Empty categories.. Good or Bad?

[Simon Gooffin]

Empty categories.. I do not remember if we have already discussed this question before. But I think it's very important to understand if it's good for SE to have lots of categories or bad. I ofter see hundreds or even thousands of categories but very few links. Most categories do not contain any links at all. Any thoughts? Please share.

[redeye]

Don't know what effect it has on SEO, but when I visit a directory and see all those empty categories I feel I've visited an amateur site and don't go back.

Just like going into a supermarket with empty shelves!

[pgolovko]

Originally Posted by redeye

Don't know what effect it has on SEO, but when I visit a directory and see all those empty categories I feel I've visited an amateur site and don't go back.

Just like going into a supermarket with empty shelves!

Completely agree with you

[digitalfog]

Originally Posted by redeye

Don't know what effect it has on SEO, but when I visit a directory and see all those empty categories I feel I've visited an amateur site and don't go back.

Just like going into a supermarket with empty shelves!

I agree 100% with this. I still think too much emphasis is given to PR when webmasters are trying to establish or maintain a site. It's all about traffic - and big traffic doesn't necessarily mean a high PR ranking.

We have our share of websites that have a very low PR. Doesn't bother me a bit because some of these sites receive much more traffic and are more profitable than other sites with high PR's.

[Ryan]

Thats a good question, if you do have a lot of empy categories then visitors might not come back, but if you dont have the categories, webmasters might not submit their sites. So at the start i think its good to have the empty categories to allow webmaster to submit, then maybe after a few months you can trim some of the empty categories out but in all I think they are needed.

[Simon Gooffin]

Ok, thanks for sharing your ideas about visitors. But there is another important thing called Search Engine Optimization. Do search engine spiders like tons of similar pages with the only difference - category titles? That's the question that bothers me a lot also.

[Sai_dallas]

Simon,

If there is lot of empty categories search engines do not like that.

That is why it will take time for a Directory to get good PR.

There is no easy escape; you have to have empty categories in the beginning to let the user know where their link should be.

If you are manually adding links, it is better you cover the empty categories then adding links in the same category.

Thanks
Sai

[Sai_dallas]

A Major help is having a .htm or .html file for each category.

You may check http://www.Onebigtravel.com

This site is indexed better as soon as I started that site.

I need to get this site to esyndicat 1.2 as soon as I can but do not have time. Older version is installed but the links were not moved at that time.

So, I am still pointing to cpLinks version on that site.

I like cpLinks software but, there is no help of any kind.
(Do not use it – you can not get any support)

Thanks
Sai

EDIT: This site is since converted to eSyndicat.

[Simon Gooffin]

Originally Posted by Sai_dallas

Simon,
If there is lot of empty categories search engines do not like that.

sure, I completely agree with you Sai but there are some other webmasters in our support forums that have a really great number of empty categories. I created this poll for them mostly to understand it's better to find a compromise of links and categories

[subseo]

Originally Posted by Simon Gooffin

But there is another important thing called Search Engine Optimization. Do search engine spiders like tons of similar pages with the only difference - category titles? That's the question that bothers me a lot also.

I had directories with plenty (over 90 percent) of empty categories and whole directory was spidered just fine. That was months and months ago.

Recently, though, I have felt Google is much less prone to deep-index directories (general ones) than it was in the past.

Originally Posted by Sai_Dallas

That is why it will take time for a Directory to get good PR.

To get good PR, all you need is links. To get PR5, all you usually need is 1 link from a PR7-8 page. Then wait for next Google update, and you got the PR.

Though, this is not general rule. Recently I have seen a directory that has hundreds of thousands incoming links, and it has also high PR links, but is only PR4 or what, while in the past I think it was PR6 or 7. A mystery.

Anyway, Google is more and more on the watch for duplicate content and general directories serving only as link-farms.

Originally Posted by Sai_Dallas

A Major help is having a .htm or .html file for each category.

Nowadays, this is being denoted as "popular myth" by most SEO experts.