| Detailed Review: Aviva Directory |
Detail Review: Aviva DirectoryDate Reviewed: 20-02-2007
Name: Aviva Web Directory
URL: http://www.avivadirectory.com/
Type: General
PageRank: 6/10
Looks & Design: At first glance, Aviva Directory certainly has the modern/retro look. Kind of like those Web 2.0 style sites you see nowadays on the Internet. It doesn't has too many colours (and a bit dull) but the design overall makes it feels appealing and attractive with the girl and all. Nothing really serious to comment on the looks department. As with all web directories, the frontpage displays the catories and some of the subcategories along with some links to other sections of the directory including it's blog, free templates and so on. The simple yet functional design also makes it easy to look for what you want. Nothing special, but what do you expect from a directory? One important point to note, there are no advertisements or even any outbound links (except that Alexa Traffic Stat) on it's frontpage! So no featured listings on the frontpage. Wanna talk about PageRank hoarding.....:-D
Functionality: It's easy for you to submit your listing to Aviva Directory, just click on the Add Link hyperlink, choose your listing options, put in your site's details, pay your money through PayPal or 2checkout and you are done. I really hate submitting my site to directories which requires a ton of personal information first before allowing me to submit. I usually don't bother with them. Aviva only allows your site's name as the title for regular listings. If you need to use other anchor text, you need to get their featured listing. As with Alive Directory, they don't allow individual descriptions for each URL. Too bad.
Aviva Directory has more category options than Alive Directory. This allows more options for it's clients but may dilute PR flow overall. However, if you were to browse it's categories, you would notice that some pages have like 32 listings in it, including Featured and Regular listings. It seems that Aviav doesn't have any limit on the number of featured and regular listings per page (or if you have it should be more than 30). This is not a good sign and would just get worse in the future. As usual, I would recommend users to choose carefully which category they would like to submit to. And I still can't figure out how Aviva arranges their listings. They don't arrange by date of submission, they don't arrange by PR and they don't arrange alphabetically.
Unlike most web directories, Aviva has content. And not just "cut and paste" type of content or RSS feeds, real informative content which it's users will read. I read through the "Strongest Directories" article (hint:PR6 Page) and was impressed, though why they are using Page Strength instead of Page Rank is questionable. How about the "21 Surefire Tips for a Successful Blog Launch" article(another PR6 Page)? Another nice read right? Their Trivia blog is updated constantly, which is a good thing. And Aviva's "content" doesn't just end there, you can even download free templates for Wordpress, Esyndicate and PhpLinkdirectory scripts. I think Aviva could do one better, add a forum for discussion regarding their templates, their directory and blog (but maybe that is just too old school for Aviva) and allow their users to rate their listings. It will then be truly Web 2.0.
Price: Permanent, one time payment. Only 2 options available. Regular with 3 additional links(to the same site) - US$34.95, Featured with 5 additional links(to the same site) - US$74.95
Search Engine Friendliness: I think that almost every web directory out there claims to be Search Engine Friendly and spam free. But sadly what general web directories matter most is it's PR and how much it can provide to it's listings. Aviva's frontpage has a PageRank of 6 but there is no featured listings displayed there. Main categories have PR of 5, while the subcategories have PR of 4. I was even more surprised to see some of the detail pages having a PR of 4! Though some of them have a PR of 0, even old ones which were submitted on April 2006 and should have gotten at least a PR of 1 or 2. I find this very inconsistent PR on the detail pages puzzling. Perhaps Aviva had a redesign recently and their URLs were changed or shifted.
At the time of writing, Aviva Directory has 8,480 pages indexed by Google and around 10,000 backlinks (this is a rough figure). Both of which are very respectable numbers. I have to mention that Yahoo doesn't seem to like Aviva, only 531 pages are being indexed by Yahoo. Why? I don't know. But whatever the reason, it doesn't affect Google (the biggest Search Engine) so crawlers from Google will still be visiting Aviva constantly. And when they do that, they will be visiting your site soon as well. And another good point, Aviva has content. Indexable content which Search Engines (supposedly) love. Not only does Aviva attracts spiders from Search Engines through backlinks, they attract spiders through quality content. This directory has what most General Web Directories lack - link bait. To prove this point, check out how many Diggs did the articles "Little Known Ways to Brand on the Cheap: 99 Tips for Poor Web Startups" and "21 Surefire Tips for a Successful Blog Launch" receive! I believe that Aviva should have quite a number of traffic to their blogs and articles, some of which will tickle down to the directory and to your website. But please don't keep your hopes too high in regards to traffic. You still won't get it. Aviva also provides free templates for blog and directory scripts. Free templates means more backlinks for Aviva. Free templates also mean that poor guys like me or even you don't need to pay for good designs.
Aviva, the PageRank "hoarder" doesn't have any external sitewide links at all. I like that. Sitewide links dilute PR that is meant for the listings. As I mentioned in my review of Alive Directory, having too many sitewide links will make a directory look like a link farm. Not professional at all in my opinion.
There is no limit to the number of listings per category (not from what I have seen anyway). So even if the category you submit your site to has few listings, it doesn't mean that in the future, it will remain the same. Take for example, the Paid Directory category, the page currently has 32 listings, 19 of which is regular listings, 13 being paid listings. Even if I pay US$74.95 for a featured listing, I will have to share the PR among 32 others, including those regular listings. How about in 3 months time? Will it be shared among 50 listings? Or maybe 100 listings?
Since we are talking about Search Engine Friendliness here, there are several points to note about this directory. The categories meta descriptions are not unique. And since Aviva has way more categories than Alive, they should have paid more attention to this. Search Engines can then make use of the unique meta description can help differentiate the different categories from each other. Another thing I don't understand is why directories limit the site's descriptions. Limiting the description to 500 characters is not a good idea, especially when we are talking about Search Engine Friendliness. Those descriptions could contain important keywords and phrases to help the site rank, more important now that Google uses LSI for determining what a page is about. A good site description is just as important in attracting traffic, exactly like in those social networking sites where both the story title and the description makes or breaks the article. I just hate one-liners.
Aviva, like Alive Directory has been advertising heavily. If you see an ad with some hands touching a pretty nice butt, well, that's Aviva's banner advertisement. Other than that, they have template sponsorships, text links and so on. They even had a T-Shirt contest before. The winner gets US$1,000 plus a free T-Shirt.
Value: Considering what you are getting and considering that the directory itself isn't crowded yet, I think that this directory is quite reasonable. If PR is all what you are looking for, I would suggest you to go for the regular listing instead of the featured listing since Aviva keeps ALL it's category listings on one page. Go for the featured listing if you want to rank for Search Engines. I wonder why would anyone want to submit to the subcategory when they can submit to the main category (with it's higher PR value)? Aviva doesn't have any criteria in which listings to the main categories are accepted, only through the sole discretion of the directory editors and so it all depends on your luck I guess. Life isn't always fair you know.
There should be some traffic to the blogs and articles at least and they do have a Alexa rating of 7,242. How many of these traffic goes into the actual directory? I believe that if your site is Internet or webmaster related, you will probably get some traffic from interested visitors. Otherwise, I doubt you will not get much.
Overall: As I said before, choose carefully which category you submit to.
Comments: The domain is registered till Feburary 2012. It looks like the directory owner must have some great expectations for this directory and it's business model. You should too.
You might want to take a look at our other reviews as well:
- Detailed Review on Alive 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
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