What is Romow?

Romow is one of the most reputable web directories in the industry. According to Wikipedia: A web directory specializes in linking to other web sites and categorizing those links. Romow directory has been around since 2006 with strict editorial guideline. They regularly add (both old and newly emerging) authority sites in various fields on an ongoing basis. Informational articles are published to keep the category content fresh and useful for users. The navigational structure of the entire directory has been optimized for the best user experience.

In short: This is like the Yellow Pages on the web where you can submit your websites and businesses to be found by other users who surf through Romow.

Why submit to Romow?

Many webmasters and SEOs use web directories to get a credible backlink and exposure for their sites. Romow is one of the top web directories on the web. Some of the facts that you should consider:

- Google Pagerank 5
- 650,000 page views per month
- 150,000 unique visitors per month
- 570,000+ inlinks according to Yahoo site explorer
- All listings remain permanent (as long as the sites remain operational)

By submitting to Romow, you are getting a backlink from the category page, and your site’s detail page. You can also get a featured listing, which will be featured at the top of the category above all other listings to increase your exposure. (Submit to Romow Now)

Romow Affiliate Program

Romow has a very generous affiliate program for webmasters. They pay a 25% commission for each paid directory submission you referred to them. So for each regular listing, you will earn $15, and for each featured listing, you will earn $30. Payment is made via PayPal once your balance exceeds $50.

This could be a good campaign if you have a website in a webmaster niche. They have numerous banners that you can find once you signup to be their affiliate. (Become an Affiliate Now)

I joined their affiliate program, and I think the affiliate backend is easy enough for everyone to follow. All the traffic and paid submission referrals are monitored by their affiliate software in real time. Once you log in to your affiliate account, you can check your paid submission referrals, commission balance, as well as detailed traffic and conversion statistics.

Romow Blogs and Guest Posts

Romow has integrated their blogs and directory into one big platform. Their blogs contain informational articles on wide range of topics. If you are interested in Guest Posting to get some exposure to your writing skills and website, then you are in luck because Romow accepts guest posting. Their guidelines are strict to ensure quality control. (Submit Your Guest Posts)

My Review

I have been a big fan of Romow web directory since my early days in the directory industry. I have seen many directories come and go, but this is one of those sites that have continued to grow. Definitely Check out Romow.com to submit your sites to their directory.

While the directory industry is not dead right now because you can still make money from a general web directory. Sadly not many of these webmasters are catching the mistake and keep on making it over and over again. This mistake is Auto Approve added in the directories, or you can call it Instant Approval like Bruce of Authority Directory calls it.

This feature was introduced and made popular in the famous bidding directory script, phpLinkBid also known as phpLB. Now this is the biggest mistake of the directory industry. I am not saying that Google got angry because of the bidding directories because alot of general directories got penaltised due to their promotion techniques of buying links on other sites, but this concept itself just goes on to show that a directory is a peice of trash where everyone can throw in their links and write whatever they want.

All Directory Owners, should stay away from auto-approval. While it will save you some time, but it will cause your directory’s quality to suffer, and directories will be considered another paid links. Right now it is not because most directory owner/editors are charging for paid reviews. They review each site individually and its a review fee that the advertiser is paying them. If the site passes the criteria of the editor, then it gets included. So it is not a paid link. But by adding this method into scripts, and sites doesn’t give you any advantage but can harm you.

Eventhough I never favored bidding directories, but anyone who asked me which script to use to start a bidding directory. I said phpLD Bidding directory by the people who brought the famous phpLinkDirectory script to us. The main reason for that was because it doesn’t do auto-approve. It will let the user bid, but the editors have to approve the site and then it will appear.

Now I am keeping a close eye at the directory industry and staying in touch with some of my friends who owns directories. I still recommend people to submit their sites to directories, but not to ones which does auto-approve. If you want to know how to determine a quality web directory read my most where I set a guideline and give you a list of my favorites.

Hopefully directory owners and script developers will take this point seriously and not implement this feature in their sites/scripts.

Well this question was asked in my previous post by Pablo Savard. While it is an easy question to ask, it is a hard one to answer. I will try to do my best in explaining this because I believe many people have this question on how to determine the quality of a web directory. If you learn this, you will not waste your money with the spammy directory submission services.

Quality Content

Evaluate the content of that directory. Content includes, listing, articles, category structure, so first thing you should look for is the unique category structure. There are tons of directories out there and I can say about a third of them might have unique category structure, rest are just using the category dumps. Now you should look at the directory whether the site offers quality articles that is helpful to the users. Romow Web Directory has updated their design a few months ago and set themself aside from many others. Each category you would enter you will find related articles for the users. Last but not least, look at the quality of the listings approved. You need to visit few of their recent listings, or look at some of the sites they have approved to determine the editorial integrity. I once submitted to stpt.com and they rejected idk.in because they said the site was new, It have potential, but it is not eligible to be listed in stpt.com because my alexa was low and it was very new, so you have to check onto such things like that.

Whereas there are some sites that will approve just anyone. For example: SEO Court, this used to be one of my directory which I started in the beginning to practice and try the tricks and then I sold it to this guy. They did not change anything on the site. Didn’t update or did anything. Admin password for the directory admin panel was the same, so was the email. When I had the site, I advertised it alot, so it became a popular free directory when it got its PR 4. Now I tried contacting the owner, and he didn’t reply. I just wanted to ask them to change the admin email. Then I tried to login and see whether they have changed anything, and the password and user was same. This is almost about a year ago. I went in and saw about 32k listings pending approval. Recently, I visited that site and saw it got a PR 6 on the update on homepage, but all other pages were 0. I don’t know how that happened, but cutting the long story short you will see their latest listing page. It just approves about any site. Want to see a few example? This one, one more, and another one. No if you are thinking it only had 3 bad listings, its not true. I just pointed out 3 .. There are tons more. Focus on their editorial integirty because you don’t want to be linked from a site that also link to the bad neighborhood, such as MFA sites and others.

Popularity

Look at the site’s popularity. Well if you are going to submit to the directory, you should visit some of the main directory forums. Digitalpoint, Info VileSilencer, and V7N. Do a little research and you will find some popular directories. Try contacting some directories that you like, and ask them who else they recommend. I know I recommended alot of people to other directories. You can also use the third party tools Pagerank (Not so Reliable), Alexa (still somewhat ok), Pagestrength (Sometimes it doesn’t work), Backlinks (Do try different search engines).

There is also a few people who made a quality directory list which list popular directories.
Directory Rate, they have their own rating scale with their own algorithm. A bit questionable, but they still hold a good resource of directories.

Jeff of Aviva also created one long list of Strongest Directories and his list is sorted by Seomoz Pagestrength.

SEO Company.ca has also created their own list which is small but reliable.

Design and look

Do you notice that I put this last. Well it is going in order of importance and while this might not be very accurate sometimes because look is subjective, it does help. Directories with unique designs show seriousness of the owner. It shows that the owner actually cares about the site, and he/she will definately invest more into the directory, so your investment is not going to waste. Next thing you need to look in the design is the seo friendliness. Make sure that the content is above the other things because you want your site’s description to go above all things. Also check the details page.

Some Decent example of detail pages are

Genuine Web Directory
Directory Dump
Directory Journal

Also look at the overall look of the directory. Does it look professional or not. I will put down some of the good looking sites, and some of the sites that I don’t like the design of.

Good Looking Directories: BOTW, Aviva Directory, Authority Directory, GII, and Romow.

Not so good looking sites: Lobo Links, iGuides, GeeksLink

You need to look for eye-friendly designs. Good Color combinations. The site that I said were not good looking doesn’t have good color combinations, or they are not eye friendly. I have nothing against the users, so if you are the owner of those sites, please don’t take offense.

Above are the three things I look in the directory to determine the quality of it. Below I will be posting some of my favorite directories.

Bloggeries Blog Directory
Yahoo Directory
Business.com
Aviva Directory
Directory Journal
Web Designers Directory
Zorg-Directory
Authority Directory
Romow Web Directory
Blog Flux Blog Directory
WOW Directory
Skaffe.com
Seven Seek Web Directory
Madmouse Web Directory
eWebPages.org

Above are the top 15 directories that I would submit to when I go on submitting to directories.

I hope I cleared it up for some people. Feel free to add onto it, or if you think some point is not explained clearly do ask me the question or suggest me how I can clear it up more.

In a course of two weeks, I recieved a few emails asking me how to make money from a general web directory. Some asked is it even possible to make money with a General Web Directory? I don’t know why I was being asked so many questions like that until I realized I was getting a few hits from 2Blog.in where he called me a Guru of Directories. I saw this post a while back but that was the one that came in my mind when I wondered about that. Therefore, I decided to write my thoughts about this issue as well as some of the other well known directory owners in the industry.

I believe that it is possible to make money with a general web directory, but those QBC Directories (yes I know the term is overrated) doesn’t stand a chance in making good money as they used to. I would like to start out with the quotes and then present my own view in details.

I asked Mikey of Zorg-Directory the question which is stated in the title.

Mikey Replied:

Yes. It requires a lot of time and effort though. Money can help a lot but is not totally necessary.

I didn’t just want to rely on source therefore I also asked Bruce of Authority Directory

Bruce Replied:

Yes I think general directories can make money, but the directory owner needs to be patient. The directory has to be properly promoted, maintained and allowed to mature. It is not a way to get rich quick.

I also asked Brian of Seo Web Directory

Brian replied:

You can but it’s harder than it used to be. I noticed a drop in submissions since Google reduced PR, seems like people are losing confidents in general web directories. As you know there is more benefits to directory submission than PR. I feel that the way forward is niche directories.

Ok people we know what is going on with Google. Directories used to sell alot of links because people were abusing the resource and was trying to manipulate PR. Which made directory owners greedy and buy links to increase their Pagerank, so they can make ten fold of their investments. Which kinda didn’t work as we can see. Alot of people think it was not good for directories, but I think it was actually better for the industry. Now we will not have any more crappy directories.

How can you not make a crappy directory and still make money. Well first of all, You need to evaluate your options now. If you are into directories for money and quick money !! You are at a wrong place. You will not, let me repeat Will not make quick money from directories. So first thing is you can’t expect quick returns and you need to learn the idea of investment. You have to invest in your directories. Time (the most), skills, money (is good always). Google is banning sites because they are gaining links too quickly, and provide no content what so ever. If you work on a directory and have tons of quality listing then you should have no problem. Start with one listing in each category. Then go on from there.

Alright old owners like aviva and alive and dump don’t jump on me. I am not saying you guys weren’t doing that. I believe that these sites were manually penaltised because Aviva specially had tons of good content.

Let me get back to the point. The owner should have tons of resourceful listing in the directory. Do not start with a category structure of 11,000 if you can’t fill them all up. It is just a very stupid move. Start with little and go on as you go. Build your directory slowly and gradually and you should be fine. When I say slowly it doesn’t mean don’t advertise at all because that way you will loose business. I see alot of directory owners not advertise and then wonder why they are loosing business.

Now you need to make money as well. Let me begin with saying Adsense will not work with you unless you have something like Romow Directory. Basically what I mean is unless your directory is like a portal which have content, adsense won’t work.

Selling sitewide links is an option. Just use the rel tags. Just remeber that the more sitewide links you have the lesser your link value gets.

Keep your prices low. I don’t know what is wrong with these new paid directories that their prices talks to the sky when they launch. I don’t know what point the owners are trying to make. Maybe that they invested alot and their directory is quality. Well to tell you the truth, you won’t get a submission from me. Wait a year and then I might submit at your given price if you satisfy me. Just an example, when I started IDK the link price was $4.95 for regular, and 14.95 for featured. Once I got decent reputation and good ranking then I changed my price to $9.95 for regular listing and $34.95 for featured listing. Then once IDK grew more, I changed the prices to $14.95 for regular and $49.95 for featured. Eventhough I didn’t make money in the beginning, but I did gain alot of clients who returned and submitted even the prices were raised.

Always have a coupon mod. It will help you with SEO company submissions (I will come back to this point later). Every 2 – 3 months. Throw a special out. Don’t cut your prices down crazily, but give discounts. It will boost your sale for that month. Eventhough you will be selling for less price, but you will sell more and your profit will be higher!

Coming back to SEO Companies. As a directory owner, these companies are your friend. You need to offer them a discount. There will be some companies like Bob Mutch’s company, they will try to take advantage of you if you are new by offering you some ridiculous deals which won’t benefit you as much. Stay away from those. Example of those would be give us 100 free submissions as a trial then we will include you in our regular package where you will give us 50% discount. Don’t make insane deals like those that you will regret in the future. But as a directory owner it is your job to contact all the big seo companies and offer them your deals. Get some contracts. Don’t sound like spammy services who are like this is the best deal and blah blah. Sound professional. Get a decent written article that you can send to these companies, and most of them will reply to you. I got once 221 regular submissions on IDK from one SEO Company. Do your homework fellas. You would need a coupon mod for this because you can set coupons for separate seo companies.

Don’t set your featured link to be permanent. That is one thing that will kill you in the future. So make sure you keep your featured link to be yearly and regular to be permanent. Keep a balance in the directory so you don’t cut your sources of income. I believe Linkforever have a mod that take cares of feature links which renews and send email to the owner etc.

Alot of people think it is wrong to say that the review fee is non-refundable, but I believe it is not wrong to say that as long as you explain to the user why the site was rejected. You will get tons of crappy sites want a listing in your directory once you get big. You don’t want to let the quality of your site suffer and not waste your time. This way will help. If you refund the fees, it just proves Google’s point right. Paid directories are selling links not reviews because when you reject a site, you still have reviewed it, or atleast I hope no one rejects the sites that paid for submission without reviewing it. You are charging for a review which you have done, therefore you get paid for the review, and not for the link. If you choose to refund the money, it indirectly means you are selling a link because the submitter didn’t get a link thats why they got their money refunded. Alot of people are worried about Paypal disputes. If you have the latest version of phpLD. It already have the check box installed. By checking this box, user agrees that he has read and agreed with our terms of submission. If you have the sentence in your terms of service that your review is non-refundable. Then paypal will be on your side. I never lost a dispute case that deals with that issue.

Category sponsorship is another way that can increase your revenue. I have not tried this, but I know the sites I saw, this didn’t work so well.

Don’t try Daily Listing Mod. That just cheapens your site. I would rather list a random featured listing there rather than a daily listing which someone pays me for. That is pushing the limit.

A blog with a directory is a good combo only if you can keep up with it. Many people just add a blog, but their blog literally SUCK! Lack of content, or let me say lack of quality content. Alot of people do it for peer pressure, don’t do it if you can’t keep up with it.

Last advice I will give you all is that make a deal with yourself that you will add 10 quality listings in your categories every day, or 5. Set a number that doesn’t seem like alot, so It doesn’t become a pain. If you add 10 quality listing in your directory every day. You will be addin 300 listings every month, and that means 3600 listings every year aside from your paid one.

I wish you all good luck and thanks for all who think of me worthy enough to ask me for advices

Let me begin with where I got the Idea to work on this mod. There was a thread started on Digitalpoint forum by a member asking for the category icon mod. Shabu, aka Vegabond on the forum replied with a link to phpLD Forum thread which contains the codes.

Now all I did was use the smarty tags to show the images for only the homepage categories and show a default icon for the rest of the subcategories. To do this method you will have to get the category ID for all your main categories. You can find it by simply logging into your Directory Admin Panel, and than going to the categories section.

Simply look for the categories that have Top tag for their parent id, and bring your mouse over. Look in your status bar, and it will show the Cat ID.

Now download any .png Icon at the size you desire but make sure that all of those have same size. I prefer 48 x 48 px, and also for your sub categories in inner pages pick an icon with the dimensions of 16×16 px and name icon.png

Say you have 16 top categories, so get 16 icons and name them each according to their category.

So for example the icon for Art’s name will be 1.png

Upload them to your template’s image folder. Then open main.tpl

Locate:

 <a href="{$smarty.const.DOC_ROOT}/{$cat.CACHE_URL|escape}" title="{$cat.TITLE|escape}">{$cat.TITLE|escape}</a>{if $smarty.const.CATS_COUNT} <span class="count">({$cat.COUNT})</span>{/if}

Replace it with:

 {if $category.ID eq 0}<img src="{$smarty.const.FULL_TEMPLATE_PATH}/images/{$cat.ID}.png" border="0" alt="{$cat.TITLE}" align="left" style="margin-right: 10px; margin-top: 5px; margin-bottom: 5px;" />
{else}

<img src="{$smarty.const.FULL_TEMPLATE_PATH}/images/icon.png" border="0" alt="" style="margin-right: 2px;" />{/if}<a href="{$smarty.const.DOC_ROOT}/{$cat.CACHE_URL|escape}" title="{$cat.TITLE|escape}">{$cat.TITLE|escape}</a>{if $smarty.const.CATS_COUNT} <span class="count">({$cat.COUNT})</span>{/if}

This code will add unique icons next to appropriate main categories, and add a default icon to all the subcategories in the inner page.

This mod does require some work, but It is worth it. If you are not willing to work and don’t want the hassle. Rob aka An0n have a better version of this mod because his version have a backend also, so all of the main.tpl stuff can easily be modified through admin panel. He also offers very good customer service support, so If you have the cash and no time, than I will definately recommend him.

I hope this helped alot of those who were eagerly wanting this mod.

Show me some support and digg this topic as well as add it in other social bookmarks.

I will relate that to Google’s recent behavior toward directories because i believe Google is in its ovulation period at this time.

All of this started in late 2007 when google entered its Premenstral Syndrome (PMS) when the first mood swing toward directories happened because before directories were loved by google and was used by most SEO Companies for their clients. This first mood swing caused google to penaltised all the highly advertised directories such as Alive, Aviva, Big Web Links, Directory Dump, and many more. This penalty caused these sites to loose their rankings in SERPs to an extent that they would not even rank for their own name. Followed by this mood swing, there was a temperature change and made google more angry toward these directories, and then Google lowered their Pagerank (PR). Most of these websites i listed were PR 6 or above, and they were lowered to pr 3 and lower.

With the penaltisation of these directories some of the new directories got high pagerank and much love from google (Sudden Mood Swing). One of this love was shown toward Directory Journal which was awarded a PR 7 in a very short time, and followed on the next update it was as well lowered to PR 6. Google’s sense of smell was becoming more sensitive as it was taking more steps into the PMS. They started sneaking in and peeking at what was going in the directory world. Many more directories were penaltised and were degraded in Pagerank. Google was smelling Paid Links which were there since the start, but Google’s sense of smell got more and more sensitive.

Many more directories got penaltised and many other normal websites were penaltised as well, so it spreaded from directories to all other industries. This new penaltisation, degrading of Pagerank, delivered a shock to webmasters. More and more webmasters each day stopped promoting their websites in the hope that if they don’t buy any links for their website, they will escape the penalty, and when i say webmasters I am specifically addressing directory owners. What they didn’t realize was that without promotion, they will loose their targetted audience which was once (submitters) not search engine. Without these submitters, the revenue decreased tremendously for directories, and the war clouds started appearing on forums like Digitalpoint. Many and many sore webmasters took their pain and put it out in public. One of the most stupidest mistake for the lack of a better word. Main strategy of business is not to show your weakness, but many of the directory owners did that. I know many who did not, so if you didn’t then this means no offense to you, but if you find this offensive then you have some sort of guilt.

From those weak threads, the upset directory owners started battling against each other and biting each others back. Instead of reuniting many started making their own groups. Many of the big ones like Jeff of Aviva, Chris of Alive, and many others left digitalpoint because there were so many useless threads focused on google rather than directories. One man who i respect for his deeds and still will respect him for his continuous effort for reuniting directory owners, and that is Pete of Forplex. Eventhough his site was penaltised, he did not reveal anything. He tried to get directory owners to reunite, but trolls and many other noobs could not understand the wise invitation. His countless efforts were ignored, but the useless threads were the one everyone paying attention to.

Google’s PMS impacted the webmaster community tremendously. Many and many directories starting to drop out. Directories that called itself a users resource started dying. No more admin/editor submission on many of the directories. Those who stopped i think deserve to stay like this because they were never really a source for users. They were just selling paid links and trying to earn the money. While many were dropping out, Google had another mood swing, and it was this week when multiple directories were given an authority status.

Phplynx
Romow
Gii.in
Ask-dir
Allthelook
Cascandra

While this good news were sent to these directory owners, Google had another mood swing, and lowered the pagerank of directories to PR 0.

Alive, Aviva, IDK, Elegant directory, Directorydump, ewebpages, forplex just to name a few.

Now one out of the case story you will see is Aviva Directory which was once penaltised, it got its authority status back, and Jeff the owner of aviva directory explained how the process worked out for him on his blog.

Shortly after as you notice aviva was in the list of downgrade Pagerank as i mentioned above.

What do you think is going on? I think Google is in its ovulation period, and it will get angry if you do anything that is against their terms, so basically don’t make Google Look stupid.

In my opinion i think this is just a phase that industry is in right now which will go away sooner or later, and the directories who stay and survive will be the ones to enjoy the glory on the later days.

I get the question how can i still keep my directory to earn profit when these Google Clouds are over us and waiting to strike the directories with the lightning. Well i just wrote a good post yesterday about Who is your Audience?, so you should definately read this post, and please please remember that the people who get you revenue are the submitters not google. If you keep promoting through adwords, and eliminate the factor of pagerank you can still earn. A perfect example of this is Romow Web Directory which used to be a very strong Pagerank 6 website and it was heavily advertised through paid links and various different methods. It was striked by google and the pagerank went down to Pagerank 4, but Romow did not stop promoting. Their team keep advertising more and more. They never stopped growing. Now as you see Romow has set a new standard in the directory industry by coming up with such a phenomenal design and content. It made romow a much more quality site which got them a well deserved authority status.

Now aside from directories, John Chow was penaltised as well. He had a good pr as well which was striked by google and brought down to a PR 3, but as you see from that point on until now John Chow’s monthly revenue has increased tremendously as well as the subscribers because all the smart webmaster knows the answer to the question “Who is your targetted audience?”, and then they focus on their audience.

I strongly recommend the users to eliminate every thing else and focus on your audience and that will bring much success to you. Now i wrote this post just to get few comments from the directory community. What they think of the article and such. Where do you think Google is going with this paid link, and thoughts and comments are appreciated.

Here is what you will have to do:

Write a blog post (bloggers), directory listing, or figure out some way to expose balkhis to your users. The site that sends me the most traffic until March 11th, 2008 wins. I will keep everyone updated on who is ranking high. Feel free to use any image from this site. I will be adding more images in a day or two.

What are the rules:

• You must be subscriber to this blog.
• You must have atleast one comment on the blog other than this post.
• You must use the website you are putting in the contest as your main website (exception contact me).
• You must use a valid email address when posting comments.

Exceptions meaning, you are allowed to enter more than websites, but to do so you need to post a comment in this post and mention your sites, and i will email you (hence why valid email) that yes it is approved or not.

Prizes:

Ladies Only: You get to spend a 2 days/nights with me. *Just kidding* Real prizes below

• 1st Place Winner: 
  Custom Website Design by Uzzz Productions. (WordPress, phpLD or plain site) – $800 Value
  468 x 60 Banner spot on balkhis on the header.
  Balkhis T-Shirt
  $50 Cash – (Paypal Only)
  Blog review at Balkhis ($50 value)
  Featured Listing on Madmouse Web Directory and Deep Link Listing Web Directory. 
• 2nd Place Winner  
  468 x 60 Banner Spot on Balkhis
  Custom 468 x 60 Banner Designed by Uzzz Productions
  Blog review at Bloggeries
  $25 Cash (Paypal Only)
  Balkhis T-Shirt
  Featured Listing on Madmouse Web Directory and Deep Link Listing Web Directory. 
• 3rd Place Winner
  Free phpLD Linkback License for one domain ($25 Value)
  125 x 125 Banner Spot on the sidebar
  Custom 125 x 125 Banner designed by Uzzz Productions
  Balkhis T-Shirt
  Featured Listing on Madmouse Web Directory and Deep Link Listing Web Directory. 
• 4th Place – 8th Place
  Balkhis T-Shirt
  Site-Wide Text Links Under the Category Contest Winners

 As you see some of these prizes are offered by other webmasters and i would like to thank them.

Steven Lincoln of Madmouse and Deep Link Listing
David Duval of PHP Link Directory (phpLD)
Rob of Bloggeries Network
Uzzz Production Team

If any other sponsors are interested in offering prizes to Balkhis Contest Winners, please contact me using the contact form, and i will make sure to get back to you as soon as i can.

Well what are you waiting for get to work, you guys have only one month to win this contest. Spread the words.

If you haven’t seen Balkhis T-Shirt, watch my video about easy money online. I am wearing that.

Hoping to see some good results here.

This question was raised by a MOG at Digitalpoint:

I believe that YES the design matters in increasing the index rate and a better SEO. A smart SEO Company once taken a project, make adjustments toward the design and how the content is organized to shape it in a way so it is both user-friendly and Search engine friendly. While many webmasters due to various reasons could not get unique custom seo-friendly designs, but here are some advices that you might want to be looking into unique, or free designs when you get them.

Believe it or not, but the design does not have to be tableless. It helps the bot crawl faster if the site is tableless, but the structure of the content matters the most. Using the effective <h2><h3> tags respectively plays an essential role when you have the content organized.

In all cases of design how ever it looks, in the coding, the content should appear above everything, MOST IMPORTANTLY, the sidebar. Why? Because sidebar tends to contain multiple links, Site Navigation link, Sponsor links, Partner links, and such. 

Even if the design is coded completely tableless, it can have the sidebar before the content. Various ways to go about it and fix this issue. Always keep the content on the left side and sidebar on the right side and that solves the problem easily eh. Make sure when inserting the <td> or <div> it comes after the content <td> or <div> tags.

We can’t all have sidebars on the left hand side, because then all websites will look the same. Well now you need a good designer because their creative minds work miracles. They can have the sidebar on the left side using the div properties, or the Master Table law to make the design SEO Friendly. In all cases you must have a valid .css file. To check the validation feel free to use the w3 services because they exist for a reson. 

Div Properties

Div properties allow the designer to use the div tags with special css float properties. These may or may not require to make parent ids including wrapper, wrapper container, or whatever the designer calls them.  By using these tags wisely, it is no problem for the designer to make the content appear before the sidebar in the source file.

Master Table Law

Master Table law is a sleek SEO table trick. It is very briefly explained at Larry Swanson’s Website. I would like to summarize what the page says.

Basically when you start making tables for the content and the sidebar you make it in one big table, so instead of having two tables, you can have three tables and use padding function to make it fit your needs.

Follow the demonstration:

<HTML>
<BODY><!-- HEADER/LOGO TABLE -->
<table width="100%" bgcolor="#666699" cellpadding="5"><tr><td>
<p><bold>[ header/logo ]</bold></p>
</td></tr></table><!-- BEGIN SUPER TABLE -->
<table bgcolor="#eeeeee" width="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0"><tr><td valign="top"><!-- CONTENT TABLE -->
<table bgcolor="#FFFFFF" align="right" width="80%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5" border="0">
<tr><!-- MAIN CONTENT CELL -->
<td width="70%" valign="top">
<p><strong>Main Content</strong></p>
<p>Your important main content is right here near the top of your HTML code. </p>
</td><!-- SIDEBAR CELL -->
<td bgcolor="#eeeeee" width="30%" valign="top">
<p><strong>Sidebar</strong></p>
<p>Sidebar content comes second, after main content. </p>
</td></tr><!-- FOOTER ROW -->
<tr><td width="70%" align="center" valign="top">
<hr size="1">
<p><a>home</a>
| <a>site map</a>
| <a>contact</a>
</td>
<td width="30%" bgcolor="#eeeeee"> </td>
</tr></table>
<!-- END CONTENT TABLE --><!-- NAV TABLE -->
<table bgcolor="#FFFFFF" width="20%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5" border="0"><tr>
<td bgcolor="#eeeeee" width="100%" valign="top">
<p><a>Nav 1</a></p>
<p><a>Nav 2</a></p>
</td></tr></table><!-- END SUPER TABLE -->
</td></tr></table><!-- BOTTOM TABLE - OPTIONAL -->
<table bgcolor="#666699" width="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5" border="0">
<tr><td> </td></tr></table></BODY>
</HTML>After using the following text, you should not have any issues with indexing.Maybe now a few of you (or atleast i hope a few) will think twice before saying Ah, lets just start a site and get the design later.