Are directories worthless nowadays?

Are directories worthless nowadays for the purposes of SEO? It seems that most of them are low-quality and Google appears to frown upon them with their new algorithm. Reasonably, they serve zero to no value on the internet. Why do people even start new directories (some webmasters even start like 100 new directories)?

 

No, directory submission may not has the power as before but is a base step in each link building campaign.

 

Free directories has slightly lost there popularity. actually for the Google Panda update this happened. but paid directories are still OK.

 

I think DimityrDimitrov is exactly right...
Now a day’s directory submission is not as powerful as two years ago. But mind it Directory submission is important for your blog or website backlink building strategy.

Shajjad

 

Not worthless, no. Submit to the more reputable ones and even the not so reputable ones too. You can buy cheap services for this.

 

Not really, Its just that directory submission has outgrown of other SEO techniques. Better submit to high PR directory sites like Dmoz. And easy approved ones may be a bit help too.

 

Yes, they are worthless. I tend to avoid directories as there is so much better ways to build backlinks. Directories are outdated.

 

directory submission are very good to get backlinks

 

Yes it is pretty much worthless, if the directories started using joomla with sobi they would get spammed less but as it stands, most people including myself can automatically submit to them and they have no unique content along with most have low pr. I have owned a few and my only ones that are still running are my high quality paid ones, the free ones we a lot of work.

 

No, directory submission are not worthless..... directory submission is the base and the first step in linkbuilding. They help a lot.

 

it will be worth only if you submit articles that are original. if not then you're wasting your time.

 

google also recommend good directory links

read at the bottom of the first post by google of this below page

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/06/quality-links-to-your-site.html

Directory entries are often mentioned as another way to promote young sites in the Google index. There are great, topical directories that add value to the Internet. But there are not many of them in proportion to those of lower quality. If you decide to submit your site to a directory, make sure it's on topic, moderated, and well structured. Mass submissions, which are sometimes offered as a quick work-around SEO method, are mostly useless and not likely to serve your purposes.

also read here where google engineer Matt Cutts recommend good directory links
http://www.clickz.com/clickz/column/1710316/link-building-seo

it doesn't matter if link is from a directory or any other site or blog but link should be natural and relevant(even if you have paid for it).

What google hates and how they detect paid links?



suppose a page has some useful information related to real estate and that page has page rank 5 ok? Now someone decide that he should buy some high pr5 link and his site is say related to jewellery. So he decided to buy link for his jewellery site from pr5 real estate site and both buyer and seller agreed and transaction was completed. Now suppose that pr5 real estate site is coming higher in google for say "real estate" keyword. So lots of visitors are coming to that real estate site from google queries as site is higher for "real estate" keyword. The queries were made related to real estate so the users were looking for information related to real estate. Now if they find jewellery links on real estate site will that be useful to the site visitors? Thats what google hates. They dont want to see irrelevant results as this irritates visitors from google and damage the reputation of google as a great search engine. So if a jewellery site is getting link from real estate google will consider it as paid link and if someone report such a site through google webmaster tools to google spam team they will throw your site out of google index.

If a jewellery site is getting links from jewellery related page it will not be considered as paid link even if u have paid for it.

 

Yes, its still worthy. Only if you choose some good ranked directories like dmoz. And there is no use for spamming, so submit in max 100 sites.

 

Dear nowadays directories have stopped working for SEO. It does not have as much effect as it had before

 

Guess directories are relevant even today. If you checked the inner cache pages of some of those, they have prety good crawling rate too.

 

It's not about submitting to 5000 dirs... it's about submitting in 50-100 but quality dirs. Quality is more important than quantity in directory submission.

 

Quality matters only no quantity just submit your site in to quality Directories.This strategy can help you only.

 

Ayesha , you are right that quality is matter not quantity..

 

Not really, I still gain some good backlinks from them although just from selected quality ones. They still give me some advantage but not that significant as with link exchange and forums.

 

If you submitted it into the right category it always worth.