I don't understand why John suggest UMDUM directory It looks good--professional but the juice is too low
true, but if you had we would know whether the 700 free directory submissions caused any type of penalty or sandbox effect, hence the outcome.
First of all I like to tell Google penalizing a site for more backlinks in a short period of time is stupid E.g: Suppose if I have a site called www.domain.com which contains good high quality content and Let us assume that its content is useful to people and the quality of content is better than the site which is at top position for a particualr keyword! Suppose If I have no money to pay for those 6 directories (John submitted ) and I submitted to 700 good quality free directories and got approved in all of them, indicating that the site is a good quality one Result :More back links in a short period of time Penalized by Google ->Resulting in loss of visitors to a good quality site containing particular informtaion So Visitors who search in Google will not find the good quality information about a particular keyword they searched for! End Result:User losses faith in Search Engine Google is strictly like a robot which takes only backlinks into account!!!! and not any other thing like quality! when deciding upon a site! ///about PR: I have two sites www.domain.com(good quality) and www.domain1.com (bad quality ) Suppose if I have a site www.domain.com and I signup for a link on PR7'shome page( suppose if I have one) Then I redirect it to www.domain1.com after some time Result a bad quality site would have got PR4-5!
Freewebspace that probably happens once for every 1000 sites that obtain backlinks quickly from spamming, directories or paid links though. Maybe it just triggers a human review?
I doubt there is a penalty for getting TOOO MANY links toooo quick. However if those links are all from spammy sites then that may be the problem. If I launch something and it goes on TV b/c I'm that kinda guy (unfortunately I'm not). I doubt google will peanlize if all of a sudden youg et thousands of QUALITY links. It's the 1000's of spammy links at once that I think offers a peanlty if there is one.
I have no proof but ... From my understanding the penalty is one that is enforced over time. Like if you build 10k links in a week and then only 200 naturally follow over the next few months it will trigger a flag. I think no one can tell you for sure as the algo's of Google are on lock down but this seems pretty logical. Nothing screams SEO more than getting a huge chunk of links in a hurry and then nothing else for a long time. This does sound pretty spammy, doesn't it? Now if you get 10k links every month for a year, Google's algo will probably not trigger a flag because it looks very natural. Good quality sites naturally build links this way, 10k/month is high but not unheard of.
I think Robert might be the only one looking at this with their eyes open. Submitting to Free directories is a long term proposition. So 1 year from now if 7 of those 700 (1%) turn into big directories with big PR then site B will end up the winner... And site A will end up with an annual bill ... Recurring payments are a waste of our time & money! Another BIG factor that was not mentioned is the number of links that are included on the pages. If you are the only link on a PR5 page then you get ((PR5 * .85)/1) passed on to your site. If you share that page with 10 other outbound links you get ((PR5 * .85)/10) passed to your site. Furthermore, site B is growing on a daily basis as the real PR is not updated every 3 months like the toolbar one you guys cream in your pants over. So depending on the particular directories that were submitted to, site B could already be gaining on site A. In the end this may be a fun thing for you guys to play around with but a scientific experiment it is not. Kudos to John however for setting something like this up ... I think many of you just piss straight up in the air and hope you don't get wet.
The only way to really test this out is to try to repeat the experiment. Clearly it's not scientific, but if more people try to repeat the 5 paid vs 700 free thing, a pattern will start to emerge. The other thing is, was there any tracking on the acceptance of the 700 submissions? Health tends to be one of the most spammy categories, so it could be that the majority of those submissions were declined. Free directory submissions are only really worthwhile for certain types of website.
I really don't think you have to look into this too deeply. Submit your site to 700 free directories, and you will more then likely end up on a page 10 pages deep with many outgoing links (if your accepted at all) Submit to a quality paid directory, your link will land on a fairly high pagerank page, will fewer outging links.
Editorial integrity. Web directories that do not rewrite submissions = spammy. Web directories that accept any and all submissions = spammy.
Nowday many of us doubt about value of free directories. But I still see great value of them, nor we say that because we provide submission service to free directories. Here is a proof: my site http://www.vnviews.com. Ugly site with non-unique contents. I submit it to free directories only, do few link exchange with other travel sites in their request. I target three phrase: Vietnam Travel Information, Vietnam Travel Guide and Vietnam Travel and use them as anchor text when submitting to directories. And now take a look at Google SERPs: Vietnam Travel, Vietnam Travel Guide, Vietnam Travel Information. You can say that they are not compatitive keywords, but what do you say if my site will be second after Lonelyplanet some time later? Second site free directory www.vinabet.net has PR3 recently, but I see some green in medium PR bar in Google Webmasters Tool. So I can expect higher PR next update. My conclusion: Free directories are good for PR as well as for position in SERPS. Just my two cents.