Does your current marketing strategy take into consideration what types of online web directories you should submit your website to? If it does and you're not careful, you could end up wasting money away and potentially hurting or influencing your rankings. At Rock Coast Media, our SEO link building experts are constantly working to develop a comprehensive list of quality web directories to improve our client rankings. Below are Top 5 Red Flags on the types of web directories you should avoid.

Red Flag #1 No Editorial Review – Recently, Google has taken action on banning hundreds of web directories that it considers outside of its"quality guidelines". Senior Google software engineer, Matt Cutts has mentioned the importance of quality on numerous occasions in the past and present. However, while Google is the search engine leader, at one point quantity did play a greater role and was more important in other smaller search engine competitors such as MSN. These days though, this is not the case as search engine algorithms are constantly updated for improved relevance in an effort to reduce SERP manipulation.

You should always make sure the directory you submit to has an editorial policy and takes the time to review your site. If there isn't, then skip it and move on!

Red Flag #2 Excessive Advertising – When spotting a quality directory, take into consideration the amount of sponsorship/Google Adsense ads that are present on the site. There is nothing wrong with placing adsense advertisements on a web directory, but you really want to avoid excessive advertising when deciding where you should submit to. Keepin mind, a lot of webmasters will attempt to set-up web directories for the purpose of generating revenue (whether through adsense, or paid submissions) without serving any value to the individual who pays. So in the end, you end up wasting your money and getting no value back.

Red Flag #3 Directory Age – Pay attention to how old the directory is and how long it has been around. Best Of The Web (www.botw.org) is a perfect example of quality web directory which has been around since 1994! These are the type of directories you should go after.

Red Flag #4 Same IP Hosting – As I mentioned above, certain webmasters have a tendency to set-up web directories for the purpose of generating revenue and nothing else. Individuals may run a network of 100 or more directories all hosted on the same IP address, and you may not even know it. Before deciding where to submit, you should analyze each directory domain name to make sure it is hosted on individual Class C blocks as opposed to same IP.

And finally…..

Red Flag #5 – Check Domain Indexability! – So you're ready to pay to be included in a directory. Everything looks good, nothing seems shady, right? But, have you checked whether the directory is actually spidered by search engines? I am starting to see this problem more and more…webmasters will allow the indexability of its main domain name, but have you checked whether the directory listing page you plan to submit your site to is actually indexed by search engines? Webmasters will sometimes attempt to put a 'nofollow' tag on a lot of internal pages of their site to avoid a so called PageRank 'Leak', in an effort to boost up the PR oftheir homepage. Sure, a directory may look great, but one that passes no backlink value to your site is worthless!

You should pay close attention to these warning signs at any time you decide to do your web directory submissions.

Labels: link building, link development, SEO, web directories