What Makes A Quality Directory?

By Author: Ivan Cuxeva Jr
Total Articles: 779
Comment this article

Locating quality directories is a very hard thing to do, specially since most directories are out there gathering links from websites which are not very relevant to their categories, list a lot of spammy content and do not provide any benefit to the surfer whatsoever. With so many issues found in online directories, how do you know which ones are the best ones and what directories provide quality listings? Lets take a look:

Multiple Subcategories:

This characteristic is often overlooked, webmasters who start an online directory grab the first script they find and create a list of categories based on another site they have browsed, sometimes the list of categories are incomplete and list sections which may overlap with other subcategories within the site, for instance a directory which has "communications" under the "computer" category and another "communications" section under society may not be accurate enough and some of the links submission may not be relevant to the subcategory they are listing. This is a problem because people who browse these categories and end up clicking on the links will not be targeted ...
... visitors.

Good Organization and Fluid Design:

Finding directories which are neatly organized is also quite hard, specially when people don't pay much attention to design and navigation structure. A quality directory should be able to take a visitor from the parent section to the subcategories without loosing them in the process, in other words the links should be well organized using CSS to make navigational links more visible and listings more obvious.

Useful Content Listing:

Content is what the search engines and visitors are looking for, but not any type of content, quality content. Online directories which link to sources which provide little benefit to visitors will often fall in the search engines because instead of contributing to the whole "user experience" they are being unwanted noise, which sooner or later will be filtered out.

Those who submit their websites to quality directories should be aware of quality factors because at the end of the day what matters most is quality, not quantity.