in this day and age, are directory submission relevant and valueable

i remember 2 years ago they helped,. but nowadays it seems like it wudnt amke any differenece in SE rankings

 

Meh I would only bother to submit to the ones that I can see as quality or have potential. There is a lot of really crap directories being pushed out lately.

 

Link directories are only good for one thing, to get a site indexed quickly, but other than that, they don't hold much weight in SEO. Complete waste of time.

 

Wrong on both accounts. Most directories take some time in approving and listing the submissions hence they can't be used for 'getting site indexed quickly'. SEs are fast and smart enough to start indexing within 72 hours of submission anyway.

Directories are easiest and cheapest way to get backlinks and you get exactly what you pay for them.. very little benefit. But saying that submitting to directories is a waste of time would be wrong. The benefit might be small but it's not 'zero'

 

exactly DP will get ur site indexed 10 times faster

 

I use general directory submissions like a lottery ticket...one of them might actually become one of the big boys. Spend 15 minutes a day submitting to them but no more. The effort will pay off. Spend the rest of your link building time looking for good niche directories that actually get some traffic and of course all the other methods of link building.

 

I'm not wrong at all.

Submitting your sites to Link directories does in fact speed up indexing if one were to go to the more popular ones out there. But as far as SEO goes. Not very useful at all. I've submitted to over 300 popular link directories and the rankings for the keywords I used didn't increase that much. But getting 300 links from other websites improves rankings 10 fold. I don't get over 30,000 visitors a month to my websites by not knowing a thing or two about SEO. You obviously don't know me too well, head over to SEO Elite Forum or Keyword Elite forum where I give out tons of advice how to do SEO. You can't miss me, I'm the only one there with over 1200 posts on each of those forums.

 

I would say if you're just getting started out, it doesn't hurt to get 20-30 backlinks from directories to get you going. You have to determine your point of diminishing returns, if you end up spending 100 hours adding yourself to directories, you'll find that 100 hours could have been better spent on your content. I do directory submission, but I don't put an incredible amount of focus on it anymore.

 

directory submissions do still have some positive seo benefit, i test this theory all the time

my best advice for directory submissions is to budget $100 for it, and spread out the submission over the course of a year, submitting to 100-200 directories per month

the couple of times i tried to submit to more than that very quickly my sites rankings decreased and it took a while for them to come back... this has to do with the whole theory that the search engines keep track of how quickly you gain backlinks, too fast and you raise a red flag that you could be spam

i use directory maximizer's service where its $14 per 100 submissions, they keep track of everything for you so there are no duplicate submissions

 

Good point about diminishing returns, you don't hear people mention that concept too often.

 

I am not going to argue with you on this. I gave you a concrete logic to why directories can't be used for getting your site indexed faster.. Someone pointed that forums or social bookmarking might be better for that because forum pages and SB sites get indexed MUCH faster.

I would agree with you that 'value' of directory links is 'very' low as compared to other form of links but its not zero. At the same time getting 300 backlinks from other websites takes a lot of time / money wheres there are a lot of free directories out there.. You get what you pay for it If you have a competitive keyword, you can't help but use 'all' types of link building techniques.

I get more than 30,000 visitors per month on my sites but I don't claim to be an SEO expert. I see logic and experiment more than anything else. Even if the most reputed members on this forum (e.g. sweetfunny, dan or ssandecki) tell me something that I feel is incorrect based on my experience/experiments I wouldn't agree.

So while I respect your opinions I don't agree with all of them !!

 

There was a time when utilizing the vilesilencer list (even when the list was smaller) got you a PR4. Now it takes much more. Directories don't weigh that much. I am seeing alot of inner pages of directories without PR even being calulated. If you can get a link on a page in a directory with high PR and low outbounds then it is worth something. Inner page link backs require much more work these days.

 

Its a backlink. There is no such thing as a badbacklinks.

 

I think directory has still value. It is helpful in our site in getting one-way link. It is not relevant if you submit your site in a wrong category.

 

Link directories are only good for one thing, to get a site indexed quickly

 

I disagree with almost everyone here. Almost all of my links are directory links and I have site links (for an actual keyphrase, not my domain name) and rank 1 across the board for a lot of high searched terms.

 

They do work, not that effectively as most of the directories lost their PR and value.

 

Sensible point. +repped

Calculate your ROI. Analyze if its worth putting in the time you intend to.

See if there is something else that can be done with the same effort but would reap in more benefits.

Invest your time and energy in what you feel will be bring in more benefits than just trying out something because you heard/read somewhere.

/G

 

I agree completely. SEO strategies should be treated as you would any advertising campaign, test things, and test them again. Don't give up too fast on a test, but don't spend too much time on unfruitful things either. Only you can find that balance with time.

 

I think they help increase PR and searchability but they dont send any traffic really