Surf SEO

Consider using a content delivery system in conjunction with your current site to ad articles, news or other information on a daily basis. Joomla and Drupal are two great products that both offer a easy to use back end for creating and maintaining a slew of articles, news feeds and blog type posts.

A great example of a working content driven site using Joomla is here: http://lakegenevajaycees.org

As a directory owner you have a responsibility to your end users, those that list with you and the directory industry as a whole to respond promptly and diligently to copyright infringement issues.

Too often sites listed in directories seem to harbor illegal, or stolen content. Now while the site's may not reside on your server, it is a good idea to remove links take you to sites that do contain illegal or copyrighted material.

While you may not be legally obligated to respond to a DMCA request given the content, again, is not housed on your site - it is a good idea to preemptively comply as a show of good faith. Not only will such a gesture look good in the eyes of the complainant, but so too will it go a long way toward validating your directory in the long run.

One of the biggest problems with directories are dead links.. What's worse however are those links that are still live but no longer contain the content they once did. For example, a travel site once listed in a travel directory now contains a porn site.

Do you move it to the appropriate location, or nuke it all together? Unless you've been notified by the site owner, nuke it. The site is not what it once was, nor is it appropriately listed, and it's domain name no doubt likely is not even remotely related to the sites newly changed content.

Having a site that has transformed to something other than what it once ways is just as bad as having a dead link in your directory.

A directory owner needs to be aware that his listings need to be checked not only when they are first listed, but periodically and at regular intervals to insure that the listings are what they once where.

I like to re-review sites quarterly, and find that doing so manually is the best way to insure you keep your directory as clean as possible.

Good luck!

Delete dead live links.

What is a "dead live link" you ask? A dead live link is a web site that was listed in your directory, was live/active and contained relevant content at the time you listed it.

What makes it dead, but live is the fact that it while the link is still active it either no longer goes to the site it once did, or is a parked/landing page.

Keeping your directory fresh and up to date is probably the single most important thing you can do.

Recently someone questioned my hosting services as being less than reliable, trustworthy or saleable because I did not have an Alexa ranking. Naturally I scoffed at this ignorant statement. However, it got me too thinking. There are probably a large number of people out there that actually base their purchasing decisions on an Alexa Ranking.

Let's just explore a few of the reasons this thinking is flawed.

1. Web Hosting Companies do not tend to get the large level of traffic to their home page that other popular sites do.

2. Web Hosting Companies do not tend to have a large audience of repeat visitors to their home page.

3. We Hosting Companies are not filled with ever changing content designed to cater to a repeat eater web audience, like a news or information site for instance.

4. While our hosting company has been in business almost 11 years now, the domain in question was only recently acquired and used to sell a new divisional consumer branded hosting product. That said, it stands to reason that a new domain owned by an old company is not going to appear to be "popular" to Alexa.

5. You need to actually have the Alexa Tool Bar installed and then visit these sites in question. How many people actually use that Tool Bar??? And of those that do, how many spend time visiting Hosting Web Sites?

6. Alexa ranks have been forever easily manipulated and as such are hardly the litmus test for a reliable web host.

It's truly sad that so many people thin this way. I really have to fault the SEO Industry for creating this air of mis-information and ignorance. Let's try to be a bit more responsible people... There are way too many hacks out there!

Don't let anyone tell you any different. Most of the SEO game is pure luck... The other 10% is real honest work, and effort. The rest, it's just luck!