How to determine the Quality of a Web Directory?

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.