Directory Links, Is There A Time To Discontinue Them? Options

[alan]

When I started my site last year, I purchased a number of links in the better directories, including Yahoo. Some of those links were pay once for life, and others require a new payment each year. My site is going into its second year at this point, and those directories that charge you every year will soon be sending the bill.

My site is ranking fairly well for even the best keyword phrases. By fairly well I mean anywhere from Google #1 to someplace on the 1, 2nd, or in some cases 3rd page. Of course we always want to rank higher, no matter how well we are doing.

I have spent the past year doing heavy article marketing to procure my one-way backlinks. And I seem to get a better class of "customer" from those who do read my articles, since my conversion rate has risen in proportion to the number of articles I've published, and the number of sites they've shown up on. My agenda is to continue to publish a minimum of one or two articles per week from this point on. I am also in the process of starting my "social" advertising by producing a series of strictly educational type videos that will be uploaded to YouTube type sites. I all ready have a number of testimonial style videos on these sites, and they are producing traffic.

So my question is this: Since directories rarely deliver direct traffic, and Google obviously has a certain amount of trust in my site since it's ranking well, is there any benefit (ranking wize) to making the renewal payments on the directories? I was thinking about renewing Yahoo, but that's it.

[donp]

Sounds like you are doing it right, wean yourself off the directories, watch for a dip in traffic & rankings. if you are getting "x" traffic from Yahoo or whoever and it's worth it, pay the bucks.

Unless it's specialty site that outranks me or my clients and hard to displace, I rarely pay for links or inclusions.

[Scottie]

There are some I still pay for each year, others I dropped. I've never had a Yahoo listing, so I can't speak to that. I think you just have to try it and see- the thing about paid directories is that you can get relisted if you think you need them.

[Jill]

So my question is this: Since directories rarely deliver direct traffic, and Google obviously has a certain amount of trust in my site since it's ranking well, is there any benefit (ranking wize) to making the renewal payments on the directories? I was thinking about renewing Yahoo, but that's it.

You can drop them, and see if you notice any change in rankings. You can always re-up if you think that dropping them was the cause.

[alan]

As usual, you have all provided me with a solid, logical response to my question. Thank you all!

By the way Jill, a few months ago I posted a question here about adding a news group to my site, and having it seeded by a service that claims to be able to take posts from other news groups and add them to your site. You may remember the ruckus it caused by those who got pissed off about that service's legal right to do that.

At that time you and a couple of others suggested that I install a blog instead - and that is what I ended up doing. So far, so good. I've had a number of people post helpful comments in response to my request for feedback regarding the educational videos that I have in production right now. And the people seemd to be delighted that I asked for their opinions.

I'm going to use the blog to display the series of educational videos that I mentioned in my post above.

[Jill]

Glad it's working out for you.