Directories and Domain Authority
-
I read all the time about how directories have very little weight in SEO anymore, but in my field, a lot of our competitors are propped up by paying for "profiles" aka links from places like martindale-hubbard, superlawyers, findlaw, nolo, Avvo, etc (which are essentially directories IMO) yet all those sites have very high DAs of 80 and above.
So, are links from these sites worth it? I know that's a vague questions, but if Moz's algo seems to rank them so highly, I'm guessing that's reasonably close to what google thinks as well...maybe?
Thanks for any insight,
- Ruben
-
Ruben,
In my experience posting to directories does not have any negative influence on a site. Keep in mind the quality of the directory does matter. It is beneficial to have a site listed on particular directories. However, if you're going to spend the time building visibility of a site, there's better ways to spend your time.
Another idea would be to create business profiles for the site. These are opportunities to create a profile with a phone number, URL, and a description of the site or business where keywords can be used. Again certain sites are better than others, so choose wisely.
If you would like more information on this please let me know.
- Nick
-
Hey Ruben,
What I would consider these types of sites to be would be industry-oriented citations. And you definitely want those. Do you want to pay for citations there? It depends on how they perform. Pay for links ... no! Earn links ... yes, probably. You might like to check out this recent video over at LocalU that is talking about the value of links:
http://localu.org/blog/video-deep-dive-on-links-and-local-marketing/
I think it presents a really no-nonsense approach to judging the value of links for local businesses.
-
Hi there.
My take on this is that having links from directories wouldn't hurt, especially if you use those directories substantially, for example for reviews, or communicating with clients. However, make sure that directories is not your only backlink building campaign.
Hope this 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
-
Multiple links from same domain (different pages) considered in credibility of backlinks?
Hi, Let's say there are multiple backlinks from different pages of same domain to different pages of other domain like below: Website A: Page 1 -----------> Website B: Page 1 Website A: Page 2 -----------> Website B: Page 2 Do the pages of Website B pages will get backlinks authority equally or they don't get much backlinks impact as they have multiple backlinks from same domain? There were old school stories that Google ignores second link from same domain.....etc... So, please suggest on this. Thank you. Note: The question is NOT about content relevancy or domain authority score of the backlinks.
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz1 -
Ranking impact: Traffic in website pages vs sub directory vs sub domain
Hi all, I need clarification on this. Not every time website main pages rank, some times even pages from sub directories or sub domains like blogs or guides; especially for branded keywords. I just wonder what happens when so much traffic is generating in sub directories and sub domains just because of limited landing pages in main website. Will this traffic be counted as traffic in main website as per Google? Traffic increase in main website really an ranking factor? Will the "brand + topic" related keywords' traffic is more for a website; will it ranking improves even for "topic keywords"? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Adding the link masking directory to robots.txt?
Hey guys, Just want to know if you have any experience with this. Is it worthwhile blocking search engines from following the link masking directory.. (what i mean by this is the directory that holds the link redirectors to an affiliate site: example:
Algorithm Updates | | irdeto
mydomain.com/go/thislink goes to
amazon.com/affiliatelink I want to know if blocking the 'go' directory from getting crawled in robots.txt is a good idea or a bad idea? I am not using wordpress but rather a custom built php site where i need to manually decide on these things. i want to specifically know if this in any way violates guidelines for google. it doesn't change the custom experience because they know exactly where they will end up if they click on the link. any advice would be much appreciated.0 -
How to Change Geo Target Location of Country Specific Domain
Hi - I have a country specific domain (www.updater.in), used it for writing blog articles Now when i go to site settings in Webmaster - the Geo target by default is coming for India, and no option of changing geographic target. Is there any way to let Search Engines know (despite .in domain) that site Geo Location is not country specific, but is meant for users from all across !!
Algorithm Updates | | Modi0 -
Which domain is better - a Long descriptive or Short Abbreviated?
I want to start a new company and have an option to have a long and descriptive domain or buy out the 5 letter Abbreviated domain for $2000. abstract example:
Algorithm Updates | | NikitaG
LegalMigrationServiceCapeTown.com
V.S.
LMSCT.com The advantage of the shorter domain is that it is 13 years old.
so now for the SEO - which one do you think is better? is Exact Match Domain a better thing for SEO or can I get away with a shorter domain? I can buy both, but which one should I build on as the main domain? any advice would be much appreciated, as well as the PROS & CONS of both.0 -
Best way of seeing how many links come from individual root domain domains.
Just wondering how best to see this - which tool to use. I'm dealing with a website with several thousand inbound links from around 100 root domains. Thanks in advance, Luke
Algorithm Updates | | McTaggart0 -
Domain Authority and Google keywords
Hi there, We have a domain authority of 33, one of our competitors has an authority of 10, yet they appear to list higher on many keyword searches in google. Is there a reason for this? Our site is 5 months old, and their site is over 3 yrs old. Thanks for your feedback 🙂
Algorithm Updates | | PHDAustralia680 -
Was Panda applied at sub-domain or root-domain level?
Does anyone have any case studies or examples of sites where a specific sub-domain was hit by Panda while other sub-domains were fine? What's the general consensus on whether this was applied at the sub-domain or root-domain level? My thinking is that Google already knows broadly whether a "site" is a root-domain (e.g. SEOmoz) or a sub-domain (e.g. tumblr) and that they use this logic when rolling out Panda. I'd love to hear your thoughts and opinions though?
Algorithm Updates | | TomCritchlow1