web, This Is
our Year.
The Microsoft
Small Business Directory
is a huge linkfarm, rather than a well-build up categorized directory,
like the
Yahoo Directory,
for instance. For only 49 $/year, BCentral can accept your site, it even
gives 3 additional links to your listing, each of which can point to any
page within your site. The submission
process is rather complicated, while the MSN search engine won't give you
much credit for your Microsoft
directory listing.
Theoretically,
having a listing in the Microsoft Small Business Directory will guarantee
your site's listing in the MSN search results. However, we have tested
this with well marketed websites and it didn't pay off. In fact, not just
that it didn't have any visible importance to our search engine ranking,
but 2 of our sites have dropped hundreds of positions on after the MSN
index. The listing in BCentral didn't contribute at all to our MSN
ranking, in fact, it had about the same importance as many other, lower
ranked site listings.
Many webmasters
consider that a few listings on important sites can give your site bigger
importance than thousands of listings on less important sites.
However, our studies have shown that often, sites using simple direct link
exchange can get better positions on search results than some sites with
paid directory listings. Note the fact that the Yahoo Directory
and Dmoz
are special categories, these always count a lot.
Reliable, good
smaller directories are Site Sift, Tygo, Best Of
The Web Directory,
This Is
Our Year, Incrawler and
others.
Payment is most
often one time payment/one time fee, done usually through Pay Pal,
secondly 2CO (2 Check Out) or by direct payment.
Direct payment
is less safe, while Pay Pal requires an account, which not anyone can
have, just people from certain countries, we recommend you to submit to
directories using 2CO, a practical online payment method: it accepts most
debit card/credit card payments from anywhere around the World.
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