| Detailed Review: Alive Directory |
Detailed Review: Alive DirectoryDate Reviewed: 14-02-2007 Updated: 01-03-2007Name: Alive Web Directory URL: http://www.alivedirectory.com/ Type: General PageRank: 7/10  Looks & Design: Well, nothing special in the looks department. Other than the high PageRank (PR) in the Google Toobar (which I am surprised that they weren't highlighting that fact), it looks exactly like a typical web directory, categories and featured listing on it's frontpage. However, with that said, the thing I like about the directory is that it is neat and clean without much cluttering it. I have seen directories with all it's categories on it's frontpage and those probably look terrible and confusing to it's users. And the colours match well with the overall design. The best part is that you won't see flashy ad banners or those irritating blinking text all over the place. Functionality: For paid general directories such as this, it is good to see that submitting a site is easy without too much hassle. Just click on the "Submit Link" on the top menu, choose your option, key in your site's details and pay your money. No need to browse to some category first before submitting. And there is no need to create an account by first providing a username, password, date of birth, your boyfriend's maiden name, your hair colour....... I also found that their Category options are limited compared to other directories. But this is actually a good point as I will mention later. Alive doesn't have more than three levels of categories, which again is a good thing. When browsing through some of the categories (eg. Directories Category), I realized that they do not limit the number of Featured listings. Although at most they have 10 regular listings per page, you could have 37 Featured listings on that page as well! So take a note on this if you are planning to get a listing on this directory. Regular listings are sorted by PR, so ironically high PR websites will be placed on the top. One wonders why this is so. I believe it is better to be sorted by date of submission, so long time clients of Alive will not be pushed to Page two or Page three when Alive gets more submissions. Price: Permanent, one time payment. Regular with Reciprocal - US$29.95, Regular - US$34.95, Regular with 3 additional links - US$54.95, Featured - US$74.95, Featured with 5 additional links - US$99.95 Search Engine Friendliness: This is the biggest selling point for the directory, it's Search Engine Friendliness. But to say the truth, the main advantage of getting listed in this directory is not because of it's Search Engine Friendliness but because of it's high PageRank. Take a good look at your Google Toolbar. Yes, this directory's frontpage has a PR value of 7. Since Alive does not have too many categories to diluate PR, all it's main categories have PR values of 5 while it's inner categories have PR values of 4 to 5. Even the site's detail pages have a PR value of 2! So that should be good news for those looking to increase their site's PR. At the time of writing, Alive Directory has 3,970 pages indexed by Google and some supplemental pages (from what I had browsed through) which usually are the RSS feeds. Alive has about 37,800 backlinks (this is a rough figure) according to Google. So I guess you don't need to worry about your listing not being indexed by Google. With that amount of backlinks, Alive should be spidered by Search Engines pretty often. And if you are lucky enough, getting onto the frontpage of the directory (through it's Featured Listing), you could see spiders crawling your site very soon. Alive has spent a lot of effort and time (and very likely lots of cash) to advertise this site. If you have been around web directories, you can see that they have been sponsoring other directories as well as through textlinks and other forms of advertisements. What I am also pleased about Alive is the number of external sitewide links it has. Well, just one. Sitewide links will dilute the PR flow to the listings and makes a directory look unprofessional. I have seen a lot of directory with tons and tons of links on their footer, looking like a link farm. You won't see that here. A thumb up for Alive on this aspect. Alive is recognized as an authority site by Google, which means that the links from Alive could be more valued than if it was from other sites. Good for getting higher rankings in Search Engines. However, a note of caution before you run off to submit your site, some categories are very crowded. Even if Alive limits the number of regular listings to 10 per page, you will have to note that Featured Listings have no limit. So again take for example the Directories category, you can have 37 Featured Listings and 10 regular listings (that's 47 listings) on that PR5 page! Not something which I would pay US$74.95 for. There are several points which I would like to make about Alive Directory's Search Engine friendliness. The meta descriptions are the same for all the categories. It would be prudent to have different descriptions for each and every category so that Search Engines will know then that these are not duplicates of each other, especially empty categories without any listing. Another thing is the serious lack of indexable content. Alive doesn't have much content, even most of the descriptions provided are barely one sentence long. Alive should encourage their clients to write a longer description or Alive themselves could even write a good description/review for them. Without content, there is nothing much Search Engines can index and it will not look attractive to Search Engines. Depending on just backlinks to bait Search Engine crawlers will only go so far. Value: When I first looked at the pricing, my heart nearly stopped beating. But upon a more careful review, I realized that it could be quite worth it, especially if you are looking for a significant PR boost. However, if you are looking for traffic, then you should look else where. This directory simply isn't meant for driving traffic to it's listings. Without much content, I really doubt people will be searching for information the directory anyway. It's all about PR here! The best part is that you can have an entire PR4 category page to yourself for just US$34.95 or a PR5 category page with very few other listings for US$74.95 (Featured Listing)! Overall: A pretty good directory. But choose carefully which category to submit to. Comments: Some of you may worry about the Domain name expiring on Oct 2007. I am pretty certain that the domain name will be renewed soon enough, probably a minor "glitch" on the part of the owner(s). The owner(s) has given a lot of effort to get this directory up and running, I really doubt that they will just throw it all away. You might want to take a look at our other reviews as well: Detailed Review on Aviva Directory Detailed Review on GoGuides Directory Detailed Review on SevenSeek Directory Detailed Review on Skaffe Directory Detailed Review on Octopedia Directory Detailed Review on Ask Directory Detailed Review on Index-It Directory Detailed Review on Wow Directory Detailed Review on DirSpace Directory |