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Building the strongest directory
Posted on March 8, 2007 - Filed Under Budget SEO |
I am looking to build the strongest directory one site at a time. Here are the current rules for submissions to my Home & Garden Directory.
- No duplicate site submission.
- Do not submit subfolder(s), please use the top-level domain.
- No MFA (Made for Adsense) sites.
- No paid content sites.
- No adult related content.
- No illegal sites.
- No sites with broken links.
- Do not use sales phrases in your description or title like, “We offer the best”
- Do not capitalize multiple letters in the title.
- Do not use exclamation marks.
- Do not include dollar values to sell products in description field.
- Do not use a title that is a keyword unless it is the exact name of your website.
- Do watch your future linking patterns, sites that link out to bad neighborhoods will be removed and refunded.
- We reserve the right to edit your title, description and meta data, this is done with your benefit in mind.
- Include owner name, email address, phone number, and company address.
Too harsh? If you noticed, there are few websites so far that have made the cut, it is basically an empty HIGH PR directory.
The funny thing is that nobody knows that the directory exists because I have not done any link building for it, if anyone knows of places that SEOs and webmasters look to find hidden gems let me know.
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March 8th, 2007 at 3:52 pm
Kind of funny how you say you won’t list any MFA sites when it looks like that’s what your directory is. I just love irony, there’s so much of it in this industry.
March 8th, 2007 at 4:17 pm
Look at my code in your browser and you will see:
google_ad_client = “pub-XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX”;
That basically will only show donation type ads to make the area look less boring and send a few dollars elsewhere. Most to all the sites in this directory so far are people who needed a little PR boost that I found in Google Groups. I do accept “paid” submissions if they pass the sniff test and are willing to keep it clean, though I have already had to remove and refund a few.
Updating to the latest version of the script tonight, the template I use comes with adsense in the code by default, new directories are worthless if you make them to earn adsense dollars but there is nothing wrong with adsense, MFA directories are a different story. Adsense can direct people to products they are looking for even if the payout for small sites is minimal.
Don’t you talk no stinkin’ “industry” in here, if you remember I am not a “rockstar”.
March 8th, 2007 at 4:28 pm
Aaron, Would my HVAC site pass the sniff test? It does sell equipment to home owners which should fit under the Home & Garden theme? Broken URL is: www hvac-direct (dot) com
March 8th, 2007 at 4:44 pm
All the pages that I visited it on it were blank. It might be a good idea to get at least a couple on each category..
March 8th, 2007 at 4:46 pm
JLH - Do your affiliate traffic building program links pass Google pagerank?
March 8th, 2007 at 4:57 pm
The most active affiliate we have builds java script enabled banners so they don’t. The affiliate link requires a parameter on the end to set the cookie so if they do create a link it goes in as a duplicate with a new name which in essence makes it a supplemental page. So the short answer is “no” we don’t get a PR bump from any affiliate links because they are all unique, and I don’t have a system instituted to strip off the parameter.
You can test it yourself to prove that we don’t do anything funny with the parameter, go to any .asp url such as /categories.asp and manually ad d ?PARTNER=anythingrandomyouwant and you’ll see that it displays that URL which is just a copy of the original /categories.asp.
March 8th, 2007 at 4:58 pm
My affiliate sites I set a cookie and then 301 redirect to the page without the referral link, so then there isn’t any duplicate pages. Stops you from shooting yourself in the foot.
March 8th, 2007 at 5:04 pm
Tim, I guess that would be possible, I just haven’t seen the need to, our affiliate program is pretty slow so I don’t spend much effort on it. It certainly wasn’t started as a PR boosting plan, just came with the shopping cart system.
March 8th, 2007 at 5:25 pm
JLH - You are in, enjoy and keep it real! ;)
About Google Adsense: If a site covers a specific niche like “HVAC Direct” and not only offers product to users but also relevant links via Google adsense it is far from the definition of a “made for adsense” site.
If I can keep the directory clean it will do better than others.