Posted on Saturday, 21st February 2009 by admin
I love reviewing directories made with custom scripts or relatively non-popular scripts. Most phpld, esyndicat and indexu directories look very similar though some directory owners manage to put together a good template and many custom mods to make their directories stand out.
Today I am going to review a Blog Directory based on Dew-NewPHPLinks script. I should review this script in detail some other time. Some stats about BlogDirectory.vg before I dive in some features I liked (probably they come out of the box with the script being used).
Google Pagerank 2, close to 200 pages indexed in Google, that means many pages are still waiting to be indexed. More than 1000 links to the domain.
What I like in this directory (I won’t be reviewing it if I didn’t like it) 
1. They let users write reviews about each entry. That can get a lot of UGC if they manage to make it popular with bloggers and release a widget that will show a random review from this directory on the blog.
2. It’s free, there isn’t any paid option either. No reciprocals required.
3. Easy account creation process. I normally hate to register in directories but these guys have made it so easy, I wouldn’t mind ‘quickly registering’ while I also submit my blog at the same time. I hope other directory owners will also adopt this concept.
4. Featured Site; I really like this one, they keep showing a different featured site (sometimes with a review) while I browse the directory. It’s not exactly a stumbleupon experience but it’s slick.
5. Category based search, I have rarely seen this one. Once the directory has 1000s of links, this would come handy.
6. Clean (not empty) template and not many advertisements on the directory, though it would be great if the advertisements could be blended better with the site’s background and font color.
7. Create My Category For Me – Another supercool feature, just like they solved the registration problem, they have also made a better “suggest a category” seen in other directories.
Directory uses a redirect for links just like many social bookmarking sites. This might confuse many bloggers to think the directory is not passing pagerank. In my opinion, it’s better to provide a direct link but directory owner might want to keep track of clicks on each link using this method.
Things that could make this directory better:
1. Redirecting blogdirectory.vg/directory to www.blogdirectory.vg/directory (or vice versa) would ensure PR is not split and google doesn’t see duplicate content. It’s surprising how many directory owners are making this mistake.
2. Meta tags look like they are for Dew-NewPHPLinks and not for a business blog directory.
3. About page is an advertisement for directory script and doesn’t say much about directory’s vision.
4. SEO-Friendly URLs are missing. By now everyone agrees on the importance of SEO friendly URLs, I wonder why a directory script will miss out on this feature.
5. Custom titles and meta tags for categories are also missing. It’s very common for directory owners to miss the custom meta tags for categories but the titles are normally taken care of by directory script. This one falls short.
Overall, I like the directory and will look forward to finding more such directories.
Tags: blog directory, directory review
Posted in Blog | Comments (5)
February 23rd, 2009 at 9:55 am
Thanks for such a great review. You obviously know directories and how they work.
I especially appreciate the suggestions you made. I will be going down your list and making changes to improve the directory.
I built this one for bloggers. I don’t sell links or ads. Some of my own links to my websites are there. I wanted to make a blog directory that did not require links back to the directory, one that was free, and one that was easy to use.
I haven’t had the time to improve it in about 3 months. Barely keep up with approving the blogs submitted. Because of your review, I’m going to go back and fix it up some more.
Thanks.
February 23rd, 2009 at 7:33 pm
@Chris: Thanks for dropping by. I understand free directories owners/editors must be having a hard time keeping up with submissions.
I hope to see you make a successful directory out of this.
August 23rd, 2009 at 10:27 pm
Hey guys,I was myself a blog directory owner and i close it because peoples are just rude,they can’t or don’t want to follow some simple guidelines like submitting to the right category.
Having a directory is a lot of work,a lot.
December 24th, 2009 at 1:42 pm
I have bad experience with directory sites as well. If your site will get in some kind of automatic directory submission software you can expect a hundreds even thousands of spammers in wrong category and even with adult content and your directory will be penalized by google really fast. But good luck with it!
John Birch@Acne Scar Treatment´s last blog ..Hello world!
March 11th, 2010 at 5:44 pm
I closed my blog directory down too. Not enough promotion out there. It seems you spend more in the first few months building links to make it desirable than gaining money