Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • SEO Q&A
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • Case Studies
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • Case Studies

        Explore how Moz drives ROI with a proven track record of success.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. Research & Trends
    3. White Hat / Black Hat SEO
    4. A Straight Answer to Outsourcing Backlinking, Directory Submission and Social Bookmarking

    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

    White Hat / Black Hat SEO
    3
    7
    2238
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • swzhai
      swzhai last edited by

      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

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • swzhai
        swzhai @swzhai last edited by

        Thanks EGOL

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • EGOL
          EGOL @swzhai last edited by

          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.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
          • swzhai
            swzhai @EGOL last edited by

            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

            EGOL swzhai 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • EGOL
              EGOL last edited by

              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".

              swzhai 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
              • swzhai
                swzhai @irvingw last edited by

                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?

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • irvingw
                  irvingw last edited by

                  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.

                  swzhai 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                  • 1 / 1
                  • First post
                    Last post

                  Got a burning SEO question?

                  Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                  Start my free trial


                  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.

                  • See all categories

                  Related Questions

                  • jogobicho

                    High Rank and Traffic of low DA and Backlinks

                    Hi guys, is a pleasure being a part of this community, hope in learning a lot with you guys, i just started a year learning about SEO and it been a big journey. I was looking at some competition of some websites that i been optmizing, and i found a website that called my attention and i cant figure out whats going on, it haves huge traffic but in terms of technicall SEO is really week, and not just this but also in terms of DA and backlinks (most of them spammy - 20 backlinks), the domain in question is bhnews.com.br I notice that doesnt have any social media, not analytics, etc. The only thing that i notice is that there is a website or a company called "BH news" (televesion), but its not related with it, since the type of information that bhnews.com.br presents is "lottery" results. So this kind of situation confuses me a lot, because is a lot of hard work in optmizing a website to rank in google, and than i come a across with this type of website with 20 backlinks (most of anchor or name of domain), and than haves like 2M visits per month and ranks for keywords related with the this type of sites of lottery. Can someone tell me if there is some kind of black seo, or something that is making this rank so high? regards

                    White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | jogobicho
                    0
                  • HuptechWebseo

                    Negative SEO - Spammy Backlinks By Competitor

                    Hi Everyone, Someone has generated more than 22k spam backlinks (on bad keywords) for my domain.Will it hurt on my website (SEO Ranking)? Because it is already in the top ranking. How could I remove all the spammy backlinks? How could I know particular competitior who have done this?

                    White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | HuptechWebseo
                    0
                  • edward-may

                    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-may
                    0
                  • ClayPotCreative

                    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 | | ClayPotCreative
                    0
                  • EcomLkwd

                    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 | | EcomLkwd
                    0
                  • k9byron

                    Finding and Removing bad backlinks

                    Ok here goes. Over the past 2 years our traffic and rankings have slowly declined, most importantly, for keywords that we ranked #1 and #2 at for years. With the new Penguin updates this year, we never saw a huge drop but a constant slow loss. My boss has tasked me with cleaning up our bad links and reshaping our link profile so that it is cleaner and more natural. I currently have access to Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools, SEOMoz, and Link Builder. 1)What is the best program or process for identifying bad backlinks? What exactly am I looking for? Too many links from one domain? Links from Low PR or low “Trust URL” sites? I have gotten conflicting information reading about all this on the net, with some saying that too many good links(high PR) can be unnatural without some lower level PR links, so I just want to make sure that I am not asking for links to be removed that we need to create or maintain our link profile. 2)What is the best program or process for viewing our link profile and what exactly am I looking for? What constitutes a healthy link profile after the new google algorithm updates? What is the best way to change it? 3)Where do I start with this task? Remove spammy links first or figure out or profile first and then go after bad links? 4)We have some backlinks that are to our old .aspx that we moved to our new platform 2 years ago, there are quite a few (1000+). Some of these pages were redirected and some the redirects were broken at some point. Is there any residual juice in these backlinks still? Should we fix the broken redirects, or does it do nothing?  My boss says the redirects wont do anything now that google no longer indexes the old pages but other people have said differently. Whats the deal should we still fix the redirects even though the pages are no longer indexed? I really appreciate any advice as basically if we cant get our site and sales turned around, my job is at stake. Our site is www.k9electronics.com if you want to take a look. We just moved hosts so there are some redirect issues and other things going on we know about.

                    White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | k9byron
                    0
                  • mywebshop

                    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 | | mywebshop
                    0
                  • phatride

                    Can you block backlinks from another domain

                    Wondering if this is somehow possible. A site got hacked and created a /data folder with hundreds of .php files that are web pages selling all sorts of stuff. We deleted the /data folder and blocked Google from indexing it. Just noticed in Webmaster Tools that the site has 35,000 backlinks from other sites that got hacked with the same way. Is there a way to block these sites? I am assuming there isn't, but wanted to see if anyone ran into the same problem. It is a wordpress site is that helps.

                    White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | phatride
                    0

                  Get started with Moz Pro!

                  Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                  Start my free trial
                  Products
                  • Moz Pro
                  • Moz Local
                  • Moz API
                  • Moz Data
                  • STAT
                  • Product Updates
                  Moz Solutions
                  • SMB Solutions
                  • Agency Solutions
                  • Enterprise Solutions
                  Free SEO Tools
                  • Domain Authority Checker
                  • Link Explorer
                  • Keyword Explorer
                  • Competitive Research
                  • Brand Authority Checker
                  • Local Citation Checker
                  • MozBar Extension
                  • MozCast
                  Resources
                  • Blog
                  • SEO Learning Center
                  • Help Hub
                  • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                  • How-to Guides
                  • Moz Academy
                  • API Docs
                  About Moz
                  • About
                  • Team
                  • Careers
                  • Contact
                  Why Moz
                  • Case Studies
                  • Testimonials
                  Get Involved
                  • Become an Affiliate
                  • MozCon
                  • Webinars
                  • Practical Marketer Series
                  • MozPod
                  Connect with us

                  Contact the Help team

                  Join our newsletter
                  Moz logo
                  © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                  • Accessibility
                  • Terms of Use
                  • Privacy

                  Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.