Directory subission post penguin
-
Does anyone have thoughts on doing mass directory submissions post penguin?
I know the value of the links are pretty worthless I am considering a submission service for nothing more than to get my number of different c-blocks up
Will directories be looked upon as link networks?
Is worth it?
-
Thanks dohertyf. I do get your point, but this isn’t the site I’m talking about and I have never had any warnings for this site.
The site that I am referring to does have a few crappy directory links pointing at it from years back and certainly nowhere near the amount I see pointing back to competing sites. And if these links were a problem why didn’t I get the notice earlier? It seems a big coincidence that I got the warning immediately after I submitted to these new directories.
-
Hey Shauny -
I'm not seeing those directory links you're talking about in either OSE or Majestic. What I do see, though, is these links which appear to be from a link network (since all the links are the same) -
http://www.directorio.internet.com.pe/Top/Regional/Europe/United_Kingdom/England/Manchester/Worsley http://www.smart-dir.com/dir/Regional/Europe/United_Kingdom/England/Manchester/Worsley http://www.gosearchfor.com/directory/Regional/Europe/United_Kingdom/England/Manchester/Worsley
I'd go and remove those links, if your rankings dropped.
In my opinion, right now directories are too risky for my clients and my own sites. The only ones that I would do are BetterBusinessBureau (in the US), DMOZ, and Yahoo directory. Other than that, I steer clear of them and have moved my clients away from them.
-
Directory Submission Update
I decided to give a few directories a go.
Here’s what happened:
1. I manually submitted my site to 25 directories
2. I chose from the list of directories on moz. All the directories I submitted to were pr2 – pr6 with good moz rank (I checked them all out individually).
3. I used variations of brand anchors and different descriptions for each listing
4. I used the paid option for all the directories for guaranteed/faster review
5. I spread the submissions out over 10 days from 24<sup>th</sup>aug up until 3<sup>rd</sup> sept
On the 7th of September I received a “notice of detected unnatural links” from G. all of my homepage keywords have dropped about 10 places but inner pages are still pretty much the same
Any thoughts on how I should move forwards?
-
When I look at the competitors that rank above me the on-page optimisation and content quality is just about the same as mine and in some cases I feel not as good.
When I look at their link profile I see pretty much the same good quality backlinks as my own the only difference is that they all seem to have in common (and I don’t) is lots of low quality directory links which is boosting the amount of c-blocks pointing to their sites
I know that articles, guest posts etc. (which I already do) will build the extra c-block links but my theory is get the crappy directory links just to increase the number of c-blocks pointing back to me?
-
A good point
-
While i posted something contrary a few minutes ago..MANUAL directory submission cannot hurt. However, I doubt it helps much these days.
At this time, we have many 1-5 ranked keywords, and have given up directory submission altogether on it.
Recommendation (that we are still trying to figure out..)Write articles, post blogs build a Tribe that follows you - its a new world! Forget the tricks.
-
Good answers here. I would also like to suggest spreading your directory submissions out over a period of time. This way you don't have a bunch of links pointing to your site - it will look unnatural.
Submissions to human edited, niche- or geographically-related directories is best practice.
-
I'd agree with Keven, there is nothing wrong with directory submissions as long as they are relevant and manually reviewed by an editor. Also look into local and niche directories that suit your site business.
The problems with directory submissions for me begin with mass submissions where the work is outsourced or automated - I cant see you getting any value from this.
There is a great list of decent directories right here on moz, with a guide.
-
I personally have no issue with directory submission. I have grave concerns about MASS submission and won't do it (some people do and don't seem to get 'hammered' by Google, but I'm not risking a short gain against long term pain if G ever gets its algo to match the rhetoric).
The only directories I list in are those that have a reasonable chance to actually bring traffic for my customers.
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
-
DMOZ Directory Impact on Rankings
For about 5-10 years ago many SEOers said that it is in particular important to be in Dmoz. What about nowadays?
Link Building | | kitoks
Moreover is it still working and accepting new projects. I suggested several of my projects but no news from them0 -
Article linking to my post kicks it from the search results.
Hi I have been trying to get a article to rank on the term: "help your child do well in school" in the Google UK. Now I was doing okay the article went from 43rd to 17th. Until I got mentioned in the huffington post. Then my result disappeared from the listings and the huffington appeared in 35th position. The article I'm trying to rank is: http://www.schoolguide.co.uk/blog/10-proven-ways-to-help-your-child-do-well-at-school The Huffington posts is: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/emilyjane-clark/five-things-that-will-not_b_5693827.html It's really annoying because this is the type of link building I thought Google really wants. Does anyone know why this would happen and any suggestions of how to proceed?
Link Building | | EdBen1 -
Is it worth pursing PR and guest posting just for links?
I'm still new to SEO, but I have a decent foundation on it. To me, it seems like guest posting and earning PR on quality sites is good for the coverage, but will those one-off links really make a difference? I'd have to assume that SEOs earn their worth when they build scalable links (i.e. tools that people link to, guides, etc) So, while PR is nice, I feel as if I shouldn't focus my time there, but spending time on building a product such as QuickSprout.com's SEO audit tool, Cappex's college match tool, CNN's budget calculator, Moz's google weather report, etc.
Link Building | | BrandonPindulic1 -
Is Penguin 2.1 an actual penalty?
By that, I mean that does Google just devalue spammy links, or does it devalue the links and penalize your site on top of it? Does it hit specific keywords, or does it have effects site wide? Does penguin run constantly, or only on specific days? If spammy links are removed, how long does it take to recover?
Link Building | | CsmBill0 -
Rankings Drop Penguin 2.0
Hey guys, Suffering a horrible rankings drop after penguin 2.0. We have 4 popular sites and have seen a steady decline in rankings and traffic after 22nd May. I've looked into it a little bit and am wondering if WordPress blog sidebar links might be hurting us. Specifically my brother and I both have sidebar links on our personal blogs which are getting indexed on every page, and I'm wondering if it's distorting our link profiles. Specifically, I read something about links coming from sites which aren't relevant to your niche and overly optimised anchor text. Both sites have very simple single keyword anchor texts on the links. We're pretty white hat in terms of SEO, we've never done that much link building, and when we do, it's usually with worthwhile directories or with sites we have relationships with. Therefore we don't have that many links. Any ideas on how best to investigate this? Thanks.
Link Building | | Fergus_Macdonald0 -
When you are manually posting to blogs, how closely related does the content of the blog have to be to the website?
For instance, if the website is for a hotel, would it be acceptable to post on travel blogs?
Link Building | | msmdz0 -
Links from local.com after Penguin
I have been doing some research on where some competing links are getting their links from and I see that a decent number seem to be getting some juice from local.com. My question is- have the panda & penguin updates rendered these useless- or even worse can links from directories like this now harm my SEO?
Link Building | | eddieredwood0 -
Directory Submissions
Hello All. Our site has 17,000 links from over 300 route domains but none from directories. Using open site explorer i've found tons of paid and free directories but Its so time consuming manually submitting. Is it better to take the time to check each directory manually or should I look at some kind of automated service? Cheers Todd
Link Building | | toddyC0