Claus Heinrich

The 22. February 2006 I launched my first english web directory. My plan was from start to keep it free for all to submit to, and only accept quality websites.
Global-weblinks.com is an international directory, made from scratch in ASP/VB by myself. The first line of code was made 2 months before launch, and is still going on this day today. The directory market is pretty hard, so I am convinced that uniqueness is a bonus. So regular updates is made, and will continue in the future.
Initially, I had a category structure with alot of querystrings, so around june 2006 I changed the complete site structure, to be more upto date with how search engines work.

An example of how is was, and is now. Everyone should be able to see an improvement:

Old category URL for the category: Recreation & Travel -» Travel Agency

New category URL for the category: Recreation & Travel -» Travel Agency

This upgrade means that both the human eye and search engines, alot easier can tell what is on the location of the link.
In practice I have made the main categories into subdomains.
shopping.global-weblinks.com will be considerated a domain for it self, and the URL has already described the main theme of the domain: Shopping.
This is perfect when running a directory, because it is very easy to be considered a link farm, if you just have tons of different links on one domain. On my way, I can make sure that all links on the domain http://shopping.global-weblinks.com/ is related to online shopping, so the relevancy for the subdomain, will be clear for especially search engines.

Another great bonus is how PageRank (PR) distributes through the directory pages. With querystrings, the PR is weakened alot, and will only distribute 1 page down. =Bad
With the static URLs I have now, I get full benifit of the PR when I distribute it down to the actual detailpage that every link in the system have.

Future Plans:
I get alot of submissions, and to many for me to keep up. So the queue gets larger and larger. I could remove the free submission for a while, and I have done once before to clear backlog, but I think I will just let it be.
It can be a good check for me, if the review delay is 2 months, if the submitted page had other intensions today, than the day they submitted. MFA sites and such is not anything I want in my index ^^

But regarding to future updated I have been thinking of, is to make a regional part on the directory system. At the moment I collect language base on all submissions, and with a little codeing, I can make it so you can see the entire directory, with only land specific sites.

End note:
If you have a normal website up and running, I urge you to submit it to my directory now, and if you have any good ideas for me, throw a comment please