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Directory Submission (In: General Search Engine Optimization)
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vculp
Joined: Mar 30, 2006
# Posts: 89
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Posted: 2006-Apr-07 00:51
Well I feel this is a dumb question ... but I hope someone can provide some advice.
Last week I submitted my directory for inclusion in "Directory Critic" a web site listing many other directories. However the submission was declined, saying that the site is not search engine friendly.
Does anyone have any advice / opinion on why this might be? I have been thinking about this a lot and have decided I need some advice. Perhpas someone here can help. My site is in my profile.
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portprophecy
Joined: Jan 26, 2005
# Posts: 14
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Posted: 2006-Apr-07 15:49
When people refer to a directory as "SEO friendly" what they actually mean is that this particular directory does not use redirects, jump links, or no follow tags. How do can you determine whether a directory uses these quickly? Here's how:
REDIRECTS/JUMP LINKS
The main thing to being search engine friendly is NOT having redirects. In other words, make sure you are providing me with a direct link to my site. for instance:
(1) [http://www.mysite.com] (good)
(2) [http://www.directory.com/dir.cgi?id=1431434817612] (very bad)
Redirects won't count as a backlink in search engines, after all, the directory is not actually linking to YOUR site. To check a directory to see if it's using redirect links, simply place your mouse over a few listings. If the status bar in your browser shows a url that belongs to the directory (like ex. 2 above), then the link is a redirect, and being listed is of no value.
One word of caution. I have found a couple directories in the past that use redirects, but use javascript to deceptively show you your address in the status bar, to make you think it's SEO-friendly.
NOFOLLOW TAGS
Nofollow tags tell search engine spiders to ignore your link, rendering the directory practically worthless to be listed in. To check for nofollow tags:
(1) Check the robots.txt file to see if spiders are not disallowed from crawling the pages where the listings are shown.
(2) Check the meta tags of listings page to make sure that spiders are not prevented from indexing the page. Ex: meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow". If it says noindex or nofollow, then don't bother submitting.
(3) Check a few typical links for the anchor tag contains rel="nofollow". If present, then your link won't be followed by search engine spiders.
(4) THE EASIEST WAY TO CHECK for nofollow is for Firefox users. Download this really nice extension from this page. It includes many useful features for webmasters including an option to highlight all NOFOLLOW links on a page.
MOD REWRITE
Another good idea for a directory is having mod rewrite, although not as big a sin as redirects and nofollow tags. What is mod rewrite? It's changing a directory structure that looks something like this #1 below, into #2:
(1) [http://www.directory.com/cat.php?id=234] (not as good)
(2) [http://www.directory.com/Computers/Internet/Forums] (better)
Mod rewrite was very important a few years ago when the major search engines had trouble indexing URLs with strange characters in them, such as the "?". However, mod rewrite isn't as neccesary these days as Google, Yahoo, and MSN seem to have no trouble indexing pages of the latter type of URL now.
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dudibob
Joined: Oct 13, 2005
# Posts: 1473
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Posted: 2006-Apr-07 16:07
that's a pretty good post port  Something I learnt a while ago, stick any www.domain.com in tags like this:
(i)(/i) - replace the brackets with square brackets []
stops them from being links
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vculp
Joined: Mar 30, 2006
# Posts: 89
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Posted: 2006-Apr-07 16:49
Port, thank you for your lengthy reply.
Can you provide a link to more info on the mod rewrite? This might be an issue with this site.
I have a few redirects contained in the site, but they are on some of the deeper content pages and have nothing to do with the directory itself. (But as I say, there would only be about two or three in total.)
There is no "no follow" meta tag.
Thanks again,
Gin
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vculp
Joined: Mar 30, 2006
# Posts: 89
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Posted: 2006-Apr-07 16:50
Dudibob, I'm a little confused by your suggestion. Can you elaborate further?
Thanks.
Gin
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dudibob
Joined: Oct 13, 2005
# Posts: 1473
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Posted: 2006-Apr-07 16:59
Hi Gin, kinda hard to explain when they won't display properly, just a thing to neaten up posts is to have anything that will turn into a link in Italics, slanted writing.
basically type in (i)www.domain.com(/i) (replace brackets with squeare brackets) and it will make italic stuff
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vculp
Joined: Mar 30, 2006
# Posts: 89
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Posted: 2006-Apr-07 18:07
Youa re suggesting that any test which displays an URL, have that URL come up in italics?
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portprophecy
Joined: Jan 26, 2005
# Posts: 14
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Posted: 2006-Apr-07 18:20
Vculp,
Mod rewrite is probably not the issue for your directory to not be accepted to a SEO friendly list. As I stated in the above post, while a good idea, it not that big a deal as long as the search engines still index all your pages.
Most likely the reason your site would be deemed as non-SEO-friendly is redirects. I just took a look at the site in your profile and it uses redirects for site listings. A direct link to my site would be www.mysite.com. A redirect would be:
www.yourdirectoryname.com/link.php?cat=24&page=http://www.mysite.com.
Google counts the first one as a backlink to my site. Google doesn't count the second one as a backlink to my site.
You really need to use direct links, otherwise your directory is kind of useless for what most people would use your directory for, which is a backlink.
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vculp
Joined: Mar 30, 2006
# Posts: 89
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Posted: 2006-Apr-07 18:42
Would this be the frame across the top doing that? I thought there was a benefit to having that. (I guess a blonde moment on my part.) *grin*
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portprophecy
Joined: Jan 26, 2005
# Posts: 14
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Posted: 2006-Apr-07 18:48
Seems to me that the redirects are part of the directory script you are using. I know this may not be what you want to hear, but you may want to change to a different directory script if at all possible. There are many good ones out there and almost all are SEO-friendly. Really not sure why someone wrote the one your using with redirects unless the script needs those jump links to count hits.
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vculp
Joined: Mar 30, 2006
# Posts: 89
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Posted: 2006-Apr-07 19:17
The php was custom-built for me.
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dudibob
Joined: Oct 13, 2005
# Posts: 1473
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Posted: 2006-May-11 13:00
ummm.... I tihnk you pressed the submit button too many times and no links please
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vculp
Joined: Mar 30, 2006
# Posts: 89
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Posted: 2006-May-11 17:00
Think so?
LOL.
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SportsGuy
Staff
Joined: Aug 30, 2002
# Posts: 3603
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Posted: 2006-May-11 17:04
Can you say spam - and it's already been reported?
...and my gut tells me it's a robot...
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vculp
Joined: Mar 30, 2006
# Posts: 89
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Posted: 2006-May-11 17:37
Gee and I didn't want to accuse anyone
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