A recent discussion over at digital point lead me to writing this article.

How can the template used on your directory affect how well a search engine robot indexes your site?

Why does it matter anyway?

People submit to web directories for backlinks to improve their sites rankings. A directory that gets indexed fast and backlinks counted frequently is likely to provide customers with better results, hence more submissions to a directory. More indexed pages also means more people will find your directory pages via the search engines.

Valid HTML

Valid HTML allows for faster serving of web pages. It will also allow google to prefer your directory pages compared with those that don't validate. For someone with the knowledge, it takes all of 10 minutes to make your website CSS & (x)html valid. This is a simple yet effective step that should be taken.

CSS Layouts - No Messy Tables

Tables were intended to sort data into a nice orderly manor. They were not intended for use when constructing a whole entire layout. Designers using a hidden border could organise a webpage neatly. This created problems for search engines as they have to crawl through hundreds of table cells and rows looking for some decent content.

The way forward is to use CSS based - tableless layouts for your directory. CSS allows improved robot indexing and boosts SEO.

• CSS allows you to place your content above your navigation - such as having a left navigation bar placed below the content in the HTML file. (This is similar to what I do on Zorg Directory, where articles on the right sidebar are shown first in the code).
  
• CSS also creates less code. The better the code to text ratio, the improved SEO and indexing of your directory. Less code means pages are content rich, faster to crawl and have more relevancy.
  
• CSS allows you to boost your keyword use by chaging styles. Google gives slight importance to keywords in hx tags, bold type font etc. CSS classes can allow you to change the style of keywords when a search engine robot visits your site, yet have a good visual appeal to visitors by controlling the aesthetics with CSS.

Better Internal Linking

Its no hidden secret that due to hundreds of categories, directories need to be crawled deep into them.

• To allow better crawling of categories, ensure your directory links to its homepage and other categories in the tree. Mods can be added to directory detail pages to link to each category in the path and boost internal linking and better crawling. See an example here.
  
• List all categories. Some directories show a list of the top level categories on every page, allowing robots to jump straight to them from where ever they are, rather than going to the homepage and starting again. For example Gii Web Directory links to its top level categories on all pages.
  
• Link to other categories and sub-categories. This can be seen on the idk.in directory. A random category and its sub categories are displayed on other categories.
  
• Link to detail pages. Many directory scripts by default have a latest links page to improve caching of newly added sites. Take use of it. DirectoryMix Directory also links in the sidebar to recently added links and currently viewed categories for faster indexing.

Use less query strings

Query strings are used in URLs on a directory to affect navigation. It may be to navigate around categories and to submit pages (example - ?c=12345) or may be to change link display order (example - ?c=12345&o=date).

• Google will see many pages like this as the same, even if the URL differs slightly. Make use of URL rewriting for categories and changing your script so that the submit page does not include hundreds of different versions just due to a ?c=12345 parameter in the URL. Block it with robots.txt if needed.

if I've missed anything please let me know.

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