World Site Index

:  

World Site Index Blog / Blog article: What were they thinking?

What were they thinking?

We’re often left scratching our heads when reviewing submissions or category suggestions wondering what people were thinking when they submitted.

It’s not uncommon to open the review queue of our art directory and be presented with a screen full of real estate sites, hotels, insurance services and other assorted sites unrelated to art.

Maybe it’s me but I would think that the title of the site, Art Web Links, is a good start as to the subject matter, not to mention the complete lack of categories for real estate etc.

With World Site Index we almost daily get requests for a real estate category to be added to the real estate category, this would give Business / Real Estate / Real Estate. We really can’t figure this one out, a visit to the real estate category shows that it’s broken down into more specialised sub categories such as real estate agents.

Then we get to the submissions where the title and description are stuffed with every variation of their keywords they could think of, they obviously expect to be listed but not in World Site Index.

Finally we get to the business or e-commerce sites that have a perfect submission, the site looks stunning but nowhere is there any contact information apart from an email address or contact form and in some cases not even this. No phone numbers nothing.

Why do we want to see physical contact details? Well apart from it being a confidence boost to your customers and required for UK companies trading online, it save us having to deal with your irate customers who are contacting us in desperation because the only contact information they have for your store is an email address and for whatever reason all their emails are bouncing.

With the internet being global it never hurts to include your country, there’s more than one town with the same name in different countries.

So you want to get your site listed in a directory, then give it a fighting chance:

  1. Check the subject matter of the directory before you do anything, if it’s an art directory and your site isn’t about art don’t waste your time submitting.
  2. Locate the most appropriate category for your site, look at the other listings in the category and see if they are on the same topic as your site.
    Remember directories usually start with general topics and as you go deeper the topics become more specialised, you should be looking for the most specialised category available. Site search can often help.
  3. When completing the submission forms, if asked to enter the business name as the title for the listing, do enter it, don’t go entering all your keywords it’s a waste of time and probably no one will even look at your site when they see spam in the review queue. There’s several thousand more listings waiting to get in.
  4. Enter a well formed description about your site or business as requested, the description field isn’t a place to stuff keywords that’s what the keyword field is for.
    Think of it this way would a visitor be more tempted to visit a site if they are presented with a list of keywords or a neat concise description of what you offer?
  5. Different directories have different requirements for submission so read what they write, ignoring it will most likely get your site ignored.

If after your best efforts you find a directory is missing the category you require then in most cases you can request it. However put some thought into it, requesting a category of the same name as its parent will most likely get you nowhere.

Final tip is if a directory sends you an acceptance email don’t add the email address to your mailing list, there’s nothing more annoying than getting an inbox full of product information.

4 Responses to “What were they thinking?”

  1. Comment by BUBBLES — August 22nd, 2006 @ 12:52 am

    I tottally agree, I have recently been submitting my new forum and find some of the directories to be appaling!

  2. Comment by Paul — August 22nd, 2006 @ 8:59 am

    My original comments were not so much about the directories, although it is true that the worse the submission the worse it makes the directory if the editors don’t clean or dump the listing, but rather about the site and the submitters.

    If all submissions were done correctly we would clear many more per day, people would get their sites listed quicker and we would have more time to develop other things for World Site Index.

  3. Comment by Adam — May 11th, 2007 @ 7:21 am

    My question is related to e mail account that you called neccesary to be paid e mail address in the above article, what do a person do if he not have any paid e mail account, isnt there any possible way to be listed in this directory without registered e mail account.

  4. Comment by Paul — May 11th, 2007 @ 8:59 am

    Any person with a domain name and proper web hosting will have access to email accounts within their domain. If they don’t then they need to take that issue up with their web host and/or change hosts.

    There are a few bloggers and the like that don’t have a domain and it is unfortunate that these people can’t submit, but to continue to offer free submissions steps have to be taken to reduce the volume of junk submissions we have to wade through each day.

    For a paid only directory there is generally no reason to need to block off email addresses.

Leave a Reply

World Site Index Blog is proudly powered by WordPress.

22 queries. 0.176 seconds.