How NOT to Get Your Directory Penalized by Google

Does Google hate web directories?

Unlike what people think about Google, the answer is yes. But there is a strong reason why Google hate web directories - something that you and I should understand so that we don't say "Google sucks!" after our web directories are punished to PageRank 0, even get deindexed from the search engine pages.

Here are some of the most common ways so that Google don't hate your web directories:

Never sell your PageRank - As intended or not, having dofollow links (especially the unrelated ones) on your web directory's homepage raises a flag. This being said, having the dofollow links site-wide will definitely get your web directory penalized much sooner than latter. If you want to feature sites on the homepage, please highly consider to nofollow the links.

Never approve sites that are in bad neighborhood - You should understand that having gambling, pharmacy and adult sites in your web directory will attract Google to keep an eye on you.

Check whether the right sites are listed in the right categories - The wrong sites in the wrong categories will get Google to think that your web directory is a link farm. Approving 90 from 100 link submissions means you are not strict enough in maintaining your web directory's quality.

Watch where you get back links from - This is actually one of SEO/link building best practices of today. The number of links pointing to your web directory is way much less valuable than some high quality and highly-related links pointing to your web directory. Monitor who's linking to you and consider to de-link them (yes, you can do this from the search engines' tools for webmaster, such as Yahoo! Site Explorer.)

I have a directory with 15,000 back links but a PR 0 - one tragic example of ignoring Google's guidelines. This directory of directories won't - lesson well learned. You don't want to push your luck with Google - trust me.