I am not talking about directory submission but the inclusion of a directory as a resource on your personal site. I am referencing the following from boonex.com The reason I ask is that I was gong to add a chemistry directory of sites I select to my chemistry website but I don't want to do it if it will make things worse.
i would not pay attention to that at all. i have asite that has a large directory on it and i have not beenn punished at all. infact with this last pr update i got a pr2 on my site and a pr1 from pr 0 on my directory from the reciprocal links.
I integrate the directory to website pages in order to get more incoming links ( in reciprocal scheme). And I think it's good! Check my web tech directory that integrated to my WP blog
I do understand your worry. If you've got strong website and create directory with very narrow niche, allow only websites with good reputation only, well classified, with unique description ect. etc. etc. then you will have a good chance to have your directory be lowed by G. Furthermore, if you do not place direct links, but use only redirection or rel=nofollow you will be out of all troubles. I've got few web directories with about few thousand pages in G-index and with reasonable traffic.
I agree with most of this. Using nofollow will obviously help - well, it won't help, but it won't hurt you. If you don't use nofollow, I would monitor the links and make sure that they're going to relevant sites. If you don't monitor them, and allow anyone to put a link on your site, you're risking the chance of linking to bad neighborhood and irrelevant sites, and that can certainly hurt your site.
Well.... You are responsible for who you reciprocate with. One way inbound links from low quality domains may not provide juice but don't impose penalties. Reciprocating with low quality or bad neighborhoods can and do. I would keep the reciprocal link percentage of your total links low (20-30%) max under most circumstances. (If the top 10 in my niche are succeeding with a higher percentage, I might too) Topical reciprocal links from quality domains will never hurt you.
Directories links are quality links, as the website submited in the proper category, so that's great... one thing you need to have lot much patience with your project, when you are doing dir submissions for your project. sometimes, it may take up to more than 6 months to show dir links in Google.
I can tell you that a niche directory coded by hand works great. PR flows nicely if it is done well, and also brings in traffic too. Just avoid accepting reciprocal links. Google has noted directory submissions that require reciprocal links is a bad practice.
Neither the directories are bad nor submission of the website in the directory is bad. It is the easy medium to increase back links. I am not using any script of software for automatic submission. I do it manually. I also suggest others to spend some time and suggest website in the directories manually and use 3-4 titles when submitting the website in many directories else google will penalize a website due to google bombing.
Just don't make your the linkfarm from you directory and work on the content of the site and you won't have problems. Reciprocal exchange is good with relevant and trusted sites.
HI I own a few directories and a lot of other websites... and have submitted most of them to hundreds of directories and have never seen a NEG effect from going so... only seen good results. Thx Tom
[to the people here that have said something along the lines of "submitting to directories won't hurt you"] hey dummies... He's talking about creating HIS OWN directory, not submitting his site to them. In other words - he's building outgoing links to other sites, not backlinks. Backlinks from directories will never hurt you, but outgoing links from your site can certainly negatively effect your SERPs.