20 replies to this topic

[Jill]

Apparently directory links do still work great, even for competitive terms.

See this post on SEOmoz.

[Googlefrog]

Most directories are crap and a waste of time. IMO, I'd try to get listed on the major directories and niche directories topically related to yours. Just going by pagerank to determine a directories link worth to your site isn't enough. There's alot of twits running around these days creating directories, offering free listings where they add every site and it's dog, guaranteeing inclusions with payment, and then selling them when they get big, those types of directories are junk and they're all over the place.

Hmm, do you have empirical evidence to suggest this? From my experience directories work. Also someone on dp forums did an A/B test over x months. When he started he was ranked 60 something for chosen keyphrase, at the end his site was on page 1 lol.

I was wondering though, what is the importance of the homepage PR when your link is often on a page with no rank? Ideally you'd want the page to be ranked?

[qwerty]

PR is pretty unimportant to begin with. The PR of a site's home page, if your link isn't on that page, is of no importance at all. What matters is that the page your link is going on is indexed.

[SnZ]

Hello im new 'round here, but wanted to post my opinion here.

Now the fuss is all about its good/not good, but imo it depends on what "ground" you're on.

Anyone that says [url=http://www.highrankings.com/forum/index.php?showforum=21]Submitting to Directories[/url] is a waste of time should have a perspective on all domains, not only .com

Everybody knows .com sites with english content are a battle to begin with (thats what i know), and probably [url=http://www.highrankings.com/forum/index.php?showforum=21]Submitting to Directories[/url] will not increase ure ranking very well (although there are tons of general free directories.), but when you're dealing with regional site (.nl, .pl, .ro) directory submission will help, a lot. They do not offer nor traffic, nor targeted traffic but they offer ibl's, and the site being new, with a little on-page optimization with fructuos h1, bold, and keyword density + meta-tags, the submission can boost your serps for your main keyword, provided that, that keyword is a regional (e.g if u have a nl site a nl language keyword).

Ive ranked with some new sites (before submitting) obviously very bad, but after the submissions took place + the on-page optimization, now they rank 1st page on the main keyword (although is a half long-tail one) and 2nd page for a generic (one word keyword)

So, imo, submitting is good, but dont expect traffic, we all know that by now + submitting to a smaller directory with a smaller numbers of sites already registered there, you will be on the highest page, and maybe first in your category and maybe the breadcrumbs to that category dont like DmoZ internet/../.././yourcategory.

Regards, SnZ

[jamesfoster]

Yes, directory submissions are very helpful. It's one of the best SEO tactics. It is going give more backlinks to your site.

[don h]

Hmm, do you have empirical evidence to suggest this? From my experience directories work. Also someone on dp forums did an A/B test over x months. When he started he was ranked 60 something for chosen keyphrase, at the end his site was on page 1 lol.

I was wondering though, what is the importance of the homepage PR when your link is often on a page with no rank? Ideally you'd want the page to be ranked?

I still stand by my words. The evidence can be found on the directories themselves as revealed by editorial quality and general page quality from the eyes of the search engines and internet users - IE: who wants to link to some no-name-just-another-general directory? For this reason many pages on these types of directories aren't in the index. However, I don't claim that some of these links don't help. If you submit to mass amount of them there's likely a sizable portion of them that will pass value. As Randy once said on this forum, <paraphrase> "these kind of easy link schemes won't last forever" </end paraphrase>, so it's a good idea not to spend too much time on them and focus on other things that will help you in the long term. Matt Cutts also pointed out somewhere on his blog that directory links will count for now, but perhaps not in the future. This could mean Google is working on a way to stop them from passing value, or severely moderate their value.