Member Avatar for AccurateAG

Hi:

After having posted to over 1,000 directories, there are a few things I would like to bring to the attention of directory owners and operators:

1. When you ask for information, such as the URL, the e-mail address, the description, or whatever, PLEASE put any restrictions right on the data entry screen! It wastes my time, as well as yours, when I have to go back to correct things such as:
- The e-mail account needs to be on the domain being listed.
- The description is too long
- The nubmer of keywords is excessive
- The URL needs to have "http://" in front of it.

2. TEST YOUR WEBSITE! It sounds mucho obvious--who would not test their web site?--but I have more than once encountered errors in web sites, such as:
- CAPTCHA is not displayed
- CAPTCHA displays one length, and the input field accepts another length (i.e., the CAPTCHA is 6 characters, and the input field only takes 5 characters).
- The site is down.
- The site is up, but you get error messages when you try to submit which show the submission form is broken

3. Speaking of CAPTCHA, please choose a version, if you can, that makes the difference between upper and lower case obvious. It is no fun to have to guess whether a W, V, X, Z, O, etc., is capital or lower case, and with CAPTCHA, if you get one letter wrong, the code is wrong and you have to redo the code.

4. Please keep up with it. I was at one website today where the number of active links was 2430, but the PENDING links were 121,249. Yes, you read that right: 121K PENDING SUBMISSIONS!

5. When someone wants to bookmark your site, please ensure the URL is in the bookmark, not just "Directory". Also, in the URL, while it is nice for the site owner to have a lot of editorial text, it is not so great for the person bookmarking your site.

6. When you display search results, please include the category the site is listed in; that is what someone doing directory postings is looking for, which category their web site will best fit into on this site.

7. Please have a "home" link in your navigation bar; it just makes life a little easier.

Thank you.

John

Edited by AccurateAG because: Added a paragraph
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Member Avatar for canadafred

1,000 directories so far! WOW! How long did that take you?

Member Avatar for AccurateAG

Hi Fred:

Since December of 2010. I may be over 1,000, but I have not done any sort of inventory on that. I have the records in my Favorites, not Excel. I started this project as a newbie SEO person, so I did not know to document in Excel. Oh well.

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