For several months, especially since the Jäger (Jagger) update, people have been scrambling to define paid links, devalued links, etc. Well after much ado, SEO Guy Forum has put one test in play regarding our own smindsrt's Site-Sift Direcrtory. They took a brand new site with no links whatsoever pointing to the site, they bought a single submission into Site-Sift, and the site is now showing a PR4. This test was good news for smindsrt for sure, but no doubt several website owners who have links there, to include me, were also pleased with the results. Read the full thread regarding the test.
Every update people are going to screap that directory links have been devalued and that recips no longer work etc etc. Until eventually 1 update they will be right But good to know its still good on that front right now Brad
Yeah, I got a single PR 5 link two weeks before the update and my domain got a PR 4 after the update. Even trickled down to some of the internal links as PR 3 & PR 2. I think people tring to get pagerank doing all sorts of different SEO things just are crazy. SEO is just for what your links description looks like in a search result. If you want PR then just get links on other PR sites. Ones that do it buy <a href="yoursite.com" title="blah">yoursite</a> that way it passes the pagerank.
Yes, there are some good directories out there and they are passing PR. Kudo's to Stuart (smindsrt) for continuing to do what he does well instead of running around screaming the sky if falling. Another validation of what Site-Sift is doing and doing it very well, is the sheer number of clone sites out there using his scritp.
I never believed anyway that directories would not pass PR at all. Deprived a little yes (or not at all) but to stop transfering ? No.
Rel=Nofollow is just a link attribute. It has nothing to do with PLD in particular (just to let the other users know that PLD DOES transfer PR, and owners have the option in the admin to enable/disable nofollows, for certain situations).
Happy to pass along the results. However, this is NOT to say that ALL directories pass PR; this was an example done to specifically test Site-Sift. That's not to say that others don't pass PR, but at the same time, I don't want to give the impression that Directories pass PR - this is an example of one that does - Site-Sift Some of you may recall that I was looking for user feedback about directories a bit back for a research article and the aforementioned thread (in the first post) came to my attention after I published my article. My article was about the use of directories for researching the web and not on this particular directory subject of passing PR, but thought the information was worth passing along - for the good information and as a kudos to one of DigitalPoint's own.
I more or less figured that if my directories get say a pr4 or better, that would be the time to start only paid inclusions? Right now, all my directories, being fairly new, have only free inclusions. I went to sitesift and several other directories with high pr and found most of them only have a paid option.
Directories can be a great way to get one way links. The fact that directories pass page rank should not be surprising. A directory is just a website with content pages. Within these content pages are links to resources related to that content. If the directory has been planned properly and links are placed properly within the directory categories it will become a valuable resource and should function in a similiar way to any other website passing page rank. Descriptions can be thought of as content related to the subject (category)... the links are the relevant resources. High traffic keywords often will have at least one niche directory from that industry listed on the first page of results. As a site owner in that industry if I don't rank on page 1 for that high traffic keyword an entry in this directory might help me get trickle down targeted traffic I may have never received if I had tried to compete for these keyphrases directly. Paying for a directory listing IMO shows you are willing to spend money on your business. Should a business owner who is willing to spend money on his business be considered a link spammer or have his link de-valued in a directory because he paid for more visibility?