Why Directories are dead to me....Hidden Secret Revelaed

No this is not a sales pitch but here is a money saving secret that I am willing to give out to DP members in hopes that somebody will be able to help me with my server issues with transporting a ms.sql database to a VPS from a shared host.

Any way here is why High Page Rank Directories are dead to me:

You often times get a link on a page that may be a 0 or n/a. but the directory has a PR of 4-9 so it gives you go link juice plus co-citation from the other related sites on that page.

Well you can go ahead and find a high page rank website/forum and create a profile/signature page and post all of the links on that page add unique text and add as many of your links as you would like all at the whopping cost of.....$0.00

Than you go ahead and build backlinks to that page for whichever anchor(s) your little heart desires and VOILA high rankings, FREE directory listings, and little to no money out of your pocket.

Thoughts, Comments, Rants?

*In some rare cases it may be useful to submit to a directory that is either cheap enough for the money or has a high enough page rank on the particular page you will be getting a link from.

 

Profile spamming will probably go the way of guestbooks. Thinks search engines aren't aware?

 

not sure about guestbooks but your adding everysite that is already listed in that directory page you we're about to purchase so I just saved you money on your car insurance by switching to.

 

The difference here is that directory listings are a legitimate means of building back links. This is why they work and why they will always work. Whereas profile spamming and every other form of spamming only propagates another pointless series of rules and obstacles that will inevitably have to be introduced to stop the practice. Why not just stick to what works? Why do we have to wee on every tree?

Akismet is a lovely tool that is a must have in every bloggers arsenal. Does anyone still advocate blog commenting as a means of link spamming? Surely not.

 

Building a forum profile and sig links in respected forums is certainly not a tool to ignore, but as has been pointed out there are some downsides and limitations....

• -1- The forums that have enough authority to matter (quickly indexed, well ranked) are not in great number, and those are the ones that police multi-profile guys. The ones that do slip past get caught eventually and after spending massive man hours gaining backlinks may see them vanish in a single sweep. That means in the long run you either go with a single profile (which limits the links in number) or risk wasting a LOT of time.
  
  
• -2- The forums that rank well ALSO limit siglinks. Two to four is pretty standard. If you only have 2 - 4 sites that's OK, but if you have clients to handle or a number of sites it won't work.
  
  
  
• -3- Google and the other big SEs has already had their attention drawn to the problems profile spam creates, and they're working on it, and forum software is constantly being improved. The perpetually busy forum backlink builders are probably going to find themselves in the position as buggy whip manufacturers when autos started being mass produced... they will need to diversify or the new technology will break them.

​

Not arguing against forum backlinks...
They are *currently* a great club to have in the bag, but don't place all your eggs in any one basket from a marketing perspective. Diversifying tactics means you can't get taken off at the knees by a single technique suddenly becoming useless due to a an algorithm change or somesuch.

Massive backlink building via forums is NOT a secret technique...
I can name two or three countries that have attempted to create more user IDs than they have citizens in their countries (counting babies). As a direct result, the backlinks they spent literally years building) are now getting wiped out at a rapidly increasing rate. That ship has sailed.

Conclusion:
Depending on this technique alone is like buying second hand lottery scratchoffs. The fact that someone used it before you has lessened the value.

 

This is not a "hidden secret" it is commonly known and used.

What happens when to many people spam profiles of a site is the site makes them nofollow(which a lot of sites have done and it is harder to find profiles with dofollow pages by the day). It is another one of those seo tactics that can be short lived and your links can and will disappear a lot faster then more legitimate methods.

Personally I only place profile links in high ranking quality sites and as part of placing a link I try to leave some content in return, if it is a good link then why not spend 15min contributing to the site. If you give back some then you are not just another spammer.

 

Sigh, yet another "SEO expert" making inaccurate sweeping generalizations in hopes people will click on his signature link and use his services.

 

be polite.. but OP must take care as well, as there is nothing important to discuss.

 

thats funny YMC look at my rankings what are yours? Also there is no seo service link in my signature to click on. However, I am transferring servers right now so don't click on the sports site till later tonight. Do you want terms it's front page for?

Any who the point of the post was to designate a strategy that works efficiently because if G looked at this as a negative and hurt your rankings based on this than wouldnt we all just spam every competitors website to hurt their rankings? hmmm....good point.

 

this is not such a big secret actually

 

In my opinion, Google stopped giving full value to signature links years ago.

 

wasn't meant to be a secret that sigs are valuable but rather the fact that its like creating your own diretory when u add all of the other pages that are on the page you wanted to submit to

 

IMHO signature links are more valuable for the traffic than the raw link juice. If you have a good site and participate in forums that interest you you'll get traffic from the sig link that sticks to your site. In addition, some of the people who visit your site will give you a natural link and guess what...your site rises in the SERPs.

 

That doesn't make any sense.. ??

Any decent lasting SEO work needs to be a assortment of links different link types, directories(good directories) are popular because they are a solid link that won't fade away you put a link in and it stays there and it stays a link. Profile pages can change and they do change. many turn into nofollow=worthless once they get sick of spam, so to replace directory links with profile links is a poor seo strategy.

Also by advertising profile spam you are just getting more people to do it which leads to more sites making profiles nofollow you are basically helping to destroy your already weak seo tactic.

 

Forum profile spamming does not work on my forums.

 

Hi David

Same at eSyndiCat. I ban them right away!

 

Correct, there is no way to create new listing page and receive instant PR on it.
Just like you can't expect to build a website and have any PR the next day it was published.

 

Great post Rob!

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/11/hard-facts-about-comment-spam.html

Just thought I should share the above link with the OP.

 

I believe that the big manual directories, like DMOZ, have problems of manpower. Nobody wants to do the job anymore.

 

Human edited is the ONLY way to do directories w/ value... but volunteers are not the only way to do human edited directories.