Hello Guys, It seems that most directories lost PR in the last G update. Now most of them have PR only for the home page. Is it worth it to even submit to a category page of a directory that has 0 PR ? and most of the good directories are not even free anymore. Is it better to spend the money in other places ? What are your opinions on this issue?
It is not specifically the PR that I care about. It is that we need a scale to measure with. How do I know what directory is worth the money and which one is not ! So should one go with the # of BLs a directory has and the age of the directory ? There has to be some way to compare one directory to another. One can easily submit to both, but thats not possible once you get into the hundreds....
A link HAS to be from a relevant site and from the current directory trend i don't think dirs these days are the least bit relevant (general web directories). Unless the directory itself is relevant to its niche (there has to be a specific niche) there is no point at all in buying links in it, it will only hurt your serps. If thats not enough, dirs usually sell you the following: -PR (lost on the last pr update for most) -Traffic (going down because of penalties) -Authority (they don't have any authority anymore for their own selves, how will they benefit you?) thats pretty much it
I agree with you Gnet. But I was thinking, along with building relevant quality links, it can't hurt to just be in the free directories just for the company name being out there, plus they all together might add up to something. And I think it would be wrong for search engines to penalize any site for being in directoris, bacause I can easly spend a little bit of money and have my competetion submitted into thousands of directories. corect !!
when you start a website, it is a good idea to have someone put you in a couple hundred directories to create a growing list of backlinks for you and get google interested in visiting you. After that stay close to your niche. Thats why i did my own directory cause i want a health directory, and i manually rotate articles on the site to add fresh health related relevent content on the site for google.
I could not disagree more. I took a two month old Website and made it a pr 3. More importantly, it has 15 page one listings scattered in the top three search engines. The only backlinks are from free general directories, and yes it is making me money. Now if someone wants to buy sitewides in a directory, I would think otherwise. But paying for a review is just fine. Relevancy is in the category your listings are. Your site is generally listed with like sites, and there is no harm in that.
WebSorter.com went from a PR4 to a PR3. A link is a link and even if the page has no PR, I believe that would help in the eyes of search engines.
In my opinion I think it would be best if you will focus on looking for a quality free sites. Perhaps there are good directories which are not free, but still there are remaining. My blog's PR ranked and that was good on my part. Though PR is not of much importance the site's content and quality are the main focus.
Hi directories do help, i created my directory a month and a half ago and submitted it to some free directories, now i am in the fourth page for key phrase "free business directory" in google.co.uk.
Directories can definately help with your SERPs. Especially the paid directories. Google just doesn't like free directories that will take every submission sent to it. And they know what directories those are. Best links of all are contextual links from good blogs or to get mentioned on an authority site (not easy tho).
Do some of you people test the theories you are stating as fact? Have you actualy measured the effect of a couple links from directories to see what the effects are? Have you tried this for difficult to rank and easy to rank terms? Have you tested the effect of listing with 200-500 free directories right out of the gate? Beware of the answers you see here. Test for yourself.
I have tested my methods, i do before i state them as facts. 80% of the directories online right now are nothing but spam and bad places to get links at, only a handful of sites are where you might get a good backlink. The results with 200-500 directories are-not be good on a site as the links aren't relevant and they will endup de-ranking the site, most links that come from "general" directories with niche categories are completely and utterly worthless.
From a search engine’s point of view, the best links are unrequested ones. The search engines tend to assign a higher ranking to the pages that people voluntary linked to because they found the content great and informative and not because the webmaster worked hard to swap links.
Now the question would be, how does Google determine this? A link is a link, you cannot see if it is a paid link or a natural one. Meti
I have a cycling website that I've had for several years. It has the word cycling in the domain and everywhere else. I submitted one phrase in several dozen titles in some directories. I tried to make sure I only submitted if there was a cycling category. The phrase is not well searched but I wanted to see if using directories only would work. The phrase is not on the website. I now rank number one across the board for that phrase. Again the phrase is not hard to rank for but it was more of an experiment. If you are wondering what the TWO words are.... Word one is cycling And the second word is v i e w p o i n t s. I split it up to avoid the dreaded DP ranking. Anyways directories can help. But you won't be ranking number one for car insurance just with directory links!
For the starters its good not to worry about the PR and all. They should go on and submit the links to all the places possible! And link builing is an ongoing activity. You will start benifitting from submitted links after 2-3months. So there is nothing specific as such. For those who are having some traffic and want to increase it, they should look for partnership with other similar websites and blogs ratehr than paid directory listing...thats what i think.
I submitted one of my sites to 500 directories... And I didn't notice anything even after months. I have had more success with article submission. I get a few traffic from those.