Australian Businesses Directory - Get Listed

abd · 16-01-08

So were back for another year and what have you done to promote your online business? If you have done nothing so far, then may I suggest you think about the following

1. Get listed in the business directory for $9.95/yr.

Why? Not only will it increase traffic to your website, but you will also benefit for the search engine marketing that we put into our site. If you sign up before March this year, we will also promote your site in our web marketing softwear for free.

We have also added a hit counter for each link on the directory so you can see how many people have clicked on your link.

http://www.australianbusinessesdirectory.com

David.Pagotto · 16-01-08

Great Looking site, I will have to sign up!

Elven · 16-01-08

Gasp!

Front Page Information
Website Title: Australian Businesses Directory
Title Relevancy 100%
Meta Description: Australian Businesses Directory - Promote your business in our business directory today & Let our business Help your business
Description Relevancy: 91% relevant.
AboutUs: Wiki article on Australianbusinessesdirectory.com
SEO Score: 88%
Terms: 583 (Unique: 242, Linked: 56)
Images: 21 (Alt tags missing: 2)
Links: 37 (Internal: 29, Outbound: 8)

All due respect, abd, but isn't this site one of those pay-for-listing link farms that Google has started downgrading?

Where's the Affiliate link?

How about free listings for the first 1000 who sign up? -or 5000? After all, there are 1.4 million registered businesses in Australia; and about half of them have websites.
70% have access to the Net

Your traffic and PR3 are good for such a new site. (I ran Whois..) The site has only been up since July 2007.

Elven

Quote:

Originally Posted by abd

So were back for another year and what have you done to promote your online business? If you have done nothing so far, then may I suggest you think about the following

1. Get listed in the business directory for $9.95/yr.

Why? Not only will it increase traffic to your website, but you will also benefit for the search engine marketing that we put into our site. If you sign up before March this year, we will also promote your site in our web marketing softwear for free.

We have also added a hit counter for each link on the directory so you can see how many people have clicked on your link.

http://www.australianbusinessesdirectory.com

abd · 17-01-08

I like the whois site stats, I may need to use that more often on other websites.

As for Google downgrading the business directory, I have actually written to Google myself about this after hearing they were punishing certain directories and asked them if mine would be punished. Basically they said NO. I think the ones that Google are punishing are the link farms that sell 1000 x PR4 links for a set $ Price a month as this interferes with the Google page rank system. Link farms that use Black Hat SEO tricks have also been punished.

A lot of search engines still rely on a good quality directories that are usually manually edited like dmoz and yahoo directories.

As for setting up an affiliate program, if you know of any good scripts to use, please let me know as I would like to do something like this in the future.

Cheers

Gav

Elven · 17-01-08

Quote:

Originally Posted by abd

I like the whois site stats, I may need to use that more often on other websites.

As for Google downgrading the business directory, I have actually written to Google myself about this after hearing they were punishing certain directories and asked them if mine would be punished. Basically they said NO. I think the ones that Google are punishing are the link farms that sell 1000 x PR4 links for a set $ Price a month as this interferes with the Google page rank system. Link farms that use Black Hat SEO tricks have also been punished.

A lot of search engines still rely on a good quality directories that are usually manually edited like dmoz and yahoo directories.

As for setting up an affiliate program, if you know of any good scripts to use, please let me know as I would like to do something like this in the future.

Cheers

Gav

I'm glad to see your response from Google, Gav. They've left a lot of grey area in that seemingly earth-shaking directive. It doesn't seem like they've got their criteria clear in their own minds.
I read the Google Webmasters forum daily. I rarely post there. The debate about this decision, and to downgrade purchased links from any site -because it lessens the relevancy of the SERPs- could change the commercial environment on the Web dramatically.

You're welcome to the Whois link. It's a great starting point with any client or site for me. All the important stuff is right there.

I still think you should accept unpaid links until you get a certain number of submissions to establish the relevancy of your site. I suggested 1000 or 5000.
Most of the popular directories accept unpaid links constantly, but stipulate the administrators will look over the site for acceptability (SEO, standards compliance, compliance with directory goals, etc.) when they get a chance.
Yahoo directory, for example, accepts unpaid submissions. It can take up to 6 months to get listed. The average is about 3 months though. (Yahoo directory is different than the Yahoo search engine.)

What sort of structure is your website? Is it PHP-based? The rendered result pages return as HTML, which could be almost anything. Or is it on Windows hosting?
I can probably run through my library and find you a good script on any platform.

Elven

Elven · 17-01-08

Hi Gav,

Have you looked over the new Copyright Law revisions enacted in Jan 2007?
There was a long debate. Australia, based on the word of the law, has put in place the most regressive copyright laws in the world.

Technically, everything on the Web is copyrighted. Even the posts to this forum are owned by someone.

By word or law, although there have been a constant stream of rationalizations and some specific exclusions, any link to copyrighted material can be fined a $6600 per instance for a business. The fine can be given as a ticket by a policeman on the spot.
The fines can be as high as $13,200 per instance, which can be set by the police on the scene or imposed by the court.

For individuals, the fines start at $1320 per instance, again at the discretion of the police or the courts.

I've been watching the development of a number of directories and search engines across Australia for the last couple of years. About 50% shut down around Jan 2007 because of the severity of the new copyright laws, and the vague terminology.

Elven

abd · 17-01-08

Google have left a few thousand people mad about there new version of page ranking. As for the affiliate program, I may look into a PHP based one.

As for the new copyright laws, I have not seen them yet, but there is not much text on my business directory other then a few things I wrote up and a Yahoo RSS feed

abd · 18-01-08

Just to clear a few things up about link buying and the use of directories on the internet.

The information below is why google may punish you if your site involves itself in link buying without using the rel="nofollow" attribute in the <a> tag

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Google and most other search engines use links to determine reputation. A site's ranking in Google search results is partly based on analysis of those sites that link to it. Link-based analysis is an extremely useful way of measuring a site's value, and has greatly improved the quality of web search. Both the quantity and, more importantly, the quality of links count towards this rating.

However, some SEOs and webmasters engage in the practice of buying and selling links that pass PageRank, disregarding the quality of the links, the sources, and the long-term impact it will have on their sites. Buying or selling links that pass PageRank is in violation of Google's webmaster guidelines and can negatively impact a site's ranking in search results.

Not all paid links violate our guidelines. Buying and selling links is a normal part of the economy of the web when done for advertising purposes, and not for manipulation of search results. Links purchased for advertising should be designated as such. This can be done in several ways, such as:

* Adding a rel="nofollow" attribute to the <a> tag
* Redirecting the links to an intermediate page that is blocked from search engines with a robots.txt file

Google works hard to ensure that it fully discounts links intended to manipulate search engine results, such excessive link exchanges and purchased links that pass PageRank. If you see a site that is buying or selling links that pass PageRank, let us know.We?ll use your information to improve our algorithmic detection of such links.

Taken from http://www.google.com/support/webmas...y?answer=66736
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David.Pagotto · 19-01-08

Abd, I like the site you run but as Elven says you should allow 1000-5000 free links to establish relevancy. I mean, not many people what to pay to be on a directory that isn't populated with other high end links. I think it would be very beneficial in the long run to take this advice.

Elven · 19-01-08

Quote:

Originally Posted by abd

Google have left a few thousand people mad about there new version of page ranking. As for the affiliate program, I may look into a PHP based one.

As for the new copyright laws, I have not seen them yet, but there is not much text on my business directory other then a few things I wrote up and a Yahoo RSS feed

Google's PR algorithm is one of those ways you roll the dice by being online. Or at least that's what it's becoming.
Intellectually, I agree with their rationale about paid links. As someone who has spent a few hundred hours tracking down directories, blogs and search engines to hype the pagerank of clients' sites though, it pisses me off.
They want the no-follow on any paid link.
I can't help wondering if this is a competitive move to edge out a proliferation of smaller search engines. Apparently, Google will punish both the linked and linking sites.

The issue with the copyright laws is if you link to copyrighted material without the permission of the owner of the copyright, you are open to police action.
There was a case in QLD, -completed only a week or so before the new laws came into effect- where a site provided links to download music and videos. Most of the links were contributed by visitors to the site. The site was run by a retired policeman.
The owner of the site was forced to pay fines and take the site down because the prosecution held the ISP responsible along with the owner.
As a result, Google threatend to exclude Australia from its indexes.

Just imagine the liability figures for millions of webpages indexed by Google.
Australia was close to being excluded from all the major search engines, and the threat of arbitrary action by police and governments convinced many entrepreneurs to shut down their search engines.
The government has issued a number of rationales which supposedly will guide judicial discretion. Unfortunately, there is no oversight on judicial discretion other than appeal (- and appeals just mean more money moving through the legal system!)
In a growing number of specific instances, there have been amendments to the new copyright laws. These amendments are very fine tuned, leaving both prosecution and defense with numerous gaps in the law.
At the end of the day, if the word of the law is enforced, linking to any copyrighted material -such as a webpage- without written permission can be prosecuted.

Although there was a long debate over these laws which lasted more than two years and resulted in over 40 submissions, the laws were enacted to please the music industry watchdog, MITI.

Elven