Everything Else

Okay directories maybe not completely dead but on life support. See I got a referral from ODP/Dmoz the other day and the event was so unusual I thought I would write about it. Way back when, I remember getting 30 hits a day directly from Dmoz the day after my listing in Dmoz went live. Good times.
I think across all my sites the only general directories that send traffic are the occasional Dmoz hit and the occasional JoeAnt hit. Even the remaining directories devoted to my niche, that are still hanging on, hardly send traffic to me anymore and they all used to be good reliable sources. I know the directories I run still get traffic and still send traffic but I wonder for how long that will continue.

Some of you might have noticed that there is a small directory of web development and SEO resources located here on Talmir.info and have wondered what it is about. The short answer is that it is my web guide of permanent bookmarks to SEO and web dev resources which I thought I would share with everyone rather than keeping them private. Although I could use a social bookmarking service, I really prefer to build content for myself. I also wanted an easy way to look up and post lists of links to resources for beginners in my forums posts and the directory categories provide a quick shorthand way of doing that.

Goals:

1. Deep link to high quality forum threads and blog posts on either SEO or web development forming a useful web guide on those topics.

2. Link to resources, approved by me, such as software, blogs and forums for further reference. The point is not to link to everything but to link to things I consider useful.

3. Encourage and educate beginners on web building and basic, standard optimization practices.

4. Keep the directory/guide commercial free and relatively neutral so that myself and other forum posters can link to it on forums to help beginners.

5. Spend no time or money promoting the directory by submitting. Generally I have let people find me by my forum profile, my blog and when I have linked to a guide category in a forum post. (Comment: My goal for the domain Talmir.info has been to see how people find the site naturally, how inbound links develop and how deeply visitors explore. See "Results" below.)

6. Eliminate spam found in so many web dev and SEO directories. My goal is to list quality or trusted sites not every site.

Biases:

1. Since most of the links are submitted by me, the bias tends to be for posts from the forums I read and post at and the blogs I read.

2. The guide is geared to beginners to early intermediates.

3. Links to discussions and post that do not quickly become dated are preferred.

Results:

1. Out of hundreds of submissions, I have approved about four listings. I think all the directory submission lists have found the directory and linked to it but not not the target audience. Passive promotion has not worked well. Sigh.

2. I have not attracted many natural inbound links other than those detailed above. This is my fault. 2006 pretty much has been a lost year for me due to family considerations so I have not been deep linking and building as I should.

Future:

I still think it is a good, useful idea. I would like to see more people submit quality individual blog and forum posts because I know I am missing a lot. If anyone has any suggestions please comment.

I've written about the now defunct web directory and portal NBCi several times before but I do not think any of those posts survive. The news that Wikia may try a community reviewed search engine brings up the whole issue of human review in search results again and I think it is useful to look at what models have been done before and their strengths and weaknesses. I still morn this portal's passing because it sent me a heck of a lot of traffic while it was in operation.

NBCi was a 3 tier web search incorporating 2 directories listing web sites and a spidering search feed listing web pages.

1st Tier: NBCi Directory - NBCi bought a top quality web directory "Snap" which just like the Yahoo directory, employed professional editors. Snap was a pay-for-review directory and you could always drill down through the categories to find sites. When you did a search on NBCi the very first results you saw were from the Snap directory. Search results from the directory were ranked (ordered) by a technology called GlobalBrain (explanation see ther-search-engines/thread::774/" rel="external">second post) which sort of learned your preferences and the people that performed searches similar to yours (via cookies) and would reorder the search results to give you sites similar to those you already preferred. (FYI: I think some of the GlobalBrain technology continues to be used in Eurekster).

The point is that not only were new sites being added to the directory but those SERP's were also shifting around because of Global Brain rankings. The SERP's did not look static to the end user like a search on the Yahoo Directory might.

2nd Tier: Live Directory - Once you exhausted looking through the SERP's from the NBCi directory you could click on a tab for "Live Directory". Live Directory had the same taxonomy as the NBCi directory, but there was no charge to webmasters for listing in the Live Directory. I believe sites submitted got just a quick review for spam and became part of the directory listings quite quickly. Websites listed in the Live directory were allowed to select about 6 keywords, my memory is dim on this but it may be that directory searches only used those keywords and not the title or description. Again, on Live Directory, the search results were enhanced by GlobalBrain.

However, listing was only provisional and sites had to show a certain popularity of click thru's as measured by GlobalBrain in order to stay in the Live Directory. Sites that showed exceptional popularity could also get promoted free of charge to the top level NBCi directory which was worth much more in terms of traffic. On that score NBCi had a nice viral marketing tool - because they told the submitting webmaster to tell their freinds about NBCi and to click on your site - the more different IP's that clicked on a listing the bigger the chance was that your site would get promoted to a free top level directory listing. A lot of content webmasters, myself included, got their friends introduced to NBCi because of this and it was an important way for content sites to gain entry into the top level directory so it did not become full of commercial only listings. I am not sure how well the Live directory would hold up to today's automated spam submissions and automated clickbots, but I still like the idea of a live directory like that and i think you could guard against abuse. One solution would be to use redirects or robots txt to keep listings in the free Live Directory from passing any link popularity.

Third Tier: Inktomi Web search results - The Third tab was for spidered search results from Inktomi. They were not the best in the world but they were fairly fresh and unlike the directories, listed pages rather than sites.

So all this is past history, but I wanted to be able to refer back to NBCi in some upcoming posts so I thought I would describe NBCi for those that do not remember it. But I also think that NBCi had some good ideas and a good model for fusing human reviewed listings with search and I do not see any technological reason why the NBCi 3 tier approach could not be copied and brought back today. If done right I think it could be quite nice, although the top level directory would need to be seeded with quality sites and not just allowed to grow full of spam or commerce only sites. If I had the money or the programming skills I would love to give it a try.

Anyone have any thoughts on or memories about either the old Snap directory or NBCi they would like to add?

I've been building niche directories, mostly as a hobby, since 1999. I build them the hard way, by hand, searching and finding sites that I think are worth including and also letting webmasters submit their sites for free. I guess it is a measure of success/bad luck/perseverance/fame that some MLM type, self proclaimed "marketing guru" comes along and blatantly copies (scrapes) my web directory so he can hang Google Adsense ads on it.

Looking at this "guru's" network of sites I have this feeling that he's not going to comply with my polite emails asking him to remove my content. I have little faith that the major search engines will pay any attention to spam reports about this guy. So I'm wondering what the best course of action is - out this guy and his phony web network publicly, DCMA him, sue him, or just ignore him?

I run a little niche directory where I constantly get spam submissions for "pills, p*rn and casino" sites looking to scam a free listing.

So the other day I get notice that a casino site wants to pay to advertise on the site. I almost had a knee-jerk reaction and rejected it without thinking. But then I accepted it - I mean that is the point, if you are off topic and can't get a listing in the directory but still want exposure to my web site's demographic then buy an ad!

I spent the last two days actually working.

I have been redesigning a little portal I had, hastily cobbled together about 15 months ago.

Old Portal:

I was using a Blogger blog as the main index page. The blog acted as a CMS for all the written content of the portal. Behind the blog was a user submitted directory. Well, it did look sorta cobbled together - more than I liked. I also had problems with Blogger being down or buggy too often when I wanted to post something. It puts you off your content creation when Blogger suddenly gets stuck and won't publish.

New Portal:

On the redesign, I am trying to limit the choices visitors are presented with in the index page. I want the majority to explore the directory and find stuff the rest I would like to channel to the blog.

1. No blog on Index: I moved the blog off the index page. I think it is too busy. People stop to read the blog (not a bad thing) and never discover the directory.

2. New Index Page: A.) I have run links to all the top level directory categories down the left hand sidebar; B.) at the top of the main content area of the index page I put a search form for the directory and a link to the directory, below that is a seperator line and then a link to the blog. Below the link to the blog is a little headline ticker for the blog, I got via Feedburner, which rotates through the last 5 blog posts to act as a teaser. I don't think it is too annoying. 3.) Of course all this is also available through the navigation which runs across the top of all pages.

3. The New Blog: the blog serves several purposes: frequently updated content for search engine spiders; a place to link out freely and perhaps attract links; a place to build repeat traffic and importantly community and discussion; place for me to expound on the subject.

I am trying some different things with the blog. I.) keeping the blog main page simple, link lists like blogrolls, causes and references are all on seperate sub pages; II.) unlike the rest of the site no links to the directory categories in the sidebar on the blog; III.) the sidebar is mainly for links to the RSS feed and blog subject categories; IV.) I am going to try to not archive by date - only links to the blog categories (I don't know if this will work with this blog client but we shall see) I'm thinking, nobody really cares much about the date stuff was blogged on but the subjects.

My hope with all this is that there will be deeper exploration of the site beyond the front page and also deeper linking since some people will link to the homepage, others to the directory and still more will link directly to the blog. It will be interesting to see if it works.

You can see the results at the portal.

For years I created niche directories that stood alone. I do not think that is a sustainable plan anymore. People find a niche directory via a search engine, use it to find what they need and leave, probably never to return, and probably never to click on your ads or banners. I am talking about a real niche web directory, an authority site on it's topic, NOT some fake scraper directory.

I think there needs to be more than just a directory. It takes time for a niche portal to be found by webmasters, and you cannot rely on user submitted URL's alone, as a good reliable stream of regularly updating content. I think the solution is to make the site more of a niche portal.

What follows is my blueprint for a simple niche portal run by one person. It needs to be simple to run and add to on a regular basis. When starting out you need to keep things inexpensive particularly if you are doing this as a hobby.

Remember, the goal of a portal is to make it an authority on the subject.

A simple niche portal needs 3 elements:

1. Web search: that is focused on the niche topic. It is better if it has a unique database (eg. a web directory) of sites that you have added as the editor.
2. Content: Articles, reviews, photographs or what have you. The content needs to be original and unique. When you are starting out I suggest a blog to post this content on and you should expect to have to write it all. A blog makes it so much easier. Update it regularly. The reason you have the blog as a traffic builder, a viral inbound link builder, and constantly updating spider food for the search engines. (This blog and it's content needs to be hosted on your own site, not remotely hosted.)
3. Community and Interaction - part of this is going to be with your blog and comments, but you also want to build a forum or at least test the niche to see if you can build a forum.

I like Nick Wilson's plan for starting a forum:

Enable one forum. Call it the "Q & A" and promote it on every page -- you'll find those few readers that use it will quickly define what seperate forums you should enable further down the road.

That idea about starting with a one board Q & A forum is brilliant - in one step it allows for interaction, community building and establishing yourself as an authority. Fantastic. It may well be that the forum never grows beyond that one board but I think you still need to keep that one board available so as to allow your blog comments to remain on the topic of the blog post. I se no reason on a hobby site why you cannot test the waters by starting with a remotely hosted forum like Proboards, or even Bravenet if you are not sure that the niche can sustain a forum. Just be prepared to have a proper forum board installed if you find you have a lot of posting members. You do want to try to drive visitors to your blog and directory to the forums and encourage posting.

Here is another good post from Performancing about making your blog sticky. Substitute "portal" for the word blog in the article and you will start getting more ideas.

I have been messing around over at Feedburner exploring and making adjustments to my feeds. I like this service. Way back when Feedburner opened in Beta I switched my feed over to them. I wasn't sure how reliable they would be or if they would even be around in 6 months. I don't think I have logged into my account with them since that time and they have added a lot of features. I'm impresses enough that I'm going to be switching all my RSS feeds on all my blogs and forums over to them.

Added.

I'm pondering about switching the feed to summary instead of full post. Not sure about that but anyone with preferences let me know.

I have switched the Feedburner to read this feed now so I will start posting here. I am copying some of my old reviews and lists from the old blog into a text editor and I will transfer them here after the old site disappears. I don't want a dup content penalty.

I'm using a Mac based client side CMS for this blog and site called Rapidweaver. It is a bit more basic than TypePad but it looks like it will get the job done for the amount I post. I like it because I can build truly static pages for content if I want. It makes it all very simple to manage a site.

Forum

I put up a link to a little forum board. Comments are great for individual posts but sometimes people have a general observation, question or just want to chat with me about something not specifically related to a particular post. This gives them a way to do that. I don't care if it is a freebie remotely hosted Bravenet board - I'm not trying to impress anyone here.