My friend Lyndon was talking about SMO (Social Media Optimisation) and directories the other day and pissed a couple of people off. He was damn right too.

Most directories are useless rubbish

Bog standard web directories are not worth a cold cup of ****. A directory that sells on the basis of PR is asking for its link-pop-pass on ability to be stripped away.
See, for me, the whole get links from lots of directories on different IP’s thing is so frickin 2003 its not even funny any more! Most can be knocked up in two seconds flat and then populated with a dmoz script or Y! scrape. Most if not 99.9% of them offer very little value at all othe than the ability for joe bloggs to be able to drill down and find or add a site in an area they want to. Usually they are plastered with adsense adverts in the head of the document, designed to attract the users eye and take them away from the people who have paid to list. Funny.

Some try and capitalise on the little green PR bar, that’s pagerank to those who haven’t been awake for the past 7 years. They run around forums and blogs talking their sites up or getting some non informed person somewhere or over to extol the virtues of this ‘great new’ resource. People look and for those still hooked into that whole green PR tool bar thing, some think ooh lovely I think I’ll buy me one of those too.

People forget that search engine sharks patrol the seo seas . Sites or individuals that brag about PR usually end up worse off as a result. Don’t take my word for it though, go have a read yourself. Who is the demon here though? The search engine for killing their ability to pass juice, or the site owner for their cynical exploitation of their naive users?

Some directories don’t even get that far though and are strangled at birth never to recover. The case cited a classical victims of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Keeping ones mouth shut can keep you out of bother

See, the moment, the very moment, a directory starts to brag about its pagerank or its pages indexed, or its anticipated PR, then that’s the moment when they effectively say to all their directory participants, sorry but your link is now worthless for ranking purposes. We got greedy, we saw a PR6 + and decided to try and capitalise on it, this is capitalism after all.

Surely they aren’t all bad?

Noooo absolutely not, some directories offer great value for money.Those who actively promote themselves and add real value to the space and do things differently and so called niche directories for example, really are worth the participation. I know of some great niche directories ( I wont list them here) that are absolutely brilliant. They are full of laser targetted relevant stuff, they take the time to contact their submitters and offer new services, they prune old listings, they take feedback from site users and ask them to come back and write reports on sites they’ve used. They give people options to talk and discuss their experience using the companies that advertise, they allow for a conversation to take place. In short, they add value. Most directories out there today do not do any of this.

But a link is a link is a link, its all about links right?

No it isn’t, some links really are better than others. Ok, so initially you’ll gain a link with some anchor text and overtime even, you may well get some genuine visitors in buy mode, you may well even get a small ROI. Yet its only a may at best, and hardly the best way of spending your money. Most of the time it will be a complete waste of your time effort and money. You may as well, just spend it on some PPC scheme somewhere, guarantted traffic, or better still pay yourself and go write 2 or 3 kick arse responses to blog posts in your theme using technorati to classify authority for your niche – seriously, I kid you not.

But directories are permanent never go away links

Sure they are, but the value they convey is always subject to the traffic they receive and the importantance placed upon them. Directories are like all manner of other web properties, if they are just offering same ol same ol without adding anything new to the mix, then really, from both a user POV AND a search engine looking to output quality sites POV where oh where is the value?

I don’t blame people for trying to sell an idea or promote and collate a business. Some like Bruce really are passionate about what they do and agonise over giving a good service and adding value to the options provided for their visitors. BOTW and one or 2 others that escape me also try to do it all a little differently, yet few if any these days at least rank in Google for anything half worth ranking for. Like it or not I have to say they just aren’t doing enough and could do a whole lot better. Sure too, they may well have traction in other spaces and verticals and rank elsewhere which is great for now, but I wouldn’t trust it long term for something that’s gonna keep its place or juice. The engines move on, algos change, they are consistently looking out for new signals and indicators. A site that ranks well today can just as quickly plummet tomorrow, especially if it isn’t getting that SMO buzz.

There are a zillion and one directories out there offering that same broad topic and region structure. Dmoz and Y! were the 1st and quite frankly have been copied to death to the point of why even. Who really needs another directory that does the same as one that exists already. One person – the owner who spots what he thinks is a gravy train and a chance for an easy pound note, and for those that would protest and spit, just wake up and smell the coffee, please. No one denies your right to build it, but you should’nt expect it to do well in search, not in a bog-standard-seen-it-all-before-what-the-heck-is-so-good -about-this-one form.

Good directories are good directories you should use them.

Just in case I gave the wrong impression, there really is nothing wrong with a directory.

Blogcatalog.com – Bumpzee.com – mybloglog.com are 3 that spring to mind. Spicypage.com is another. What I hear you say, these aren’t directories! These are different, these offer something else, whatever are you talking about Rob you big fat idiot!

Well, no just go take a look. Everyone of them is a directory of sorts, a variation on a theme, that theme being the directory theme with a little SMO, you know that SMO stuff that creates buzz and interest.Whilst they are indeed very different types of directory, they are directories nonetheless in that they offer categorised sections of links to themed content and sites. They are different though and hold one simple similarity between them that their predecessors are severley lacking.

They Actively Engage With the People Who Use Them.

They are an alive community of real people talking about real things. They are not some static dead bunch of links that antiquate with age, ran by some little hierarchical fiedom who talk to you like you are some piece of errant scum. They are ran by people who truly want to provide something useful and different. They stay fresh and on topic. They utilise new tools and technologies to help the people who use them. RSS to give user visitors sample content, they get real traffic for their users illustrated in server logs and SERPs up and down the lists of those who participate. They provide voting systems, messaging systems, widgets and stats, they lead the way in enabling people to use the web as the amazing communication tool it is.

If you are a directory owner today, and aren’t trying to engage ALL of your users in ALL manner of ways that take account of web 2.0 and all the various other interaction options that people want, then you really could be doing a whole lot better.

If you are a site owner of any description, then you really need to wake up to the fact that the days of just build it and they will come are fast fast diminishing. You really need to get out there and enage, just like you would in the real bricks and mortar world. You can catch up, its not too late, get on it today.

Related posts:

1. Run a local business? Get directorified!
2. Google blogsearch – sometimes you suck 403 forbidden

John Andrews posted today about MFA (made for adsense ) sites appearing in #1 place positions in competitive SERPS (search engine results pages)

One of his commenters remarked

A lot of our customers are small, local area businesses that serve their niche market very well, but the top SERPs are dominated by directory knockoffs like the one you mention above, often by national websites with huge PR but no real quality Maine-based services or content… Just oodles of keywords and links to sites which they extort a huge amount of money from to list.

If you follow this stuff with any level of intensity then you may have noticed a thing or two. This got me thinking about the current state of SERPs today and how frankly, nothing very much (the inception of local aside) has changed that much at all. Directories still cut it over and above singular business entities.

The search engines will say that they want to give their users the most relevant pages/sites for their queries. They tell us that this is determined via use of their algorithm. Their algo we are told looks at all manner of signals and is then given a score for a KW (keyword) or KP (key phrase) query and outputted in the SERP.

A local business providing legal services in Islington for example, would argue that they are pretty relevant to a query for the KP ‘Solicitors Islington’. The problem is though, so do the other 100 + other providers operating within the same locality.

How can the search engine best determine the relevance of any number of 100+ providers within the area? The short answer is it cannot. So, it takes a mix and match approach and returns (in the case of Google) 3 local businesses, and a mix of other sites that its algo decided might be relevant to the query at hand. Not an ideal way of handling things, but a way nonetheless.

In the Google example below , right at the very top it shows , 3 local listings with a prominent link to a number of other business drawn from the Thomson Local Directory. Below these are a number of other links to other websites. Position #1 a solicitors practice in Islington, positions #2,3,4,5,6,7 and 9 directory type sites, with 8 and 10 being 2 other Solicitor firms.

I refreshed the Google SERP for this KP a number of times and noticed that the businesses returned as local choices did not change. This might be rotated daily or weekly (I don’t know) but assuming it doesn’t (I’ll check tomorrow) then from the perspective of the Solicitor touting for business in Islington that didn’t ever appear in these local offerings, its a pretty poor show.

Of course, Google or any search engine for that matter isn’t obligated to return any of them – its a decision of their choosing entirely, they are after all, a capital generating enterprise in the business of making money.

Its clear to me that the business providers themselves appear to be the losers whilst the real winners it seems are the directory providers. These are often designed to attract adsense clicks from the unsavvy, they benefit 2 fold. They get to charge an inclusion fee to their advertisers and also receive a payment for a % of any adsense clicks they might generate too. It’s a familiar model and can be seen amongst all manner of competitive KW sectors. Travel, Money, Health Care, Law, – you name it, and you’ll find a directory listing amongst the returned results, for the directory owners it seems like a very good thing indeed.

The search engines seem to like this model too, as a best fits solution to a problem. After all, how do you objectively or fairly rank 1 , 2 or 3 hundred providers of a service operating in the same area? There are after all only 10 default spots to be had. Who is there to say who is best, most efficient, competitive etc. A relevancy algo doesn’t thats for sure.

Could this be addressed in any way?

Perhaps, with the right will of course why not.

For the search engines that run paid advertising programs, they could use the data held to determine which websites were targeting which keywords and then in some way integrate these on some kind of rotational level in their SERPs. For the business wanting to get customers to their sites, this would at least add some kind of perception of fairness and perhaps level the playing field somewhat as opposed to the current state which uses a mix of SEO’ed type data generated via link pop, on page and other relatively easy to manipulate metrics.

For those who might shout, hell what about us, we don’t use adwords why shouldn’t we be able to rank? Simple answer of course is that search engines are businesses with no obligation to include or rank anybody. Its their free SERPS which give them their user base, it is the platform on which they’ve built their advertising model around which paradoxically makes my whole suggestion null and void! As to take such a route undermines the whole concept of paid search and algorithmic ‘free’ search results as being a separate unrelated thing. The moment either of these lines are crossed then the whole house of cards implodes.

Anyways, getting back to ranking websites and getting a business in front of eyeballs, it seems that for now, the message is loud and clear. Get your business into local search directories. If you are really lucky then you might just get returned in those juicy little local spots as shown, and if you don’t quite make it there, then there are always a number of other directories with search engine result spots on page one to fall back on.

One things for sure. If you are starting from scratch and expect your nice new shiny website to start ranking for keywords and phrases that matter, then…well, it just isn’t going to happen.

Related posts:

1. Most directories suck and could do a whole lot better

Aaron wall reports that DMoz has re-opened its add url or suggest a site feature.

So there you have it.

If you have a site and fancy hanging about chasing them up to see if your site has been accepted you know what to do. Hell, if you really want to, you can go over to their forum (assuming they re-open it) and get flamed by a bunch of arrogant rude feckers who will tell you that they are just volunteers, or tell you that DMoz doesn’t exist for the benefit of webmasters, or tell you that your site is an affiliate, or tell you that your site sucks etc etc blah blah blah.

There was a time when it paid to be in DMoz, maybe there still will be, who cares, I don’t. I don’t need them, they don’t need me. End of. I’ve done perfectly well without them. My life hasn’t been poorer for their not being around to add sites to. In fact its probably been a whole lot richer. I’m with the many other detractors out there who have had an uncomfortable experience or two with the odd self inflated wanker over there. Lord of the flies, power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely and all that stuff. That whole meta super status bollocks set up they have, ran like some 3rd world dictatorship of the proletariat.

I could be wrong of course. They may have had a clearout. Someone somewhere may have had an epithany and screamed jesus, look at what this has become.

See what I really don’t get is towards the end of its usefulness the message people were getting was DMoz doesn’t exist for the benefit of webmasters. Some of its meta editors were more or less saying, don’t submit, our editors will find sites worth adding, we really don’t need or want your submissions. There was this huge anti SEO mindset. People like me were viewed as some kind of sub human low life out to corrupt some jewelled piece of antiquity. If you dared actually question them, then they were on you like a rabid pack of attack wolves. It really wasn’t worth the bother, unless you were a glutton for punishment. You were viewed with suspicion, like you were some kind of virus out to infect the hive, at least, that was my experience.

So why has it re-opened? Why why why? Are things going to be different or something? Are they actually going to get hold of the concept of politeness there? Maybe they’ll make it all a whole lot more transparent. Maybe they’ll set up a system that shows you where you are in the queue. Maybe they’ll introduce proper management systems that get rid of that whole elitist set of bollocks they had there.

Sorry, but the whole thing was dead in the water in my book, its a shame it can’t stay that way. We have the Y! directory, we have a zillion and one other smaller niche directories I’d be happy for it to stay dead. Unless maybe, they were brave and decided to wikitize it, now that could be very interesting indeedy…
P.s Ok, so there are a whole bunch of people who edit there or edited who were perfectly nice good people, Im not saying that all volunteers there were wankers, far from it, just a vocal minority who shall remain nameless.

No related posts.