Er your site does rank in the top 500 for "Information Web Directory".
#232
http://www.google.com/search?num=100...+Web+Directory
Also John I think that is a valid way to measure how well a page rankings by taking the title or part of the title.
Now common sense tells us you don't take one word and see how a site ranks for it but I think taking your title "Information - Avivia Web Directory" and removing the Aviva out of it and seeing how you rank is very fair.
Look at Rands site title.
SEO - Search Engine Optimization | Read SEOmoz, Rank Better
Here is how he rankings:
SEO #25
Search Engine Optimization #19
Read SEOmoz #1
Rank Better #1
The title tag is one of the optimization items that Search Engines give the most weight to. In Rands survey of 37 SEO experts the title tag was ranked the highest with a rating for 4.9 out of 5.
http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors#f3
Seeing how a site rankings for their title tags tells you a lot about the authority a site has -- if the title tag is completive.
Also that doesn't mean looking to see the number of results as
blue and pink dogs has a page results of 2.9 million.
http://www.google.com/search?q=blue+and+pink+dogs
But put the title into quotes and you will see there only 9 pages.
http://www.google.com/search?q="blue+and+pink+dogs"
Putting a key phrase in quotes or searching using the allintitle:keyword will show give you a better idea how competitive the key phrase is.
For example
title optimization has the following results
61 million no quotes
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=title+optimization
40k in quotes
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q...+optimization"
And
blog titles has the following results
47 million no quotes
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=blog+titles
110k in quotes
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q="blog+titles"
My blog
http://seo.seocompany.ca/ rankings on the first page for both these terms just based on on-page optimization.
That tells you my blog has good authority.
I think this was Rands point. To show that not very many directories have high ranking authority by showing that they don't rank well for competitive phrases they have in their title tags.
So while it smarts to have him name your site out on his point making, it is a valid point in my opinion.
While I think this is a valid point it is not my experience that having high ranking authority is needed to give value to inbound links from a site. ~40% to 60% of my $415k income last year was from link building with directories so I can say that I have experience in this area. I find that getting links from directories are not only "Google blessed" links but they are the best bang for the buck links out there.
Directories that give multiple deep links where you can put the key phrase you are targeting with out having to add your domain or company name in the anchor text works the best.
Your Aviva Directory is one of the directories I put my clients in and while it may or may not have high ranking authority and its categories pages may or may not rank high for the title tag phrase -- it still provides value for the price.
So what I would do is look at category titles on your directory and see how they rank. Best to look for 2 or 3 word phrases that have 30k plus results when they are in quotes. This will tell you a lot about the authority your directory has.
The following will help you to rank better for your titles.
1. Put only the key phrase you are targeting in your title tag only.
2. Put the same key phrase in the URL, meta description/keywords, h1/h2 tags, bold in the first paragraph.
3. Do internal linking to the page with the same key phrase in the anchor text.