Journal

TOLRA operates two web directories, worldsiteindex.com which is a general directory and artweblinks.com which as most people will be able to guess from the name is an art related directory.

Both directories get a mix of submissions from individual site owners as well as from companies set up to promote web sites, the logical thinking would be that those submissions coming from professional promotion companies would be near perfect.

The unfortunate reality appears to be that some of these promotion companies are being paid to do a job yet they fail to even use common sense in the execution of this work, an example would be the submission of a used cars site to artweblinks.com, obviously not appropriate. To put it in plain English the site owner pays the promotion company to promote their site, the promotion company submits the site to an inappropriate directory and the directory discards the listing, the net result is the site owner has gained nothing but a bill.

The other failure we see is in the title and description text, there’s obviously those that keyword stuff and for free submissions they go directly to the bin, but many fail to use the description to it’s full. Experience tells us that using a description of the absolute minimum length results in the listing having a lower chance of being indexed by search engines than one submitted using a well formed descriptive sentence using all or most of the permissible space. This being the case then my feeling is the promotion companies should be writing unique descriptions for their clients that not only fulfil the requirements of the directory but also entice visitors to the site being listed.

Part of the problem is undoubtedly submission companies offering to submit a site to thousands of directories for a few dollars the other is companies deciding to offer SEO as an extra without putting the effort in required to fully understand the marketing of a site. As far as I’m concerned a site has to be marketed as a whole, that is usability, appeal to the target audience along with both on site and off site optimisations, there are marketing people on myJournal that can explain site marketing far better than I can.

So what’s the point of this other than a rant, well it’s to remind people who want their sites promoted not to waste their money on shoddy services by blindly going with companies that promise the earth, not all SEO companies are equal or performing the same work. Ask questions, for example when submitting to directories will they simply use the text you give them or will they actually take the time to craft a professional description for your site to maximise its exposure, are they just link building or optimising your content and probably most importantly do the people doing the work have a complete grasp of the language your site is being promoted in. Don’t be affraid to ask for examples of their work.