Google No Longer Suggests Directory Submission.....???

Google's PR Machine doesn't always feed the truth. They have their own agenda, so you have to keep that in mind.

 

yeah , really good question ! :/

 

Yahoo not being a paid directory is not entirely true, if you are a commercial business site.

 

Its a bit pre-mature to conclude that google doesnt value links. It is well known that even if a webmaster tries too much, its just too hard to get free links. Paid links are easy to get at a price. So a webmaster with no money or skill hardly gets any quality links. Perhaps its got to do with this.... Say, I have a published article at several directories with the same content, giving me multiple links back without no significant contribution to the community in terms of knowledge. The same article is recycled with different words to obtain hundreds of backlinks. For example, "The sun rises in the east", "there in the east the sun rises", "east is where the sun rises", "sun doesnt sets in the east, but it rises".... blah blah ;-) and I get 1000s of links for just telling that eternal truth that everyone knows.

 

Those two lines have up to the present been some of the keys to good SEO. But their removal from the guidelines suggests that Google may be devaluing those two items to some degree.

 

* “Have other relevant sites link to yours.”

So they are saying don't bother with backlinks any more? This is really the only way a site can rank for keywords or rank at all, apart from minor on-site techniques so backlinks will always be key, as G has no other real way of assessing how one site is better than another.

 

This topic should be a reminder to all of us to have a broad-based SEO strategy. It's the same principle as diversifying your investment portfolio, lest a big downturn in one over-emphasized area bring down your whole portfolio.

 

Yahoo is a direct competitor and DMOZ has some corrupt editors. So you tell me why Google decided to stop promoting Yahoo and DMOZ.

Who knows, maybe Google has plans to operate its own directory...

 

It's about building multiple types of backlinks. Just goes to show that you cannot limit your linking strategies to just a handfull

I wonder id this applies to new directory submissions or all existing links

And what about DMOZ?

 

It may be that onpage SEO will be of greater import than in the past. But Google removing those two link-related guidelines may be simply increasing their emphasis on naturally-gained links. For that reason I have added the addthis.com bookmarking button to each of my pages and am picking up lots of links from it. These links are true "natural" links, since they 100% represent the value judgment of the reader, rather than my manipulations.

 

Like zexy said:

So don't worry about past submissions...or present one's, it will not positively or negatively effect the SERPs. That being said, directory traffic itself is practically null. webmasters visit directories to submit, but don't browse directories looking for resources, so "real" traffic from a directory just doesn't exsist...so if there are no positive effects in the SERPs, it is a waste of time.

 

So how do we go about improving our position in SERP's if backlinks and directory submissions aren't suggested no more?

 

Forums via signature link.
Asking other webmasters to exchange links(better from tri-way exhange link)
Writing in digg.
Writing in blogs.

 

I don't see where Google is either recommending nor condemning directory links or link exchanges. The omission of the two lines seems to take a rather neutral stance.

* Submit your site to relevant directories such as the Open Directory Project and Yahoo!, as well as to other industry-specific
expert sites.

*Have other relevant sites link to yours.


The original lines it seemed to imply that Google was saying you should/must submit to Yahoo and DMOZ as well as to other industry-specific
expert sites. It's more like they are saying if you want to submit to these fine, we just aren't making it a recommendation or as some may have viewed it a requirement.

 

The new guideline says, "Make sure all the sites that should know about your pages are aware your site is online"
This means backlinks are still important. They have encrypted it in this way to dilute the emphasis on link building and link exchange. Google are just trying to combat the amount of spam in their index.

I still think they will also consider links from certain directories. Perhaps not dmoz, perhaps not yahoo. But there are other directories they may find valuable.

Also, as Jim4767 mentioned, Google may also be moving to focus more on web2.0. They may not be so interested in social networks or social bookmarking services which have a high propensity to spam and over-submission, but web2.0 as a whole is very very important for the future of the web in terms of the way visitors directly decide on the value of a site rather than webmasters.

Look at the fact that so many social bookmarking sites have the tagging facility. Well this is an opportunity for the public to determine what keywords and tags apply to a web site, not the webmaster. That's very interesting, don't you think?

 

I think on-page optimization will not become more important until Google can algorithmically calculate the quality of content, which would be very difficult except by checking the quality of inbound links, which is off-page anyway.

If they are changing anything, it will be ignoring unnatural links (directories) and putting emphasis on natural links (in content) in the algorithm.

 

Yes it is harmless but do you think it is justifiable at such high costs of submission time and monies?

If you already have directory links, I agree it is harmless to keep them but running a campaign now will be useless. By the way, there aren't many webmasters that optimize their sites specifically for either Yahoo or MSN. Right from the word go, the focus is has been on Google and traffic that comes from Y and M are just taken as bonuses, not more, not less. Believe it or not, this is the truth.

 

Google CANNOT penalize your site for directory submission, they simply will just not count them. If they did penalize a site for having directory submissions, then it would be easy to try and sabotage another website by simply submitting the site to thousands of directories. You have no control over who links to you, if directories are linking to your site you cannot be penalized for it. Currently Yahoo still counts directory links as relevant back links.

 

This is good of google to not use DMOZ or Yahoo in their algorithm, as those directories are biased and no better than any other directory on the internet....... they should not be discriminating against anyone's directory and using another directory like dmoz at the same time, it is totally unfair that way.

Dmoz can be a link farm of their own liking if people like it to look around, that is fine, but dmoz should never ever have any influence on any search engine algorithm.

 

Google keeps changing the rules on us.