I have a question about Directory submissions. Is this still usefull and if so does anyone have an up to date list of top 10 of Directorys?
Only directories that are reputable that are in your niche are worthwhile anymore. The old time free automatic approval directories now do more harm than good.
I think if you are considering directory submission, you should only consider the prominent business directories that have a good domain authority and page rank.
In my personal opinion, I believe that directories are dying now although there is still very few of important directories to consider such as Yahoo! Directory and DMOZ but the rest are either dying or shutting down because Google has started penalizing many of directories except Yahoo! Directory and DMOZ due to their popularity I am sure. Although some of the directories can get you backlink but hardly that Google would be happy with them, since penalizing several directories so only ones you can think about is Yahoo Directory and DMOZ or none although it's not THAT important to have a backlink from Yahoo! Directory or DMOZ although they can help your ranking drastically in SEO.
In my opinion, Directory submission is useful only before 2012 (the year of panda & penguin). And you know, it's 2014 now.
yeah you have to concentrate on the directories relative to your niche/subject. actually most link building should focus on websites that are within your niche. random directory submissions all over the place don't really do much good.
Still you can submit in couple of good manual approved directories. If directories are not good then why google still indexes all their pages. Directory can give some minimum exposure to your websites. Now, local business directories are catching up. You can see some results popping up in google search results when you search for a particular restaurants.
Directory submission is out of seo trend these days nobody prefer doing it. But if you find any directory which is result oriented or update continuously and relevant to your niche the probably it can be fruitful.
They are useful. Indeed, they still help but in order to stay on the safe side you should be very picky in choosing the right ones based on the niche, indexation, PR, etc.
I disagree, they have been useless for a lot longer than that IMO. I still see SEO "experts" going on about the value of paying money to join directories like DMOZ. The people at Google are very smart and what a lot of people in this industry seem to forget is that the goal of Google's engineers is to match the search results as closely as possible to what people want to read. Now ask yourself: as a search engine user, what is the value of a site belonging to some obscure directory you've probably never even heard of? Directories are from an era before search engines when people would visit them to find cool sites to visit. Now that function has been replaced by search engines.
A simple question to all of you, when you search in Google, do you find any result from directory? If yes, then it may be 0.2%, I think.... So, it is not useful... Also, check Web-directories.ws and DirectoryCritic, they don't have advertisers, and most of the listed directories are not maintained (admins of these directories have realized, and they are not giving time to moderate directories)..... However, there are still some directories which are still useful, but the percentage is just 1% compared to post penguin directories... For link building purposes, only one thing you have to keep in mind, that the sites you are linking to should be better (or higher quality) than your site.... you won't get penalized......... you can still get penalized if you started building too many links in one day....... so may sure that only 2 or 3 links in a week is very useful... Build 2 links, this week, and see ranking improved or not in next week...., if there is increment, you can build more links next week, or to show natural, create content in your site using internal linking...... linkbuilding = superior sites than yours + slowness + natural + relevant + don't let Google know that you are doing link building
I remember the old days, when it was possible to submit your site to thousands of directories and see a nearly instant boost in rankings. Those days, imo, are gone now, and it's best to focus on other methods when it comes to link building, unless the directories in question are highly relevant and targeted to your niche.
Directories are still effective and useful if you submit to strong directories that are well edited and have been online for a while.
free backlinks will always count no matter weather less or more but it will always count on the eyes of major Search engines