Are directory listings still appropriate in 2013? Aren't they old-style SEO and Penguin-worthy?
-
We have been reviewing our off-page SEO strategy for clients and as part of that process, we are looking at a number of superb info-graphics on the subject. I see that some of current ones still list "Directories" as being part of their off-page strategy.
Aren't these directories mainly there for link-building purposes and provide Users no real benefit? I don't think I've ever seen a directory that I would use, apart for SEO research.
Surely Google's Penguin algorithm would see directories in the same way and give them less value, or even penalise websites that use them to try to boost page rank?
If I were to list my websites on directories it wouldn't be to share my lovely content with people that use directories to find great sites, it would be to sneakily build page rank.
Am I missing the point?
Thanks
Scott -
Thanks, I appreciate your response.
Scott
-
Hi, thanks for you reply. One of my clients, build garden offices and I have explored a lot of garden related directories. There are loads. Defining which is worthy isn't always straight forward. Some sites look good at first glance, but when you dig deeper, they seem pretty spammy. I got caught out with one website which when I added my listing it appeared on thousands of pages in a number of sites under an umbrella called Durokon. All horribly similar. I still can't work out if that site is real or not. I tried to contact them, but no luck, so I'm now assuming it's a link farm of sorts.
I suppose we need to be more critical when doing work like this.
Thanks
Scott -
I think any directory that is either niche relevant or local is still valuable! Especially in terms of local optimization because they also serve as citations!
-
95% of directories are for passing PR and I wouldn't use them for link building. There are only a few like Yahoo or Dmoz that I would consider safe.
-
Scott,
You are right - the majority of directories don't really seem to provide much real value to actual users. I would suggest being extremely critical and conservative if you do decide to pursue 'general' web directory links.
There are niche directories out there such as directories that feature businesses that are green, and electrical contractor directories. These types of hyper relevant directories both add value and Google responds well to them. The more general type of directories are the ones that tend to attract the penguin's wrath. Hope that helps!
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
-
Do you see sites with unfixable Penguin penalties?
Hello, We have a site with 2 Penguin update penalties (drops in traffic) and one quality penalty (another drop in traffic) all years ago, both just drops in rankings and not messages in Google Console. Now that Penguin is hard coded, do you find that some sites never recover even with a beautiful disavow and cleanup? We've added content and still have some quality errors, though I thought they were minor. This client used to have doorway sites and paid links, but now is squeaky clean with a disavow done a month ago though most of the cleanup was done by deletion of the doorways and paid links 9 months ago. Is this a quality problem or is our site permanently gone? Let me know what information you need. Looking for people with a lot of experience with other sites and Penguin. Thanks.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobGW2 -
Hit by negative SEO
I think my site got hit by a negative SEO campaign. We got nailed by the latest Google update and our traffic dropped significantly. We don't buy links, ask for links, do link exchanges, etc. Since the last update was all about spammy backlinks, I downloaded backlinks from Google Webmaster Tools just to see if there was any info in there. There are tons, hundreds, thousands of backlinks from spammy sites to us. Sites that are spammy as heck and sell backlinks on the footer. I can only assume someone went after us with a negative SEO campaign. We're the #3 site in a hot market. Is the only way to combat this to disavow all those spammy backlinks with the Google disavow tool? We also have a manual penalty on our site as well. I've asked for a reconsideration request and have heard nothing. Please advise.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | CFSSEO0 -
Learn Local SEO
What are best local SEO practices 2013 ?? to get website on top of all major keywords ???
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | mnkpso0 -
Post-Penguin 2.0 Gust Blogging
I'm really just curious about everyone’s thoughts on post-Penguin 2.0 guest blogging. Is it still a viable option for link building? Is there anything you should proactively do to make it "safe"? What makes a guest blog post "advertorial" (or would it never be, if it is clearly marked as a guest post with a writer's bio)? Will moderate guest blogging on highly related, top ranked sites ever be a prime target for Google updates? I feel like guest blogging is still a viable way to build links, as long as it is on high quality and highly relevant sites that post content people actually read. Limit the number of links to 1-3 for every post, use generic or branded text as anchor text rather than your "top keyword" anchor text of old, and make the content interesting (educational or funny, not just for the sake of getting links) and completely unique to the site you are posting on. Just my 2 cents. Anyone else?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | jaredkipe0 -
Should I ask for Nofollow on directory URLs?
Hi, I'm just putting pizza restaurant on various very relevant 'eating out' directories. Just noticed one directory then proceeds to place your listing on around 40 other sub-directories (each with own URL). They don't put <no follow="">tags on any of the 40 odd backlinking URLs.</no> I currently have around 300 existing backlinks, to this pizza restaurant, from a diverse range of sites. Should I ask them to put a nofollow on these 40 odd new backlinking directory URLs?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | McTaggart0 -
It Shows as "google results" but it's an incoming links, is it spaming me...?
Hello everyone I have 2 issues to share: 1) We have a site (personal-loans.org), In the past few weeks we notice that there are sites that have links to our site and we get traffic from them but...! when you go online to these sites they show you that all they do is provide "google search" results, because we where in first page on the results we had hits there as well what leads me to think that this is the reason we are at page 7 now after yesterday the ranking was at page 4. these are some of these sites so you can see it: internetpayadvances.com fastlivecashadvance.com assistancemoney.com scoutcashnow.com officialpayday.net Does anyone else got to see anything like that...??? I have many more links like that, these are only 5 out of 9 that had hits yesterday only, site traffic went from 250-300 to 63 a day... For the same site - it was on google search results 1st page and ranked 4-7, even after the big penguin changes. What we did notice is that A LOT of non related sites like surfing (yes ocean surfing) and sites that had no content AT ALL - all the text was inside of an image and ranked 3! 3rd on payday loans search result. (and the rest was and still just looks the same with different content...) Google say they want quality but does not do homework for the 2nd largest search for keywords such as loans and payday loans market, same goes for the cash advance. Please help, need your advice.... Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Yonnir0 -
I am still confused about anchor text and penalties
As I understand in order to rank well for the page in google, the page/site has to have a lot of back links that have an anchor text with the keywords that you want to rank for. At the same time if google finds that your anchor text contains kewords that are in your title or h1 tag, it may penalize your site. So what do i do to rank well for my chosen keywords. Lets say I am only interested in keywords San Francisco widget and Oakland widget The title of my webpage says San Francisco | Oakland widget The anchor text that I usually pick is either San Francisco widget or Oakland widget. I also have plenty of links that have anchor text like "website" or "click here" What should I use for my anchor text in my backlinks?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SirMax0