It makes you wonder doesn’t? why everyone else who was selling links get penalized and not yahoo’s dir?
Well for one they are linked from one killer strong domain (yahoo.com) what more is that their directory does not revolve around their database of links, its more like a blog with a side order of links, so who ever is visiting the directory or that page that they call a “directory” home page, they aren’t there just for the links they are there for the news and the latest posts from their blog.
Its pretty simple actually with a few edits to phpLD and Wordpress you can have your very own Yahoo! Dir Template/Setup, so that the traffic you get is relevant as well as pleases Google. Simple yet effective makes me laugh actually it was just this simple to be border line approved by Google.
Your directory should revolve around news and latest review or anything that you update on a daily basis which is in fact unique, and people WANT to read or get to know better. Its all about user satisfaction, and whenever a user bounces of your site to another page Google gives the landing page more authority then you.
If all you have to contribute is tons and tons of links and you are getting backlinks to them then you won’t get squat out of Google.
Backlinks will only help your current situation, think of it like a booster shot, for example : my blog has the proper tags and proper content and relevant information for the term “SEO Blog” so i targetted that term actively and within a week im in the top 30’s of that term at google:
Now, heres Yahoo’s dir page, unique content covers the page by 80%, the categories to the directory are on the left so the home page is safe, and passes the proper PR, the difference here is that the content is actually hosted on the same domain and is shown FULLY no excerpts on the front page, most dir owners use feeds to publish news on their directories (thats a serp killer too, in a bad way).
So in conclusion, here are the things you have to keep in mind while making a directory.
- Links should only be like a second feature to the site and the front page.
- NEVER make general or web directories, they are irrelevant, choose a niche and run with it. (Specifics help you get better rankings)
- News or any other kind of info should be the whole idea of your directory.
- All news/info used should be unique and hosted on the same domain.
- No RSS feeds under categories (this has only a few down sides, better safe then sorry)
- Resources for regular users not just webmasters, the kind of traffic you get is a key factor in authority at google.
- Backlinks should be your last priority here, you are not selling PR now you have to sell relevant traffic.
- You CAN use category links in blogposts to get more backlinks and relevance as well.
- The more you from within the domain the better, those links count as backlinks at google as well.
