Lately I have become more and more diligent in enforcing certain submission requirements to the dismay of some that have been submitting. Despite what some might think, I am not having a bad day nor am I picking on anyone. With the recent crackdown by Google on directories, owners have had to become something more than just a place that provides webmasters with links or they face becoming irrelevant due to the dreaded Google penalty.

So what exactly does that mean? For one directories need to provide something useful for real users, and by that I mean those other than webmasters or bloggers. Before the latest Google “wild hair”, most directories rarely if ever provided a resource for the general browsing public. Webmasters submitted their sites and if they get some link juice from the directory they were happy, any visits received from a directory was a bonus that was normally not expected and rarely happened. The better directories have come to this realization and are now trying to be more than just a link farm.

What does that mean to those submitting here? As has been noticed by some, I am moving towards the DMOZ model of submission reviews. If you stuff your site title or description with keywords, you can guarantee it will be rejected immediately. Site descriptions must actually describe what your site is about, if by reading your description I am unable to determine what your blog discusses, It will be rejected.

Even given a good description and title, ensure you have some posting history. Nothing is more annoying to those looking for types of blogs than finding out about it here and clicking through to a dead link or going to a blog that hasn’t been updated since the Reagan administration. I have received a lot of complaints about that requirement but proving to me that you are serious about your blog by showing some history of updating it means that it will be less likely to turn into a dead link later on. That is also shown by those newer bloggers willing to submit as a featured listing which is why that requirement is waved for premium submitters. Lastly pick the most relevant category. Site users go to a category to find blogs that are relevant to what they are looking for, not for sites submitted to a category because it has page rank or is closer to the home page. Depending on my mood, sites submitted to the wrong category can also be rejected.

Finally I thought I would close with a comment on the benefit of upgrading to a featured listing. Besides the obvious of putting your site above all regular listings and the extra exposure generated by appearing randomly on our home page you also can submit your RSS feed. This feature gives your listing links to 5 more pages on your site along with the text from the article being linked to. As this site has matured, A much larger portion of the visitors are coming directly to the detail pages from search engines because of those post links. They then click through to your blog which if you think about it is what directories were supposed to do in the first place, get visitors to come to your site.

If all you are looking for is a link, feel free to submit your keyword spammed submission to the various directories. I am sure some if not many will accept them. If you want more, spend some time on your submission and write a description and title that would benefit someone looking to find what you offer. Those submissions are welcomed here.

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Comments are welcome as long as they are on topic. I reserve the right to delete any comment I consider off topic, spammy, or is posted for what I consider purely self promotional reasons. Continued abuse of these guidelines will result in banning from this site.