Business Directory Blog

After checking for dropped domains, the design and overall look of a web directory are important factors to consider when you purchase a directory listing.

Let’s take some reputable web directories:

• BOTW   http://www.botw.org
• My Green Corner   http://www.mygreencorner.com
• Busybits  http://www.busybits.com
• Dir Journal  http://www.dirjournal.com
• The Red Tree http://www.theredtree.com

Yes, you noticed that each of them has an unique template.

Directories that can’t afford to get their own design and use free templates, are most likely not serious and short termed. They are easy to spot, even if the owner removed “Sponsor/Template by” section from the bottom of the site: they don’t have a logo, you see a boring page or you get a deja-vu.

Detecting a dropped domain it’s easy. First of all, if someone decides to setup a web directory, he would probably choose a name suggestive for this niche. Generally something containing: directory, links, submit, addurl, tree, etc.

Let’s take the following domains: pmdip.org, ascia2008.com, icca-2004.org.

What normal person would name his directory like this? So it’s very obvious the domain was used for something else before, then it expired and someone wanted to build a directory because of the Page Rank.

To be sure, you can always use Internet Archive to check what site was on a specific domain years ago.

Now once you detected such directories, avoid listing your site on them, even if they have a high pagerank, it will drop in a few days or weeks anyway.

Sooner or later Google penalizes dropped domains. Of course getting a link or two from such directories ain’t gonna do much harm, but when you get tens or hundreds, your own site may get penalized.