Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
A Straight Answer to Outsourcing Backlinking, Directory Submission and Social Bookmarking
-
Hey SEOmoz Community!
I've spent a bit of time now reading about SEO in books as well as online here within the SEOmoz community. However, I've still struggled to find a straight answer to whether or not directory submissions to non-penalized websites is acceptable.I suspect the reason I haven't found a straight YES or NO answer is because it isn't so straightforward and I respect that.
My dilemma is as follows: I want to raise the domain authority for a few websites that I optimize for. I've submitted and gotten listed a bunch of excellent backlinks, however it still is a painfully slow process. My clients understandably want to see results faster, and because they have virtually no past outsourced link-building campaigns, I am beginning to think that I can invest some money for outsourcing directory submissions.
I see more and more people talking about the latest Penguin updates, and how many of these sites are now penalized. BUT, is there any harm to submitting to directories such as the ones on SEOmoz's spreadsheet that aren't penalized? My concern is that in the future these will be penalized anyways, and is there a chance then that my site will also be de-listed from Google? At what point does Google completely 'blacklist' your site from its engine? Furthermore, I don't understand how Google can penalize a website to the point of de-listing it, because what would prevent other competitors from sending mass spammy back-links to another?
What it all comes down to: At this point, are verified mass directory submissions through outsourcing still much more beneficial than detrimental to the ranking of a website?
Thanks SEOmoz community,
Sheldon
-
Thanks EGOL
-
I understand the content creation problem. I have graduate degrees and decades of work experience in my topic area. Content creation still is a laborious undertaking.
In the biotech and medical areas your writer needs a strong background in the content area. Without that he/she will quickly be spotted as a noob by people who know their stuff. This is long, careful writing that most people don't want to do.
-
Hi EGOL,
Thanks for the response. I've been reading a lot of articles and your responses to them lately.
From my understanding, natural anchor text's often should be something like my websites domain, instead of the same repeated anchor text of, for example, "monoclonal antibodies". I read this in another article on how to recognize if your back-links are coming off as spammy. I concluded from this that I can have my virtual assistant only submit to directories or social bookmark with anchor text such as my domain name instead of repeated keywords.
As far as creating great content goes, it is a huge concern of mine. However, a large percentage of my clients come from the high-tech biotechnology and medical industry. Even though I have thorough academic training in high-tech sciences, it still is incredibly difficult to create great content because of just how in-depth the scope of something like biotechnology and stem cell research goes. It's something I've certainly been working on though.
Thanks for the contribution EGOL,
Sheldon
-
Anybody who says "yes" or "no" without further clarification is giving you a lazy answer.
Penguin problems can result from links on crap sites or links from great sites. If you place lots of links with optimized anchor text on a lot of great websites you could still have problems. Google knows by that artificial anchor text that you are trying to manipulate.
So, it is not only WHERE the links are placed but HOW the links are anchored that is important.
Honestly, the best way to get links is by publishing great content. If you can do that the links will arrive naturally with zero work from you. I do almost zero link building. The anchor text for most of my links is a domain name or a URL or simple words like "here" or "this website" or "this article".
-
Thanks Irving,
I suspected directory submission sites are no longer relevant due to the reasons you listed. However, when I go on my competitors sites with OSE and look at their backlinks, I can still see a large number of them rank incredibly well on competitive keywords with poor directory links...?
This is what prompted my question in the first place because it seems that there still is value to it. The big question is at what point does it become detrimental?
-
I'll give you a direct answer. No. Directory submission sites are no longer relevant due to search engines, and they are seen by Google as nothing more than sites designed to sell links and pass PR.
Smart link builders stopped this activity years ago. There are only a small handful of directory sites like yahoo that are worth submitting. 99% of them are not.
If you find a directory site that is in your niche and nofollows your link then it might make sense to get listed as a possible traffic driver.
It takes a lot to get your site removed from Google index, the easiest way is to be hacked then your site gets banned until you remove those links.
What would most likely happen with directory submissions is that the keywords you are targeting get suppressed in the rankings, you go from page one to page 50 for example and your traffic drops. Google emilas you a letter in WMT saying they detected unnatural link building and then you spend all sorts of time trying to get your links removed and disavowing and resubmitting for reconsideration.
Directory sites are dead, if you're going to do link building it needs to be one offs to individual sites who have never sold links, not on sites who's sole business is to sell links.
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
-
Malicious backlinks
Hello to everyone! We have identified some weird links that are pointing to our site and we are not sure if they are considered malicious backlinks and we should disavow them. Most of them are directories of websites, the most common one is called "Top million domains by alexa" (you can see an example here: www.besafe.in/domain-list-237). Have you ever seen these kind of links before? Are they causing harm to our site? Thank you so much!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | xaviplabor0 -
SSL Importance For Backlinks
I am trying to build some good quality backlinks, how important is SSL for the site that we post guest blogs on? I realize that if a site does not have SSL currently, their DA will likely not go up very fast because of Google's new algorithms, but currently, I am looking at a couple sites with a DA of 40 and 41. By the way, my site has SSL (is https). Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | CSBarns0 -
Good vs Bad Web directories
Hi this blog post Rand mentions a list of bad web directories - I asked couple of years ago if there is an updated list as some of these (Alive Directory for example) do not seem to be blacklisted anymore and are coming up in Google searches etc? It seems due to old age of the blog post (7 years ago ) the comments are not responded to. Would anyone be able to advise if which of these good directories to use? https://moz.com/blog/what-makes-a-good-web-directory-and-why-google-penalized-dozens-of-bad-ones
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | IsaCleanse0 -
How did I get over 1000 backlinks in less then a month? help?
Hi Guys I'm a newbie and just started my website, im wondering if im reading this correctly, i use a tool called my seo tools and its telling me my website zenory.co.nz has over 1600 backlinks, this is scary since the site is only 5months old and i didn't see this till at least today and i check my sites backlinks on a regular basis. However when I check with moz it says I only have 2? I'm a little confused. Any advice here? Much appreciated Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | edward-may0 -
Forcing Google to Crawl a Backlink URL
I was surprised that I couldn't find much info on this topic, considering that Googlebot must crawl a backlink url in order to process a disavow request (ie Penguin recovery and reconsideration requests). My trouble is that we recently received a great backlink from a buried page on a .gov domain and the page has yet to be crawled after 4 months. What is the best way to nudge Googlebot into crawling the url and discovering our link?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Choice0 -
Are All Paid Links and Submissions Bad?
My company was recently approached by a website dedicated to delivering information and insights about our industry. They asked us if we wanted to pay for a "company profile" where they would summarize our company, add a followed link to our site, and promote a giveaway for us. This website is very authoritative and definitely provides helpful use to its audience. How can this website get away with paid submissions like this? Doesn't that go against everything Google preaches? If I were to pay for a profile with them, would I request for a "nofollow" link back to my site?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | jampaper1 -
Niche Directories
Hello, I like the concept that a directory is good only if you would still want the link if it passed no link juice. DMOZ and Best of the Web fall into that category. And so do some niche directories. How do you determine whether to go with a niche directory or not? Also, what's the ratio of how many niche directory links you'd want compared to other types of links (being very safe) 3:1? 4:1? 5:1? Does it matter what your other links are? Thanks.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobGW1 -
Is it negative to put a backlink into the footer's website of our clients ?
Hello there ! Everything is in the subject of this post but here is the context : we are a web agency and we, among others, build websites for our clients (most of them are shops). Until now, we put a link in their footer, like "developped by MyWebShop". But we don't know if it is bad or not. With only one website we can have like hundred of backlinks at once, but is it good for SEO or not ? Will Google penalize us thinking that is blackhat practices ? Is it better to put our link in the "legal notices" or "disclaimer" part of the websites ? What is the best practice for a lasting SEO ? I hope you understand my question, Thnak you in advance !
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | mywebshop0