[John Scott]

Originally Posted by seomoz

Does the directory itself (the home page) rank for any of the moderately competitive terms in it's title, e.g. for Aviva Directory, whose title tag is "Information - Aviva Web Directory," I searched Google for information web directory and didn't find them in the first 500 results.

Where the hell does he pull this criteria from? What basis does he have for stating this? Since when did a page ranking for the words in it's page titles mean something?

There are hundreds of thousands of pages out there, clean as a virgin honeypot, and enjoying some solid linkage, that do not necessarily rank for some words that are in the page titles.

Pretty sure somebody just pulled that criteria out of their ass.

Also note that the page title of the page in question is "Information - Aviva Web Directory", but to prove a non-point, the author searched Google for "information web directory", a phrase that is nothing similar to the page title.

And apply Rand's own criteria to the SEOMoz blog and it will show that the SEOmoz blog is not, um, worthwhile? A little confused here because I'm not sure what the aforementioned, pulled-from-the-ass criteria is supposed to show. But whatever it is supposed to show, it shows the SEOmoz blog in the negative.

"Search Engine Marketing News & Tips" is in the SEOmoz blog page title, but when I search for "news" they aren't in the top ten. Nor when I search for "tips" or when I search for "&", or even "Search Engine Marketing News".

Originally Posted by seomoz

Do the pages inside the directory rank well for their targeted phrases, e.g. I might check the financial forums page at Aviva by searching for financial forums information directory at Google - again, not in the top 500 results (even though the page is recently indexed). If I dont' find general pages, I'll search for more specific ones, like their page on ScaleModel.net with a search for international list of scale model related web sites (unbelievably not in the top 300)

Who said that Aviva Directory was targeting the phrase "financial forums information directory"??? Where the hell is this guy getting this crap? I mean, you want to piss on somebody else's work, fine, but do so honestly. Don't go making up keyword phrases and saying that Aviva is targeting them.

Originally Posted by seomoz

Check the links to the directory - do they appear legitimate and valuable, e.g. For Aviva - 907,819 to the domain, 683,573 to the homepage. They're at close to a million links, but can't rank for even 5-6 word phrases in their title tags... Something's funny.

Can't even rank for the 5-6 word phrases in their title tags? They do rank for most of the searches I checked, but then I didn't alter the title tags. Somewhat dishonest article if you ask me, and by "somewhat" I mean "very".

Aviva has been on Digg's home page more than once, and the organic linkage it enjoys is nothing short of awesome.

Originally Posted by seomoz

Check the page strength - do they have links from edu and gov domains? Are they listed in places like dmoz or Wikipedia? Do blogs regularly link to them (Technorati numbers)? What's their PageRank? etc. For Aviva, they're a PS 7 (although the Technorati numbers aren't coming through right now).

Why should anybody check page strength? Does Google use page strength? No. Does Google give extra credit for .edu links? No. for .gov links? No. Do most professional SEO's know that most edu and gov links are actually on spam pages? I would hope so.

Originally Posted by seomoz

Check out mentions of the domain on the web - do they come from legitimate sources? Is it mostly SEO-related websites that are talking about them? If so, the engines might have less trust in them than in other types of sites, e.g. for Aviva, searching google for avivadirectory.com -site:avivadirectory.com.

Again, "the engines might have less trust in them than in other types of sites"????? Any sources to back up this assumption?

Do these directories have value? I will have to go with a response that is 180 degrees from Rand Fishkin: YES.

http://www.v7n.com/forums/web-direct...ories-win.html

I regularly experiment with new sites and web directory submission, and I can say, YES, web directories with editorial integrity like Aviva do help you in the SERPs.

And I would suggest that you evaluate web directories with a much more useful criteria - one, that they rewrite titles and descriptions, and reject unworthy submissions.

And two, that they have high quality sites in their index that serve the public.