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.
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.
-
"I like the concept that a directory is good only if you would still want the link if it passed no link juice."
Yeah, I agree that this statement is pretty naive. You shouldn't expect to get much traffic from Yahoo or DMOZ. People use these directories for the link juice and the credibility boost, not traffic. Since both directories editorially approve their links, they still carry a bit of weight (although exactly how much is up for debate).
-
I totally agree with the statement "I like the concept that a directory is good only if you would still want the link if it passed no link juice."
However... I have a bit of an issue with Best of the Web (and many other "quality" Directories). The only reason that you would want a link without link juice is if it was bringing in traffic.
We have been on BOTW for 3 years on 5 of our websites. I have just checked and we have received a total of 9 clicks (across the board) in those 3 years. Hardly worth writing home about.
I've never met a person that uses directories other than (yell.com perhaps). I have even forced myself to use BOTW for a week instead of Google and it only lasted 3 days before I gave up.
Am I missing something?
I also just did a search on BOTW for "Air Conditioning" and this result came up: http://www.kingair.com.au (just one example that took me 10 seconds to find)
Is this really "The Best of The Web". Why would Google trust their judgement?
-
DMOZ, BOTW, and Yahoo are really the only directories worth submitting to, plus maybe a couple of niche specific directories and local directories. That's like maybe a dozen directories tops.
As long as you keep directory submissions to a minimum, it's not going to get you penalized, so there is no need to worry about "ratios" or anything like that, although you may want to vary your anchor text or stick to your brand name.
The bigger issue is that directory links don't carry that much value, so you'll want to acquire relevant, high authority links outside of directories if you actually want to rank.
-
If you find the directory useful as a user then it's safe to get a link there. If you wouldn't use the directory yourself it's best to just steer clear of it. I can't imagine many situations in which you would want more than 10 niche directory links because there just aren't that many quality directories any more.
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
-
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 to make second site in same niche and do white hat SEO
Hello, As much as we would like, there's a possibility that our site will never recover from it's Google penalties. Our team has decided to launch a new site in the same niche. What do we need to do so that Google will not mind us having 2 sites in the same niche? (Menu differences, coding differences, content differences, etc.) We won't have duplicate content, but it's hard to make the sites not similar. Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobGW0 -
Real Vs. Virtual Directory Question
Hi everyone. Thanks in advance for the assistance. We are reformatting the URL structure of our very content rich website (thousands of pages) into a cleaner stovepipe model. So our pages will have a URL structure something like http://oursite.com/topic-name/category-name/subcategory-name/title.html etc. My question is… is there any additional benefit to having the path /topic-name/category-name/subcategory-name/title.html literally exist on our server as a real directory? Our plan was to just use HTACCESS to point that URL to a single script that parses the URL structure and makes the page appropriately. Do search engine spiders know the difference between these two models and prefer one over the other? From our standpoint, managing a single HTACCESS file and a handful of page building scripts would be infinitely easier than a huge, complicated directory structure of real files. And while this makes sense to us, the HTACCESS model wouldn't be considered some kind of black hat scheme, would it? Thank you again for the help and looking forward to your thoughts!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ClayPotCreative0 -
Multiple stores for the same niche
I started developing a new niche of products in my country about 3 years ago. That's when I opened my first store. Everything went fine, until a year ago, when someone I thought was a friend secretly stole my idea and made his own competing store. I was pretty upset when I caught him and decided to make it as difficult as possible for him, so I made another 4 stores, trying to get him as low as possible in the search results. The new sites have similar products (although not 100% identical), slightly different titles, images and prices. They look different and are built on different e-commerce platforms. They are all hosted on the same server, have roughly the same backlinks, use the same Google account for Analytics, have the same support phone numbers etc etc. I wasn't thinking that I'm doing something fishy, so I didn't try to hide anything. Trouble is that those sites, after doing fine for a few months, dropped like bricks in the search results, almost to the point that they can't be found at all. At the moment, the only site that ranks relatively well is the original one and a couple of secondary pages with no importance from one of the other sites. How did this happen? Does Google have something against this practice? Did they take action by themselves when they realized that I was trying to monopolize this niche, or did my competitor report me for some kind of webspam? And more importantly, what do I do now? Do I shutdown all but my original site and 301 redirect users to it from the others? Can I report my competitor for engaging in the same practice? (He fought back and now he has 3-4 sites, some of which still rank kind of OKish, also he has no idea about web development, SEO or marketing, he just crudely copies what I do and is slowly but surely starting to do better than me).
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | pandronic0 -
Are link directories still effective? is there a risk?
We've contracted a traditional SEO firm, mostly for link building. As part of their plan they want to submit our site to a large list of link directories, and we're not sure if that's a good option. As far as we know, those directories have been ineffective for a long time now, and we're wondering if there is the chance of getting penalized by google. When I asked the agency their opinion about that, they gave me the following answer - Updated and optimized by us - We are partnered with these sites and control quality of these sites. Unique Class C IP address - Links from unique Referring Class C IP plays a very important role in SEO. Powered by high PR backlinks Domain Authority (DA) Score of over 20 These directories are well categorized. So they actually control those directories themselves, which we think is even worse. I'm wondering what does the Moz community think about link directory submission - is there still something to be gained there, is there any risk involved, etc. Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | binpress0 -
Macrae's Blue Book Directory LIsting
Does anyone know more information about this directory? Is it a good quality directory that I should pay to get listed on?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | EcomLkwd0 -
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
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | swzhai0 -
Using an auto directory submission
Has anyone used easysubmits.com and what's your experience with it? Any other directory submission or link building tools that help automate and manage the process like easysubmits.com says they can do? I'm just looking at it currenlty and wanted to hear others thoughts before I get taken in by some black hat method that hurts my websites instead.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Twinbytes0