Directories - Bad or Good for Link Building (Discussion on Penguin)
-
Hello,
I would like to hear everybodies opinion on directories for link building now that penguin is out.
Here's a good background post: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/web-directory-submission-danger
Do you think their out?
How do you still use them?
Which ones do you stick to?
-
Thanks Cyrus. That's close to what my intuition told me. I'll try to keep the niche directories in the 4:1 or 3:1 ballpark.
-
Excellent! Thanks for the further explanation. I knew what I did worked but was not sure if it was short term. I did make the mistake of submitted to a few non editorial directories early on but I will not get any more of those. Industry specific makes the most sense and I have two real good general directories.
I will have to research were else I can get links. I am guessing blogs are huge so we are developing a blog on our website over the next 2 months. Also we are adding social sharing to our content in hopes of getting additional links.
Boo
-
Hi Bob,
Great question. I wrote a post a few months back about this when SEOmoz re-released it's Directory List - most of the advice still applies today:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/seo-link-directory-best-practices
I don't think directories are inherently bad for SEO, although their value has certainly diminished over the years. That said, I generally stay away from "general" directories and stick with niche specific directories. Some general rules to follow:
- Make sure the directory is editorial - if they accept anyone, you don't want to be there.
- Be sure to make directories only a small part of your overall link building effort. An old rule of thumb used to be 2 regular links for every directory link. I might go 4 to 1 just to be safe.
- Be wary of directories that let you choose your own anchor text. Not only are these directories usually lower quality, but over-optimized anchor text can lead to penguin dangers.
- Check the ratio of MozRank to Page Rank. The closer this ratio is to 1, the less likely the directory has been penalized. For example, a directory with a homepage Mozrank of 6, but a PageRank of 1, probably has had an algorithmic or manual action taken against it by Google.
- Niche specific directories are best. If you run a nursing home, try to get in directories of nursing homes.
In short, it's fine to use directories, but be cautious, and use them in moderation. Think of them like sprinkling salt over your larger link building efforts.
-
Bob, your question is irrelevan "How do you get enough links without including some directories" because today it's ALL about quality and not quantity.
Now on a different note based on my experience. We did lots of directories way back and many of them show in the WMT as if they are pointing hundreds of links to my site. These sites are very simple and made to the point of links, they don't use rels properly (next, prev, canonical etc.) so Google thinks I have cross sites links from them - I only want to remove these links these days... Only use directories that you think are serious.
-
Based on results for my "new website" that didn't have but a few links..... and being new to seo for my company....... I highly recommend industry specific directories and some high quality general directories. Not being experienced I may be walking the edge but for a new website it gave our website a very big jump across all SEOmoz factors.
My Domain authority(doubled) and Page Authority (33%) just shot through the roof because I added several new reputable high ranking directories. I also added two or three industry specific links.
Two of the best general directories BOTW.com and Business.com and one industry directory have not been added yet for some reason. . Hopefully those will show up soon and help me a improve a little next month. It has been an exciting journey so far on this new adventure in SEO.
-
with the exception of a few real sites like BBB or yahoo (who does not guarantee inclusion) I would stay away from directories.<<
I like your line of thinking. How do you get enough links without including some directories?
-
no directories provide traffic. google is a directory, why would they want to show crappy directories inside their directory. it's strictly a SEO play and with the exception of a few real sites like BBB or yahoo (who does not guarantee inclusion) I would stay away from directories.
-
sign up due to the potential value of traffic from it<<
Could you give a couple of specific examples or explain this
-
Meny directories are still providing link juice, and it tends to be the least spammy ones.
I would say the best rule of thumb is any directory you would sign up due to the potential value of traffic from it is going to be relitivly safe to go for as it will be providing real value and thus less likly to be crushed by google.
Directories for links sake is more risky.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Will link juice still be passed if you have the same links in multiple, outreach articles?
We are developing high quality, unique content and sending them out to bloggers to for guest posts. In these articles we have links to 2 to 3 sites. While the links are completely relevant, each article points to the same 2 to 3 sites. The link text varies slightly from article to article, but the linked-to site/URLs remain the same. We have read that it is best to have 2 to 3 external links, not all pointing to the same site. We have followed this rule, but the 2 to 3 external sites are the same sites on the other articles. I'm having a hard time explaining this, so I hope this makes sense. My concern is, will Google see this as a pattern and link juice won't be passed to the linked-to URLs, or worst penalize all/some of the sites being linked to or linked from? Someone I spoke to had suggest that my "link scheme" describes a "link wheel" and the site(s) will be penalized by Penguin. Is there any truth to this statement?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Cutopia0 -
My wordpress site generating bad links
Hello Everyone, I have wordpress site Which is from last 20 days generating links like For Example http://www.domainname.com/game/965/wiki/キャラクター図鑑_レアリティ(★★★)_【ID:675】ワッツ・ステップニー htttp://www.domainname.com/nkpghfu_13356_gvgjq_tfjhnkt_jsj_296_82566_673_567_245 This is screenshot of webmaster tools http://prnt.sc/ccwh0e can please any expert check & Tell How this Link i am getting, Also What are steps i need take for removing this Errors, As it is harming my sites Flow As well As Rankings. Thanx in Advance
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | innovativekrishna10 -
Social Links through Link Shortners. Does it count?
We use link shortner services like Bitly, Goo.gl, etc. Does the post used while making use of such link shortner services counts as a social signal. Or should we post the complete website url pointing to each page while posting on social sites. Secondly, should we write a new description while posting on Social sites or just copy paste a few lines of original posts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | welcomecure0 -
Linking to External Websites?
Is it good to link external websites from every page. Since, the on-page grader shows there should be one link pointing to an external source. I have a website that can point to an external website from every page using the brand name of the specific site like deal sites do have. Is it worth having external link on every page, of-course with a no-follow tag?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | welcomecure0 -
What Links to Disavow?
I am looking through my website's link profile that I pulled directly from Google Webmaster Tools. What is the best way to determine the links to disavow? Maybe the Webmaster Tools list is not the best list for this process but I really need to clean up the links that are hurting the site's SEO. Does anyone have any insight?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PartyStore0 -
Sitemap contains Meta NOINDEX pages - Good or bad?
Hi, Our sitemap is created by our e-commerce software - Magento - We are probably going to make a lot of products Meta No Index for the moment, until all the content has been corrected on them - but by default, as they are enabled, they will appear in Sitemap. So, the question is: "Should pages that are Meta NOINDEX be listed in a sitemap"? Does it matter? thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bjs20100 -
Creating 100,000's of pages, good or bad idea
Hi Folks, Over the last 10 months we have focused on quality pages but have been frustrated with competition websites out ranking us because they have bigger sites. Should we focus on the long tail again? One option for us is to take every town across the UK and create pages using our activities. e.g. Stirling
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PottyScotty
Stirling paintball
Stirling Go Karting
Stirling Clay shooting We are not going to link to these pages directly from our main menus but from the site map. These pages would then show activities that were in a 50 mile radius of the towns. At the moment we have have focused our efforts on Regions, e.g. Paintball Scotland, Paintball Yorkshire focusing all the internal link juice to these regional pages, but we don't rank high for towns that the activity sites are close to. With 45,000 towns and 250 activities we could create over a million pages which seems very excessive! Would creating 500,000 of these types of pages damage our site? This is my main worry, or would it make our site rank even higher for the tougher keywords and also get lots of traffic from the long tail like we used to get. Is there a limit to how big a site should be? edit0 -
First Link Priority question - image/logo in header links to homepage
I have not found a clear answer to this particular aspect of the "first link priority" discussion, so wanted to ask here. Noble Samurai (makers of Market Samurai seo software) just posted a video discussing this topic and referencing specifically a use case example where when you disable all the css and view the page the way google sees it, many times companies use an image/logo in their header which links to their homepage. In my case, if you visit our site you can see the logo linking back to the homepage, which is present on every page within the site. When you disable the styling and view the site in a linear path, the logo is the first link. I'd love for our first link to our homepage include a primary keyword phrase anchor text. Noble Samurai (presumably seo experts) posted a video explaining this specifically http://www.noblesamurai.com/blog/market-samurai/website-optimization-first-link-priority-2306 and their suggested code implementations to "fix" it http://www.noblesamurai.com/first-link-priority-templates which use CSS and/or javascript to alter the way it is presented to the spiders. My web developer referred me to google's webmaster central: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66353 where they seem to indicate that this would be attempting to hide text / links. Is this a good or bad thing to do?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dcutt0