Link-Building - Directories
-
Hello,
The SEO world is a bit confuse in the last months with the Google Antartic updates. Its normal since Google is trying to kill SEO to have more Adwords publicity results.
My most recent doubt is about directories. I heard Matt Cutts from Google in a recent Google Hangout saying that registering a website in directorys was ok, but not the ideal method to become relevant in the internet world. However it seems that this procedure is not against the Google policies.
Now, here in the forums, I already saw someone writing about adding your site to directories and how dangerous that situacion is.
So, whats your opinion about adding your site to free and pay directories as first link-building strategy? If directories are out of the question, why SEOmoz as a huge list of paid directorys? Is SEOmoz outdate?
-
Love your awser MetmiX and in my experience thats the way I feel about this question. I was just feeling the community....;)
-
The important point is that not all directories are equal. "Directory" really described the structure of a website. However for many is SEO it refers to the thousands of directories that exist only to "help" sites rank in google.
So, if you were promoting a car tyre shop and found "Bobs Auto Resource site" where Bob picked great firms, wrote up what he liked about them and was itself linked from other quality looking sites then that would likely be a good resource.
However "Bobs cheap SEO friendly directory" that listed virtually any site that submitted itself, added no value to those listings, was full of rubbish and linked from equal rubbish would not be as good.
Damn that Bob and his wildly varied site quality.
-
Stick to vendor listings and niche directories and stay away from seo directories
-
There are very few directories that are worth much anymore because they have so many external links the links are devalued I think you still might get some benefit from the few super popular directories like yahoo & dmoz.
Stick to paid.. or human verified
-
I'm new to this so I might be off the mark but when I look for directories for SEO I will also consider the directory itself as a source of traffic, unless I'm mistaken and most of them are just "SERP machines", which I suppose isn't so bad becuase the good ones with standards are like Search Engines outsourcing for humans examining and verifying sites at 0 cost?
-
Hi Pedro,
Very nice question. I was thinking to place this question too, but you have allready placed it. I am using the directory-list from seomoz, and i invested more than 2500$ in a 3 Months, i see results, i see positive results, my competitors are not so strong, but it would be nice if someone answer our answer here.
But from my opinion, i think the directories are not so Powerfull, it helps, maybe really less, but if you think to make a good link metric for your domains, than i think every type of backlinks what we use, directory, press release, news article on newspapers, rss feeds, blogsubmission, css gallery, i think it helps, because we do on a natural way. I think is good and it helps, on my situation it helps, but on yours maybe not, it depends on your competitors, if they are strong, and hiring strong quality backlinks from new york times, cnn etc.. than you must hire the same quality of links, with a directories can't take a higher position.
Thanks
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
-
Is there any reason to Nofollow Internal Links or XML Sitemap?
I am viewing a new client's site and they have the following nofollow(S) on their site homepage. Is there a reason for this? Also, they people who originally built their site have a footer link on every page to their company (I guess to promote their work). They didn't "nofollow" that link lol... What are the thoughts on footer links? About Us Privacy Policy Customer Service Shipping & Returns Blog Contact Us Site Map Thanks James Chronicle
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Atlanta-SMO0 -
Unwanted link ?
Hello Working on my 404 pages, I've just found the following http://awesomescreenshot.com/08d22txtc9 This website http://basilurteaindia.com has a link mine as checked into Google. Link is presented with some of my content here http://basilurteaindia.com/images/19022012list.asp?type=2&file=C%3A%5CProgram+Files+(x86)%5ChMailServer%5CData%5Cace-egy.com%5Cm.kilany%5C9A%5C%7B9A532C2F-FB00-4C72-9403-7F26B7DC8E54%7D.eml Does someone know what the hell is that and how to remove it ?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | AymanH0 -
Competitors Building Bad Back Links
Hi there, I recently checked the back links for my site using Open Site Explorer, and I noticed a huge number of bad back links which I believe a competitor might be building to help lower my ranking for a number of highly competitive keywords. Besides spending time disavowing these links, what else can be done? Has anyone else been faced with the same problem? Any help would be appreciated. cXT0lvd.jpg
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | bamcreative0 -
Can image links help improve my backlinking profile?
I recently spent some time looking at the backlink profile of a leading UK food & clothing retailer and noticed that a high number of their backlinks for very competitive search phrase's consisted entirely of image backlinks. 50% of the links contained no alt text and other 50% contained a mix of just the targeted keyword or a phase containig one mention of the targeted keyword. Has anyone had any experiance of this type of marketing producing any positive effect on SEO or search engine rankings?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BigJonOne0 -
Strange Pingback/Blog Comment Links
On one of my sites I've noticed some strange links from Google Webmaster Tools recent links feature. They are pingbacks/blog comments but they are using keyword anchor text and linking to my site. I know we are not doing this. Should I be concerned about this possibly being negative SEO? Here's a sample (be careful, shady site)
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | eyeflow0 -
Do sitewide links from other sites hurt SEO?
A friend of mine has a pagerank 3 website that links to all my pages on my site on every page of his site. The anchor text of all these links are the title of each page that it links to. Does this hurt SEO? I can have him change to the links to whatever i want, so if it does hurt, what should i change the anchor text to if needed? Thanks mozzers! Ron
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Ron100 -
Removing Unnatural Link Penalties
As soon as I began working in my current position at my current company I noticed my predecessor's tendency towards buying link packages from blackhat companies... I knew we were being penalized, and had to prove to him that we needed to halt those campaigns immediately and try our darndest to remove all poison links from the internet. I did convince him and began the process. There was 57% of our backlinks tied to the same anchor phrase with 836 domains linking to the same phrase, same page. Today there are 643 of those links remaining. So I have hit a large number of them, but not nearly enough. So now I am getting messages from Google announcing that our site has been hit with an unnatural link penalty. I haven't really seen the results of this yet in the keywords I am trying to rank for, but fear it will hurt very soon and know that I could be doing better in the meantime. I really don't know what to do next. I've tried the whole "contact the webmasters" technique and maybe have had 1/100 agree to remove our links. They all want money or don't respond.. Do I really need to use this Disavow tool?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | jesse-landry
I hear mixed things about it.. Anybody with experience here like to share their stories? Thanks for the moral support!0 -
Is Guest Blogging the Next Link Buying
I like the guest blogging idea for two reasons. One, it builds links, and two, it allows me to add content to a lot of blogs that are really interested in growing a lot of good content. But I often read articles that give credit to another article, that give credit to another article. I have been offered plenty of documents for client blogs, but I am worried that at some point in the future Google will decide all this guest blogging is similar to link trading and selling. What does everyone else think of guest blogging?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | HandsomeWeb1