| Detailed Review: SevenSeek Directory |
Detailed Review: Skaffe The International DirectoryDate Reviewed: 06-03-2007Name: SevenSeek Directory URL: http://www.skaffe.com Type: General PageRank: 5/10  Looks & Design: As you should know by now, I am not a big fan of colourful sites. But Skaffe did a good job choosing those colours and they mix quite well. At least they are not way too bright. No fancy logo here as well. Skaffe's frontpage doesn't look like a directory, it looks like well, a normal website. This is a refreshing change for me, since I have been reviewing directories for some time now. Other than that, Skaffe looks clean and neat even with all those categories they have, though I must say the frontpage has been invaded by Skaffe's own services "anouncement" for blog hosting, article submission and webhosting. Skaffe has a "lite" version which is a stripped down/slim/"powerful" version (no other distractions) of the directory. You can access the stripped down verion of Skaffe here. Functionality: No, clicking on "Suggest URL" will not send you to a page where it actually allows you to suggest an URL. You will need to browse into the categories(as deep as possible) and then click on "Suggest URL". Why make it so tedious? There is only 1 option for inclusion. Depending on how you look at it, I would say having only one option in this directory is a good thing (all the editors are volunteers). The best thing about Skaffe's submission, they allow you to add in important anchor text in your title(along with your site title)! Finally a directory which understands the importance of anchor text for us webmasters! I don't know whether there is a limit to the number of words in title or not but I believe there should be. I had done a review on GoGuides previously, and both of them have the exact same categories. Give and take a few different or missing subcategories, both of them are nearly identical(right down to the colour used)! It is just too bad that they don't offer a 2 for 1 deal, where if you submit to one of them, you get listed in the other as well. However, Wow Directory's categories seemed to be slightly different from these two. Skaffe rates their listings from 1 tick to 3 ticks (3 ticks being a high quality site). So higher quality listings will be on top while the rest will be behind. Although Skaffe has a little guideline on how to rate a site, it is just not comprehensive enough. Just check out how a 3 tick rating comes: "Cream of the crop. Contains an abundance of information on the topic. Site is quick to load, pleasing to the eye and easy to navigate. May contain additional content such as chat, discussion forums or commerce. Is usually updated on a regular basis so that information is current and reliable." Skaffe needs a more detailed set of guidelines to rate their listing for their editors to follow than this, especially since I am paying for it to be reviewed. If your site is rejected, the payment will be refunded so you should have no worries. Each category page has a maximum of 30 listings per page. It is interesting to note that for the "lite" version, they have only 10 listings per page. And as mentioned above, higher rating sites will be displayed first. Whether this is a good thing, it depends on the quality of your site and on the editor of the category. But I am always wary of directories doing a "review rating" on their listings (as you should of me when I do reviews on directories). No offense intended for the editors of course. Please note that as in GoGuides, Skaffe has a very deep directory structure, so you may need to browse through a lot of categories to get to those listings. And so does Search Engines. Which is bad. Skaffe has a flash submission tutorial done. So if you have problems trying to submit a site to Skaffe, please refer to this flash tutorial. Or course, they could just make it easier for their users by streamlining their submission process. Oh, I believe that a 600 page, 25000 words step by step tutorial will be out soon for people having problems browsing Skaffe's directory as well. It is ironic that the flash tutorial also tells their clients that they have recently increased their price of submission from US$39.99 to US$44.99. I spent some time browsing through the directory and I am quite impressed with it's listings. Skaffe indeed has good quality content. Though the listings they have are not as plentiful as GoGuides, but they are still pretty good. I don't see any spammy sites nor do I see unrelated sites in the categories. Heck, I couldn't even find one dead site. If only new directories would go this road and start having quality sites (even if they have less listings), I believe that the reputation and the usefulness of directories will grow. Human edited directories are always better than Search Engines when we are talking about relevancy. Unless we were to see a sudden improvement in Search Engine algorithm, directories will always be important. Skaffe do have some adsense advertisements as well as banner advertisements. But at least the Adsense advertisements are few and far between. And if you hate advertisements, you can use the lite version. I do. It is just too bad that it is difficult to find the link to the "lite" Skaffe now. It seems to me that Skaffe used to have other content like classifieds, photo hosting and other interesting sections, but I couldn't find them anymore. Not too sure what happened to them. These will certainly be add value to the directory. Price: Permanent, one time payment. Review - US$44.99 Search Engine Friendliness: Skaffe suffer from many of the same problems as GoGuides in terms of Search Engine Friendliness. You can read my review on GoGuides here. You will find many of the comments I made are the same. AT the time of writing, Google has indexed 22,100 pages of Skaffe and there are approximately 44,100 backlinks (rough approximation) to Skaffe. These are very respectable numbers. You won't have to worry about not getting spidered if you get listed here. But you need to be carefully about the category you submit to. As with the problem on GoGuides, deep directory levels may result these pages not being spidered often, even with Sitemaps. Skaffe has a frontpage with the PageRank(PR) Value of 5. It's main categories have a PR Value of 4 while it's subcategories range from PR 4 to PR 0. However, since Skaffe has less listings compared to GoGuides, it will mean that there will be more PR flow to those listings. The lite version of Skaffe (PR3) can also pass a little PR as well. There are also some sitewide links (as advertisements) to consider if you are looking to increase your site's PR. But I doubt that anyone submitting to Skaffe will be looking at it's PR. The main draw of this directory is it's listings and content. And this means good traffic. You could be driving targetted traffic to your site. Furthermore, Skaffe is an authority site and this means that their links are probably more valued (to Google) than from other sites. And since Skaffe allows their clients to add keywords into their title(most directories only allows the site tile), think that you can really make use of Skaffe to improve your Search Engine rankings. From what I have seen, Skaffe also allows users to deeplink to their internal pages. This is two thumbs up for Skaffe! I wonder whether Skaffe accepts multi-submissions of the same site to different categories? This directory uses their title tag for their meta tag description. For convenience sake I guess. In my opinion, it would be better for them to add unique and meaningful descriptions to their meta description for their categories. Skaffe's site descriptions are also rather weak. Most of them consist of a few keywords in one sentence. Disappointing. Very disappointing especially when they have editors. Skaffe should have made sure that each and every site description has about 500-800 characters and it should give at least some detail about the site listing. This way, Search Engines can have something to index and site users can know what that listing is about before they visit. Skaffe doesn't have keyworded URLs, neither do they have detail pages for their listings. I am worried about the lite version which is the exact duplicate of full version Skaffe. I have seen most of their indexed pages on Supplemental. I am surprised to see that Skaffe didn't restrict Search Engines from indexing the lite version. But I am not very sure whether this is a good thing or not. On one hand you get duplicate content, on the other, you get PR flow and traffic from the lite version. And the lite version is definitely more Search Engine frendly because they have less code and more content for Search Engines to index. Value: Good for both traffic and backlink. If the anchor text is properly used, you should see a marked improvement in your Search Engine rankings. I like the "ability" to deeplink as well. If I am to understand correctly, Skaffe's editors are all volunteers, which means that they are not paid, just like Dmoz. And unlike other directories with paid editors and reviewers, Skaffe doesn't incur cost from hiring editors and reviewers. So why is Skaffe charging more than GoGuides? I understand that these two directories are not the same, but with the lower cost for Skaffe, it should be passing on those savings to it's clients and not be charging such a high premium. Lower the price of submission and all will be well. Overall: As above, lower the price of submission. Comments: As with GoGuides, a tediously long Terms of Service and Submission guidelines. Actually they have nearly the same set of TOS and submission guidelines. But I am just nitpicking here. Overall a good directory. I always like directories with at least a good number of listings and unique site descriptions. A bit pricy though. You might want to take a look at our other reviews as well: - Detailed Review on Alive Directory - Detailed Review on Aviva Directory - Detailed Review on GoGuides Directory - Detailed Review on SevenSeek 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 |