Are directories a WASTE OF TIME?!

How true is this?

From my understanding you can never be hurt by a backlink to your site because you have no control over it.

It is only outbound links that your rankings can be affected by.

Justification: If a backlink could hurt you, then you could hurt your competitors site by doing the same thing to their's.

 

I consider them a waste except for the biggest couple, like DMOZ and Yahoo.

 

many free directories lack of supervising. Quality free directory are even fewer than quality paid directories

 

Submit to new directory's and top directory's like dmoz I use daily this list http://www.vmoptions.com/directory-list.php 50% accept links from new directory use your keyword in the link then it helps for serp... But you wont get any traffic from it.

 

Its one of the easiest ways to get links that i know of, raises serps and you must be doing something wrong to get so few backlinks.

 

I have not encountered that at all. I submit continually to free directories in a popular topic, and the page I submit to is almost always just two clicks from the home page.

And as a reminder to all, PR is a Google thing. Yahoo and MSN don't rate PR. Each of those free directory links counts some, even if only a tiny bit. Add up a few thousand of them, and you are getting some weight from those backlinks. I received over 32,000 pageviews from Yahoo last month, and I know that lots of directories are included among my Yahoo backlinks. Don't focus overmuch on Google and its PR.

 

out of a 500 only 3 links ??
Did you go through your emails and clicked the confirmation links ?
How many confirmation emails did you receive ?

Usually the directories (at least 30% of them) send you a confirmation email
before they approve your links and after you confirm they will send you another email
if ACCEPTED or REJECTED

Directory submissions ALONE work well ONLY for smaller niches

They are cheap way to get backlinks and increase your serps
but would not advise them by themselves

Combine them with article submissions, social bookmarks, etc
and any other form of SEO you can think of

The guaranteed directory INCLUSIONS are not scams (usually)
and can be an easy way to get some more directory links

 

Free directory is not waste of time. It's a one way link. If a free directory have a high PR you will get PR credit to higher too. Such as DMOZ , if you get list in a high PR directory such as /health/beauty/ has PR 5. You will get not less than PR 2.

Cheer free directory submission.

 

Just work on developing your site using things like Adwords and what not to get traffic. Then over the course of learning how to make your site better, just slowly submit to more and more directories. If you just submit to 1 or 2 a day, then your link base will slowly build up and you wont have issues with this. But if you're just submitting links to directories hoping that your site will grow with this, then you've failed already =\.

 

People talk lots about getting a service that will submit you to something like 500 directories. the thing is google doesnt care about 450 of those directories, and only 4 or 5 really matter to them. (in my opinion) I have had better luck with article submission websites, and i do pay to get on the best of the web directory for some sites.

 

i think all free directories sites owner are only pr2+ sites submission listing are approve.
owner want only minimum pr2 and pr2+ sites listing.

 

Your best bang for your buck, free - paid, or otherwise is to submit to a small amount of the best directories, and or targeted / niche' based directories rather than 1000's of relatively unknown directories.

 

I disagree, thats simply not enough and its debateable what makes a directory one of the "best" ones.

You must simply continue to submit to as many directories as you can and keep this up.

Just because a directory has a page indexed it does not mean that it may stay indexed, keep its pagerank or stay ranking for a keyword or phrase and these so called "best" directories will usually have less traffic than a free one.

The traffic boasted by some dirs/sites is bloated by setting up whatever they do to keep refreshing the page and i still see some dirs redirecting domains (unrelated to the dir domain) and redirecting other websites through to the directory.

Your best bang for your buck would be to use adwords sensibly and with a plan submit to some paid dirs, lots of free dirs (keep on submitting to those) occasionally use some social bookmarking, some forum sigs...........

 

10 Great links goes a lot further than 1000 shitty ones, IME (in my experience) anyway..
YMMV.

 

we can't say they're waste of time .
but its better to spend your time on something else

 

Sounds like you are checking links at Google, which displays very few of them. Yahoo Site Explorer is much better. However, no backlink checker will list all of your backlinks.

Submitting to directories is not a waste of time. If you are submitting to high PR free directories, they can take many months to review free submissions. Some just delete them without telling you. Submit to the newest directories you can find, and you will discover your links getting indexed quickly.

 

Exactly snowbird, i always tell this, the PR0 link you are submitting today might turn into good PR by next update and ultimately it benefits.

PR is just a number game which changes every 3 months.

 

I believe some of them works but do not spent too much time on them.

Forums and blogs are more important than that.

 

you can say 50 50 ..
always chose stable and higher pr directories
try to submit on those directories if your doing it by your self choosing it frm dp or other forums.. then you will get 99% result that was my secret not to waste time on submitting site on free directories..