Assist me in starting a new Article Directory

[stuarts]

Greetings to one and all! I am planning to come up with a new article directory based on WordPress format. For this, I want your help. Can anyone tell me what should be the factors for consideration? My aim is to get the site at the best position with minimum PR5 in a Google update. Moreover, I also want the site to have the best traffic so that the website owners and SEO professionals would like to submit their site here. Gradually, I wish to improve the ranking to PR7. I also want to include only original and quality articles.

[The Old Sarge]

1. What do you have in the way of human editors?

2. What is your criteria/standard for listing?

3. What have you done as far as a toxonomy?

4. Do you have any idea how large your directory will have to be to rate a PR 5, 6, or 7?

[frankingmachine]

The basic thing to do is to get an article directory script.Then buy a good domain name that gives some indication of what your site is about and of course buy web hosting for it.And set the script up or get someone else to set it up if you don't know how to set up scripts.

[michael123]

Flash and Javascript sites make it difficult for the search crawlers to read and understand content. This will also require the web development team to contribute its expertise. They will assist you in the conversion of your web content into different formats; this will allow the search crawlers to properly index every page of your website, giving you the best possible results.

[kpfingaz]

I have an article directory based on Wordpress. I used a free theme and plugin available through Articlesss.com but I think they're selling those now. You can probably check Wordpress for free plugins that will do the same thing and maybe a free theme that will allow your categories and latest articles to be placed on the front page.

The key to growing your directory is promotion. I promote everywhere I know people need traffic - forums, other article directories and I use RSS feeds to get more links. My directory is a PR1 because it was still very young at the last PR update but I'm pretty sure its a PR4 minimum right now.

Authorship is growing - I have over 8000 authors who have submitted over 50,000 articles in the last 12 months and the site pretty much operates on autopilot. I only moderate the first 3 articles by each contributor to control spam then I change them to author level so they can be instantly approved. Not every article is original though since it would be tougher to check out all articles.

You'll need to have links to a privacy policy page, a DMCA page, TOS and contact page for obvious reasons. Google also smiles on sites that have these pages.

[The Old Sarge]

kpfingaz,

What do you do to enforce your TOS? Say someone plagiarizes one of the articles on your site or simply removes the original author's name and link/s? ... assuming those would even BE violations of your TOS in the first place.

[Alfred23]

Here are the first basic steps involved in starting your own article directory:

1) Get an article directory script.

2) Buy a good domain name that gives some indication of what your site is about.

3) Buy web hosting for it.

4) Set the script up or get someone else to set it up if you don't know how to set up scripts.

[kpfingaz]

kpfingaz,

What do you do to enforce your TOS? Say someone plagiarizes one of the articles on your site or simply removes the original author's name and link/s? ... assuming those would even BE violations of your TOS in the first place.

I have a DMCA and a contact page where I encourage people to report stuff like that. If it is found that someone had their articles copied then I have the articles and the author removed from the database.

Yeah, you can't have people plagiarizing other people's work.

[The Old Sarge]

Thanks for the reply. However, I was referring to the opposite situation.

What if the original article and author are both legitimate and on your site and someone else gets the article from your site and alters it? ... which I assume is against your TOS.

What do you do, what CAN you do, about someone plagiarizing an article they find on your directory?

[kpfingaz]

As the admin for the directory, I usually don't go looking for these types of situations. It's really up to the author of the article.

With hundreds of articles being submitted every day, I can't police the web to see who is doing what with the articles from my website. If the author finds himself in a situation where his articles are being plagiarized and he reports it to me then I will try to assist with getting it removed from the offending website but other than that I don't worry about it.

On a personal note, I don't worry about my own articles being plagiarized by others either. I submit to a directory and someone comes along, strips out my links and submits it to his website, it doesn't bother me. Laziness would only get you so far.

[The Old Sarge]

As the admin for the directory, I usually don't go looking for these types of situations. It's really up to the author of the article.

I agree. My example would depend on the real author lodging a complaint. I should have stated so.

With hundreds of articles being submitted every day, I can't police the web to see who is doing what with the articles from my website.

I agree. It's simply not your job.

If the author finds himself in a situation where his articles are being plagiarized and he reports it to me then I will try to assist with getting it removed from the offending website ...

Good for you! That's what I was looking for. Most reputable article directories do pretty much the same.