Directory backlink

[drimlike]

Hello everyone,

I know that this question has been asked millions of time, but I am really not getting a straight answer for it. Well the question will be divided in few other questions :

1. Google changed, I get that, but I am reading everywhere, come up with a great content and the rest will follow, stop creating your own backlink and let user link to you ... But I don't know if this is apply for every site on the web, let take the example of a flash gaming site that we manage, we are creating games every day, coming up with great (unique) text for each of them, we are active on social media and stopped backlink from directories. But now we can see our sites losing ranking and seeing some websites that are not having much content on their sites or even active on social medias that are ranking better than us.

We always used white hat techniques, this is why we were so well ranked for so long, but now we see our ranking change on a daily basis but can't explained why.

2. So my question is, should we totally stop directories backlink (even the good directories)? Or we should keep on going and try PR at the same time?

3. For a site that just started how on earth will he be able to get backlinks if it's not using directories in the first place?

So I feel that I am going in circle here and I don't know what else we could do to improve our site.

We even recast the site to bring better experience to the user to see if this will help on us on getting our ranking back. And this help, as the page views and time on the site improved with it, but the ranking is still unchanged (that has been done 3 months ago).

Just to let you know we are aware about the panda and penguin updates

Thanks for your help on this, and I hope the answers will help others

Thanks,

Mounir

[drimlike]

Andrea,

I guess you are right, and I think like you with all the test and experience I have, content seem to have its importance, but it's not the main key for a great ranking.

I am going to spend sometime at looking at the inbound links from our competitor and try to see where we should may be be too

Thanks again to take the time to help, really appreciate it

Cheers,

[josh-riley]

Don't let it kill you - there's too many factors that influence ranking above-and-beyond just content. They're doing something right if they are ranking well so they are making it happen without, in your opinion, making it all about content. Which is also why I also find it questionable when anyone tries to make it just about content. Their domain rank may be high, they may have a better inbound link portfolio, older domain age, etc.

[drimlike]

Andrea,

thanks for your reply,  this is exactly what we are doing, finding other channel to get links but also using good directories, but what is killing me is to see sites ranking better than us and not spending a 10th on content.

Anyway, I guess it will be really hard for someone to start working on a brand new site with a new domain, it may take ages before seeing it climb in ranking.

Any other feedback/experience sharing are more than welcome in this post

Cheers,

[josh-riley]

I agree about the "just make great content and people will find you" mentality. Really, it's that easy? No, it's not. Because people have to find you and links can help.

That said, there's a lot of different ways to get links. Good directories are fine enough. But I also think that's just a small piece of the pie. There's media coverage from online outlets, as another example. A lot of people I know don't just post to directories and call it a day, they actively go out and approach other sites and ask for links. That could be how your competitor(s) are doing it.

Fact is, whether you want to call it link building or whatnot, you have to market your site so people know it's there and can find it. Then if you have good content, and built it well, people can find it.