It's official Google has opened up a can of whoop ass on directories

Actually that's pretty much your decision, but good directories will send you some decent traffic.

 

It really depends on the category. BOTW for example has categories which will get you 40 uniques daily in targetted traffic, and there are other categories which get you 1 click a week. I would check if a directories has any type of rankings for the category that you want to be listed in.

There are quite a few real estate directories as well which can get you targetted traffic.
People may not use them that much to search for realtors, but some of them have authority status. So when you submit using a long description with good keywords, the category you're in will often rank for something related to what you offer.

Always use long, unique descriptions. You site may not have authority status and won't rank by itself (for a while), but there are many place (blog networks and real directories) which you can use by ranking those for your keywords and getting part of the action by having your link placed on them.

If you think a directory has what it takes to do that, I also recommend buying a featured listing.

Don't waste time on directories if they've proven not to get you traffic. The best way to find out whether or not a directory is liked by Google, check what they can rank for. There are very few general directories which can do that.
DMOZ of course can, Yahoo! and Business.com as well.

Amongst the less prominent directories my choice and recommendation would be Romow and BOTW.

BOTW may first get you into a smaller subcategory. But if that category is targetted and you provide a good description, you should benefit from it regardless.


Mike

 

Sad story for me ,cause I have new directories awaiting for published soon.

 

Not all directories are a waste of time, there are quite a few that have been well established for over and more, they can provide real traffic for you, its only the more recent dupes that are worthless.

 

I can't believe that they have hit addurl-free.com I mean that site is old skool, it's like the one place anyone can go and get a link from, it was the 1st directory I found when I really started doing SEO last August.

 

I'm not really surprised at all, Dave. It seems to me that they have just hit a few first to send out a message. They probably believe that the message was not strong enough and will most likely continue to hit more directories.

There isn't much you can do. addurl-free.com may list sites for free, but Google may also look at the list of links on the homepage and honestly:
Using a name like "add url free" is not something that appears to me like a site targetting the enduser (serving a purpose). It's something appealing to webmasters to get their links in.
Why?
Because of the search engine benefit.


Mike

 

Also with addurl-free.com, it lists 59107 links in only 114 categories.

No doubt that was part of the problem. Seems to be borderline link farm.

 

Didn't even notice that.

 

addurl-free.com is owned by Jim Westergren

 

Google should first stop inserting their google local listings on top of natural listings before hitting others with their so called user friendly rules and stuffs on spam,

 

Its far from old school, quite new in fact, if it was the first you found then you weren´t looking very hard.

 

That name, all by itself, says to the end user, come here and get a free link--for the search engine benefit, which is exactly what Google is fighting against.

 

Here Here!!