5 replies to this topic

[anne999]

Someone recently suggested to me that a good way to build links to my business site was to start a reciprocal directory, and rather than have the sites submitting for inclusion into the directory link back to the directory, have them link to your business site.

What are the pros and cons of doing this? Is this really a good idea?

Thanks,
Anne

[Randy]

Sounds like a large waste of time to me. It's doubtful you would even get any quality backlinks from it even if you did it perfectly because the links would all be pointing at some site other than the link directory. Meaning the links from the directory aren't going to carry much if any weight. There's no reason for a truly quality site to join because the reciprocation is vastly uneven.

Why not simply build a relationship with your potential market and let them link to you because they like what you're doing?

The thing people seem to forget or haven't noticed is that these days exponentially more real people have the ability to create a link than was the case at any time in Internet history. Back then these easy-to-use platforms just weren't there for normal (meaning non-SEO and non-marketer) people to utilize. Now they are, and they're being used by lots of people would wouldn't know how to code an html page if their life depended upon it. Because of this critical shift exponentially more real people are content producers today than has ever been the case before. So if anything getting real links from real people is exponentially easier that ever before.

The only key is connecting with them and building a relationship with them.

[anne999]

Thanks Randy, that's what I thought. I spend my time trying to ensure that my content is link worthy and updated regularly.

Anne

[Jill]

Someone recently suggested to me that a good way to build links to my business site was to start a reciprocal directory, and rather than have the sites submitting for inclusion into the directory link back to the directory, have them link to your business site.

That's very nearly the definition of a link farm, but with a little twist.

[1dmf]

[url=http://www.highrankings.com/forum/index.php?showforum=21]Submitting to Directories[/url] for links sake is a waste of time and any recipricol links you place on your site, could harm you if they are 'bad neighbourhoods'.

The best way i find to see if a directory is worth adding your site to is by searching for the keywords you would use to find your site.

Does the returned search results contain any directories? If so then it may be worth adding your site to that directory.

This has worked well for a friends mobile disco business.

however if the way you found the directory was by searching for directories, then they probably aren't worth your time and effort!

Add links to directories to bring you targeted traffic and nothing more, and only from directories that actually have visitors in the first place to send you

[Randy]

If it's any consolation Anne your question --actually the answer to the question-- reminded me that I really need to find some time over the next week or so to put pen to paper to answer I question I've gotten about 40 times over the last few months since Google announced their upcoming Caffeine update. The question being how I expect things to change with Google's organic search over the next year or two.

The short answer is I expect to see some pretty significant changes that will end up affecting many, many markets.

Not so much changes in how Google analyzes pages for organic placement with respect to traditional SEO, but in where they choose to pull those rankings from. It's basically an combined effect of personalization, geolocation and the various things (video, news, social/blog, local that makes up their concept of Universal Search. The bottom line being that in order to get a solid first page listing means you're going to have to attack it on more channels than has ever been the case before, because if you stick with traditional SEO that has simply worked for the last year it's probably not going to be good enough.

Or to put another way, if you're not already locked into a top two or three positions you're going to need to do more just to stay in the first page once they start to blend in results from all of the other channels. Because all of those other channels you're currently ignoring are going to take up a fairly good chunk of the first page real estate.

It's not a great time of the year for me to try to find several hours to organize my thoughts from all of the stuff I read into something that's coherent for someone who doesn't track this stuff constantly. Just the tracking is a full time job. Putting it into something people can understand without first reading and understanding all of the source material is a time consuming process. And I have too many sites that actually have a high season just before and just after the Christmas holiday, and fulfilling those orders are of course the first priority. Well, that and cursing at Karon practically daily for mentioning that little corporate holiday card idea a few years ago that is making me work far, far too hard this year. (I love ya for the idea Karon, but hate that I'm having to devote so darned much time to sending out orders for greeting card stock this week!)

But thank you for reminding me Anne that I do have a deadline of sorts on that little project. Because I do need to get it done prior to when Caffeine goes live sometime after the first of the year. Since I expect that will be the main trigger.