Link DIrectories - Is it a Good Idea with recent Panda Updates
-
Yo!
I have been doing a tonn of research on a few of my top competitors and have noticed that a decent percentage of their links are from link directories. Most of these directories seem organized and the links on the pages are relevant to the selected category. These pages offer both free link submission and a paid feature link submission.
My question is that is it a good idea to submit my site to these directories with the recent Panda update(s). I have read a bit about it, but still do not fully grasp the overall picture of it.
Any thoughts or suggestions?
-
Hi guys, some good answers above, however in regards to Panda I do not believe link building is directly connected. Are links from Panda hit sites as valuable as they used to be? That is still being debated and I am yet to see any clear tests on it. Although commons sense tells me links from pages Google deems poor should have less value!
However you can read a little about it on question 3 here: http://www.sugarrae.com/link-development/link-building-with-the-experts-2011-edition/ (although it is worth reading the whole article!)
-
what happens if after your article what got a couple of links, you still dont rank...what then?
Then the article is probably not as good as it needed to be. It's then time to figure out where you missed.
-
Ask those who did link to the article what made it stand out to them.
-
Ask other experts on the same topic what information they would find helpful enough to cause them to want to link to an article.
-
Ask yourself "how can I improve?". Could you add images or videos or graphics? If you already have those items, can they be improved?
-
Can you add more details? Or perhaps summarize points better? Can you tie in to current events which would make the article more relevant to what's happening in the world today?
-
Is the article supported by experts? What evidence do you offer to support the article?
Look at a great SEOmoz article you may have linked to and measure the differences in quality and presentation.
Millions of articles are read every day. If you wrote a quality article, and I mean a truly great article, and others are not linking to it then either you need to publicize it more (tweets, etc.) or you picked a topic with such a narrow focus that it will take a lot of time to build links for it.
@Grotbos, there is no harm to submitting your site to FREE directories outside of the loss of time.
You are right that we have all seen sites boosted by these directories in the past. We have also seen many of those site owners in this Q&A site with the standard "Help! My site rankings dropped and I don't understand why" questions after their links have been devalued. Most directory links do not offer any value to users. SEs knows this and are adjusting accordingly.
-
-
Also @Ryan and techbattery. Techbatteries question regarding panda has also not been answered clearly. Could submitting a site to these directories have a detrimental effect due to the panda update from Google?
-
Hi Ryan
I agree with you 100%, but that is a bit easier said than done, even once you have written this great article to find people to link to it is the next challenge (A big one). And what happens if after your article what got a couple of links, you still dont rank...what then? I agree with your perception of directories 100%, but if google still values them (which in many cases it looks like it might), should we just neglect them all in all? We obviously do not want to prioritize directories over quality content, but the questions is does google still value those links? I would love to know this from someone who has run an experiment, as I do believe directories can sometimes be helpful to increase number of links and get good anchor texts. If someone could give me proof (besides the user argument) that directories don't help at all, I would appreciate it.
-
Link directories are a poor method of link building. Ask yourself, as a user, do you like link directories? Do you use any of the ones on the list? Do you know anyone who does? If the answer to all these questions is "no", then why would you want to spend time and money to be added to one of these directories?
Take all the time and effort and write the best article ever on a single topic. I notice your user name is techbattery so I will use a battery example. Write an article on cell phone or ipad batteries. Make the article relevant to anyone who owns one of those devices. "Best Ipad Battery for you" could be the title. Talk about different battery types, charge life, shelf life, can you overcharge them, why do they get so warm/hot, etc. Make it an article that everyone who owns an iPad will want to read. Let the world know about the article.
Ideally everyone who sells or owns an iPad will WANT to link to your article. The value you will get from that article will exceed anything you get from your link directory efforts.
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
-
Are charity/sponsorship links good, bad or just useless?
Some facts: We will probably only doe this 2-3 times a year (we have hundreds of links coming in each year from organic sources). This is for a really prestigious charity website with very nice link profile from other non-profits, news organizations, and even government websites. We will get a logo on their sponsorship page, with a link back to our site. Some articles say Google considers this "buying a link" and will therefore penalize you. Or at best, this will have no effect. And here's a Search Engine Land article saying the exact opposite. $1,500 is a lot of money. So I just want to make sure I'm not wasting it -- or worse -- getting penalized.
Link Building | | Brand_Psychic0 -
Internal Linking - Post links vs Side Bar Links behaving differently
Hi, I have a question regarding the internal linking behavior. My website is www.hindimeaning.com which is approx 3 years old. I have approx 450 posts. Now i have a widget on right sidebar "Popular posts". A widget below my posts "Related Posts". And a simple html CSS menu above the posts (I removed menu around 6 month before so currently it will not show.) I crawled my site with moz crawler (same are the result from google crawler as well) and it shows menus links as internal links. While sidebar widget "Popular posts" and "Related Posts" are not showing as internal links. If we talk theoretically what i learn till now is "every link on a page behaves as internal link". Then why the widget links are not showing as internal links. Thanks, Mahesh Kumar
Link Building | | chaudhary04890 -
Paid directory links
Just going through my competitors back links, and discovered a couple of directories who charge a small fee for a listing (£20) (one way link) or a free listing (with a reciprocal link) they both have PR of 50 so I was wondering are these type of links still worth it? Best wishes. David.
Link Building | | WallerD0 -
When buying used domains, how do i see the links pointing to that domain? OSE not showing links
when buying used domains, how do i see the links pointing to that domain? Sometimes the open site explorer doesn't show any links to the domain, especially if the domain is parked. Obviously a domain for sale with 1000 domains linking to it has lots of SEO Value right? Thanks mozzers!
Link Building | | Ron100 -
Why am I getting links in my link report from sites that no longer exist?
So, I have a link report from Link Detox. And I'm going through all of them and considering what sites need to be removed. and trying to find emails and contact webmasters. There is just one odd thing i'm starting to see more of. A lot of links are on websites or webpages that no longer exist. The link no longer exists. Some of the domains are even available for purchase. Why are these links showing on the backlink report and are they really harming my website? Also, do I need to add these links into the disavow document that I will submit to Google?
Link Building | | lightwurx0 -
My Question : why site explorer not showing yahoo directory link
why site explorer not showing yahoo directory link i have tried many different sites which listed in yahoo directory but site explorer not showing ?
Link Building | | amreen8470 -
Link Pharming
My company has been using an SEO company for a while and have built up our pagerank to a 6. However, we have noticed that they're involved in link pharming - they're buildng extra websites and linking to our site on them. We are not happy with this as we know it will only be a matter of time before Penguin hits us. The contract with the SEO company is coming up for renewal soon and we're thinking of cancelling it. However, we are not sure if the company will delete all our backlinks, which will probably decrease our PageRank too. Has anyone here ever had a similar experience? What did the SEO company do when you cancelled the contract? Does anyone here work for an SEO company and what do you do when someone cancels your service?
Link Building | | AAttias0 -
Why don't directory backlinks show up in Open Link Explorer?
Why don't we see linking root domains like yelp, google, yahoo, etc? Is there any way to get a more accurate list of links to a domain where webmaster tools are not an option?
Link Building | | ScottM0