Search directories, are they worth it??

[MissThumann]

I pay Yahoo, sorry Aabaco.... a lot of money every year to be listed on all the little search directories. I'm told this helps my SEO efforts, but I don't see where? Is there a page on MOZ that would tell me this, I'm interested to know the truth about this? I'm kind of new to seo so please answer lightly...

[BlueprintMarketing]

Happy to be of help

PS thank you Miriam

[MissThumann]

I get it now, thank you for that answer & I love MOZ, such a great place to learn.

[MissThumann]

Thank you for taking the time to respond to me! I appreciate your answer.

[robertsteck]

Hey Miss Thurman,

Great question. No doubt you've been googling ways to quickly increase your site's rankings and one of those is to get external links and one of the easiest ways to get external links is to put your info on a ton of online directories... Unfortunately that information is outdated. Nowadays, the links you receive from online directories are basically worthless. The only thing the directories are good for any more is having your business info out there for other people to find.

So I highly recommend that you check local directories to ensure that your business information is correct, but beyond that, I wouldn't worry about them that much. MOZ has a service called Local Listing which will automatically update your businesses' info across a number of listing sites, that others also pull their info from. It keeps you up to date on your submissions, whether there is a duplicate listing, or incorrect listings that need to be removed (some they remove for you, others must be removed by you).

[BlueprintMarketing]

If you're talking about being added and local directories you can do that using mozlocal  this will increase your local presence but search directories that are random  directories for the sake of being directories or not relevant are worthless and will harm you unfortunately.

If you are listed in a directory like recommended by moz  and other high-quality listing like distilled.net/u or University

You are in good hands. You have to be very careful of the type of directory in which you place your website.

If it looks little fishy don't do it

I hope this is of help,

tom