Guidelines for Accepting Submission Titles
A question recently came up about the titles that should be accepted with web directory submissions. Listed below are some tips to keep in mind when reviewing submissions:
- Avoid accepting titles that are overly promotional, such as "cheapest", "best", etc. Consider using "affordable" or "high quality" instead. Otherwise, your directory would be endorsing a web site that may in fact not be the cheapest or best.
- Avoid titles that are too long for the sake of keyword "stuffing". Such titles should be revised to include a few of the targeted keywords.
- Avoid approving titles that are too short, such as a one-word title. These titles are not descriptive enough to properly represent a web site and should be altered to do so.
- Most obviously, ensure that titles actually represent the content of the web site submitted. Some web site owners and marketers will attempt ranking for keywords because of the volume of traffic they will send when it is not truly appropriate for the web site.
The above efforts should be common practice for quality web directories, and helpful tips for all web directory owners that want to maintain a valuable resource.
This entry was posted on Saturday, August 11th, 2007 at 2:21 pm and is filed under Tips for Directory Owners. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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Nice tips. However for the last 2 points, isn’t it the right of the submitters to target any keyword they choose? If you changed their titles, it would surely not be pleasing to them since it kinda defeats the purpose of their submissions in the first place (to a certain extent). If a website was targeting its URL like bloppers.com and put in the title as bloppers, i would think it’s alright even though it’s short. It is reasonable for them to want to target their URL title. I agree that when the titles border on misrepresentation, then there is a need to be changed, but else, I would try to leave them alone. My 2 cents
In your example, Bloppers would be acceptable since it’s not a generic word and is the name of the actual site. As for the rest, in most cases, submitted titles are mostly acceptable with small tweaks, such as the text that is too promotional as mentioned.
Nice tips there, Chris.
I think 4th point is what summarizes the whole topic. As of point 1, I think sometimes such words need to pass through (Yes I am talking about my directory
) and for point 3, again it depends on site.
But whatever it is, title need to represent the site and should not be “out” of way.
@Eonte - to avoid the problem you describe, you should make clear in your submission guidelines what titles are acceptable and what titles are not.
I like to see the actual business name in the title somewhere as well. A lot of time the title tag is stuffed, but the logo gives the actual business name away.
This is exactly what I expected to find out after reading the title . Thanks for informative article
Nice tips. Link exchanger need to make Title with all above guidelines.