Ive read the first page and the last without getting the answers I was looking for, so theyre probably buried deep inside the pages that i missed, but to make it easy for me & anybody else reading about your services, could you please describe the best way of entering submissions to you for a directory entry- i.e. please describe whats required in these areas:-
1a. TITLE is a maximum of no more than 30 characters (or 40, or 50 or whatever)
1b. natural language only to be used - i.e. no keyword stuffing OR keywords in the title in the following format:
keyword 1 | keyword 2 | keyword 3
1c. HOW MANY VARIATIONS of the title should we provide or can the same one be used across all directories
2a. DESCRIPTION is a maximum of 150 characters (200, 300 or whatever)
2b. HOW MANY VARIATIONS of the description should we provide
3. In your experience as a directory owner and following on from the questions asked in 1c and 2b, could you please advise us whether or not it matters to the search engines that the same title and description are used across a number of directories, or put another way, what do recommend as best practice for web directory submissions?
Matt Cutts et al tell us that we should have link diversity and specifically mentions that being listed in directories is a good thing, so it doesnt make sense for them to penalise us if we use the same words in submission to all directories - its the equivalent of saying that a national advertiser in yellow pages should change their advertising copy for each local editioin of the YP - utterly ridiculous.
Anyway, aside from that last little rant, your service sounds good and im sure i'll be taking you up on it at some point in the not too distant future.
Look forward to reading your response.
Hi, thanks for your interest in my service and for taking the time to formulate those important questions, here are my answers:
1a) the title should make sense and ideally should have your targeted keywords in it, so a size which make sense, obviously using whole sentences as titles is not practical for the users or the search engines, so keep it as short as possible.
1b) yes natural language is preferred and definitely no keyword stuffing.
1c) you can give me up to 10 variations
2a) a description can be anything from 15 to 100 words (those are directories not article directories)
2b) you can give me up to 10 variations
3) While i recommend using the full 10 keywords/ 10 descriptions when possible, i definitely saw an improvement in rankings even when people used only 1 title and 1 description, this is due to something called "content syndication" , google knows that there are websites which pick up identical content from good sources manually or automatically, so in many cases that maybe viewed as a good thing, obviously that's not a good thing when it's done with XRUMER on 200 000 forums (even in that case google will probably not penalize you because there is no way u can prevent a competitor from doing that blast for you)... so as long as it's not overdone you should be fine.
By link diversity, matt is not talking only about anchors but also about sources, which means, blogs, directories, news sites, personal sites, business sites, forums.. keep in mind that matt gives political answers to sensitive questions most of the time, so don't take him too seriously, also SEO is a case by case thing, what is good for you might be very bad for another site..
i hope that answers your question, i don't want this thread to turn into an SEO discussion though, so please keep the questions related to the service and if you have personal / broad or off topic questions feel free to PM me instead.
thanks