Directories as Link Partners

Directories as Link Partners
By Mordechai Chachamu

While traditional directories are edited by humans, search
engines are pure computational sites. The billions of pages now
held in the search engine databases render human intervention
impractical. From the gathering of web pages using robots or
crawlers to their indexing of that information and finally the
ranking of those pages in the search results, it's all done by
software and computation.

The first two stages (assembling and indexing) are relatively
simple, but the third (ranking) presents a much higher
challenge. How do the search engines determine which of the
many millions of pages that contain a particular word or phrase
be shown first? Get it right and people will be using the search
engine time and again. Get it wrong and the engine will be
dropped like a hot potato.

The one engine that seemed to consistently get it right was
Google. Its secret was the addition of PageRank -- Google's
form of link popularity. According to Google, a link is
considered a vote of confidence from one page to another. The
more links, the more votes. Moreover, votes from important
pages are valued higher than votes from non-important ones. A
higher PageRanked page is one that has a lot of other pages
voting for it; in other words, it is heavily linked to. Link
popularity now plays a significant role in the ranking
algorithm of all the major search engines.

The challenge for site owners and webmasters is to increase
link popularity, which in turn increases the likelihood of
pages from their sites appearing high in the search results.
One of the best ways to start a link campaign is to get links
from directories. If you put the right amount of effort (and
money) into it, you can see your link popularity increase
significantly in a short space of time. The question is: How to
judge the relative merits of directories? Which ones are worth
paying for? What elements do you need to look for to help you
make an educated decision?

Link Types

The first and most important consideration is the link type.
There are two types of links: Simple Links and Redirected Links.
You cannot discover the difference by clicking on them – the
outcome is identical, but from the perspective of a link
campaign the difference is fundamental. As far as Link
Popularity is concerned, the Redirected Link is absolutely
worthless. Here is why:

A Simple Link is a link that contains the target URL of the site
and directly points to it, as in this link:
http://www.target-site.com. On the other hand, a Redirected Link
points to a URL inside the current site, usually to a script
file, and the address of the target site is passed to the script
as a parameter, like this:
http://www.this-site.com/jump.php?www.target-site.com . You can
check the type of links used by a Directory by observing the
'Status bar' while hovering your mouse over the links.

When a Search Engine visits a Directory that uses Redirected
Links, it does not get from it the 'vote of confidence' for the
linked sites – as they do not show up as links at all! If
anything, such links only 'strengthen' the internal script page,
as there may be thousands of links pointing to it. Your site, if
listed in such a Directory, will not see any of it.

Page Visibility

To gain link popularity, the search engine must know that you
are listed in the directory. In other words, the search engine
must capture the pages of the directory and index them. Only
then can it add the link from the directory to your site to
your link popularity.

Find out if the directory has good presence in all the search
engines. You will soon discover that some search engines are
notoriously difficult to get indexed by, while others are
relatively easy. A good spread of page visibility among several
search engines increases the chances of your site being picked
up and indexed by them too. Thus, not only will you gain in
link popularity, but also your site will be present in their
index!

PageRank and Backward Links

Not all links are created equal -- some are more important than
others. If you have the Google toolbar installed, it will give
you a rough estimate of the page's PageRank (PR) using a scale
of 0 to 10. A directory with a high PR is more important than a
directory with a low PR. A directory with many sites linking to
it (backward links) is more important than a directory with
just a few.

The devil, as always, is in the details, so it pays to pay
attention to them. Invariably, the home page of the directory
will have the highest PR, but very few (if any) sites will be
listed there. You should try to examine the PR of the specific
category in which your site will be listed to get an idea of
the strength of vote you are likely to receive from it. For
example, although DMOZ has an exceptionally high PR of 9 on its
home page, the deep categories may be just PR 4 or less. There
is nothing wrong with a PR of 4, quite the contrary, but it is
not exceptional.

In Return

While some directories provide a totally free,
no-strings-attached submission option, many directories expect
or require something in return. In most cases it's simply
money, ranging from a few dollars to several hundred. A few
require an annual subscription to keep your site listed, but
most are satisfied with a one-time payment.

In addition to (or instead of) payment, some directories insist
on getting a link from you before they agree to list your site.
Others may require you to agree to get periodic emails that
include promotional material for various products. Still others
suggest that your site will only be listed if you join them and
become an editor. There are many variations, and some
directories offer several options to site owners.

How can you make a good decision when faced with so many options
and considerations? The answer lies in limiting your options
and dealing with just a few directories. First, you must
establish your goals for your link campaign. Is it traffic,
link popularity or both? Then compare the sites that meet your
requirements and rank them according to how closely they match.
Finally, add the required payment or any other condition
imposed by each directory to your ranking considerations.

Once you've done all of the above, all that's left for you
to do is visit each of your chosen directories, follow their
guidelines and submit your site!

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Mordechai Chachamu is the CEO of Gimpsy (http://www.gimpsy.com),
a unique directory that classifies interactive sites according to
the online activity provided by them. Submitting a site to Gimpsy
entitles the user to a special extended free trial of the
Strongest Links (http://www.strongestlinks.com) facilities.
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This article was originally published in SiteProNews, one of the
Net's most widely read webmaster newsletters. An online version
of this article and other articles can be found at:
http://www.sitepronews.com/archives.html
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