Info Vilesilencer Directory Owners Forum and Free Directory List » SEO Friendly Directories » Directory Discussion & Questions

[drwebs]

Not meant to the the definitive guide or anything like that. I just wanted to post here a article I wrote and video about how to spot a bad directory.

This was inspired by the last batch of directory spam done here on IVS.

My post is located here How to spot a bad web directory.

I want to post an excerpt from a conversation I had with Dan also. I was chatting with "a guy" who outsources all his submissions because "directories are not worth it anymore". He just pays people from other countries to do the work.


I said:

"the reason why they are not as useful is because you get someone from other countries to submit for you. They do not submit properly, they spam, the spam is then accepted (by stupid directory owners) and the directory is now less quality. Repeat this process over the course of years and bam, you now have a weak industry. Go ahead outsource some more, and continue wondering why you get spam."

My thoughts are that this is a long cycle, build, spam, repeat. What do you think?

[YMC]

Sure, if submitters followed the TOS of most directories, even the least well-equipped directory owner would have something better than about 99% of the directories now. And certainly, it's the submission companies that are causing the most problems for directory owners.

I have an Arts & Crafts directory. There's no doubt it only accepts sites in that niche. Yet, around 90% of my submissions are for other topics. It's been that way since I launched the site.

And, if I had to guess, at least 95% of that 90% are coming from submission companies. And my favorites are the ones who spam a bunch of junk submissions and then drop me a note about how they could help my directory do better in the SERPs.

The irony is if the submission companies did submissions correctly they could actually make far more money.

If the idiot "SEO pros" would work with directory owners instead of against them, everyone would benefit.

The SEO folks have no intention of changing their stripes.

Educating their customers may help. However, the few times that I went to the effort to contact their client directly didn't even generate a response. My favorite is the one who was submitting on behalf of some company with 'Australia' in the name of their company. All of the submissions they were doing spelled it incorrectly. I emailed the company (with an email from their site, not the submission). Never heard a peep. I guess they like paying people to dilute their brand. Can't really feel sorry for idiots like that.

[BobP]

I've heard of including misspelled keywords for common mispellings, but not titles, that could be a problem. When using a bulk submitter, providing everything they need to know to do the job properly goes a long way toward the kind of results you get, provided the submitter isn't just a scammer. Funny thing is, I get a lot of off topic submits to Arts and Crafts I believe because it is simply the first category they hit without having a requested category or were given a bogus category to submit to.

[YMC]

Originally Posted by BobP

I've heard of including misspelled keywords for common mispellings, but not titles, that could be a problem. When using a bulk submitter, providing everything they need to know to do the job properly goes a long way toward the kind of results you get, provided the submitter isn't just a scammer. Funny thing is, I get a lot of off topic submits to Arts and Crafts I believe because it is simply the first category they hit without having a requested category or were given a bogus category to submit to.

When doing directory submissions, I almost always look at the first category on the homepage. Like you said, it's the one the lazy spammers most frequently submit to. I guess you could call it my own version of the flower test.