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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.
All y'all SEO clever men be saying that paid directories (and fo' sho unpaid ones) ain't worth diddly.So how come when I open a can of Open Site Explorer on the a** of my (breathin'-down-my-neck) rivals, their (meant to be worthless) directories be passin' them lots and lots of link love? Riddle me that, people.
FWIW, I had a similar problem, in that one of my internal pages had 1,500 total links -- of which approx 1,425 were internal and had exactly the same three-word exact-match anchor text.
The page was ranking top 5 pre-Penguin for the keyword. Post Penguin, it sunk like a stone. A very heavy stone. As in, not in top #100. I've changed the links but still haven't recovered 10 months on.
Bizarrely, the page still ranks ok for other keywords, which makes me suspect some kind of manual keyword-specific penalty.