I’ve often wondered why so many directory owners fail to show any level of standard with their sites when it comes to editing the descriptions to their links, not all, but most directories out there are poor to say the least. But rather than criticise, (because after all many directory owners are new to the industry, and perhaps don’t recognise the need for a high level of editorial integrity), I thought my time would be better spent sharing my knowledge and offering some of my experience of directory editing which now spans over a decade.

So what can you do to improve your directory and make it more appealing to your visitors? Well, the obvious one is accuracy, if you have a link to a site selling for example, ‘women’s swimsuits’ then is should say just that in the description; an example being something like this.. “Bella Beachwear is an Australian based Swimwear firm that make high fashion, high quality, designer swimsuits to your specifications…” What’s so special about this you might think? For starters, it is simple to understand, tells you what you need to know, and more importantly, without being too verbose.

You can never put enough importance on a good descriptive tag because like a shop window, the description you give a link is exactly what the potential customer sees first. If you put the same description in the following format you’ll see what I mean. “..Bella Beachwear, Australian Swimwear, high fashion, high quality, designer swimsuits, designer, bikinis, for sale..” What’s your perception likely to be? To me the description not only looks messy but appears amateurish, and very poorly thought out, and if the description is poorly presented is it accurate? An even worse example is when you see sites that use meta-tag fetchers which produce results such as “…Bella Beachware, swimwear, water…” or something non-descript like that!

Take my word for it, there are directories out there that do this even now!

The old saying is first impressions count, and there’s never been a truer word. Just think how many sites you’ve visited in your time, took one glance, and though it was awful thus quickly moved on? The ‘made for adsense’ sites are just one that comes to mind! It’s the same principle with directories, if you’ve provide poor descriptions you run a very high risk of not only losing visitors but also of SEO companies wanting to submit to you as this affects their credibility as well.

So why not go that extra yard, take your time when writing a description, make sure it matches the content of the site your describing, even if you only touch on the surface. I would much rather have a good concise description of at least some of the content of a site, than to have a mish-mash trying to cover all of the content in an disorganised fashion. How many of you have heard the saying ‘Can’t see the wood for the trees’, This is exactly the effect you get when you try to keyword stuff a description, people get blinded by the word confusion and move on.

So to bullet point effective descriptions.

1. Be concise and accurate, you don’t need to cover everything, but cover at least the basics.
2. Check that the content correlates with the description.
3. Never take the submitters words for it regarding description, they may have motives for pushing keywords.
4. Don’t make false statements in the description whatever you do, this will come back to haunt you.
5. Work with the site owner to get a mutually acceptable description.
6. Refuse to compromise on your integrity, it’s better to lose a customer for that than lose my target audience.
7. Constantly re-review your sites, content can change literally in seconds.

Always provide a terms page stating you reserve the right to amend or completely change the description, if the customer has any level of internet savvy they will feel comfortable with that, if not then your probably better off without them. Remember, its your directory, and ultimately your income if your serious enough about it, don’t risk the long term benefits a well edited directory can bring just for the sake of gaining a short term profit.

Phase 2 to follow.