Directories are dead

Thanks for bringing us back on track britishguy, I feel like you are a good voice of reason.

 

Talk about intolerance. Another DIRECTORY OWNER. See what I mean. All the people here arguing are directory owners. How can your comments be accepted. If you are so sure they work go ahead provide the proofs to those who are thinking about submitting to directories.

I started this thread for the people and not for the directory owners. And all I have to say to the people is that do not submit to directories unless and until the directory owner provides you proof that doing so will help your website.

I will not call on people to provide proofs here because they will think I am asking for the proof. But I would recommend any webmaster who is thinking about submitting to directories to first make sure that doing so is worth the effort. And please IF YOU OWN A DIRECTORY DO NOT REPLY TO THIS THREAD. YOU ARE JUST BIASED.

 

The funny thing is that I am also a website owner, well more like 8 websites. Yes one being a directory, but that was one of the later additions to the portfolio. When I first started doing this about 4 years ago, I had to read a lot of information to find my way. After reading and finding out that directories are a good way to go, I started submitting to them. About 3 months later, I started getting high rankings for the keywords that I used as my anchor text in the directories that I submitted to. I know that it was the directories because that was all the link building that I did. I found out that it was a good idea from Google at their Webmaster Help Center, you can find the information here:
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769

It talks about submit your site to directories on there, right out of the horse's mouth. If you do not want to trust the biggest search engine on the planet, then do not. That is up to you!

 

You do realize you posted in the directories forum where 99% of participation is from directory owners, right? What exactly were you hoping to achieve with this thread?

P.S. You didn't acknowledge or respond to my respectful reply at the beginning of this thread.

 

I would appreciate it if you could answer the following

1. Which directory did you get traffic from?
2. How do you know that directories helped you rank better in SERPs? You say you submitted to social bookmark sites. Could have been that they helped your ranking. And not to mention other links you left on the Internet at places other than directories. Is it not possible that, that could have helped your SERP and not the directory listing?

 

1. Directory is not for traffic.
2. How do you know directories do not help SERP?

 

The reason I do not think directories help SERP is because most are not properly constructed and due do abuse search engines now do not give as much weight to the links comming from them as they once did.

I submitted one of my depression sites to directories such as jayde which have a pr of 4 and it did not do the site any good.

As for directories not being for traffic. That is debatable in the sense that not all people submitting to them believe they are doing it only for the links but have the feeling that they might get some traffic as Bernard's post shows.

 

Im curious why a Yahoo! Inc based website submitted to my directory today if they are dead? They must know something about SEO...

Check it here

 

Not only that but many seo's have blogged that DMOZ is losing link value. Now if DMOZ is losing link value I do have reason to believe so are others. As far as I know DMOZ has a page rank of 9.

Plus links in directories are not natural. Yes it is true that search engines say that you should submit to directories but they do not say that you should do so to have your serp increased.

Search engines want to provide users with the best possible results. When you submit to directories its is YOU and not a reader who is submitting. And YOUR vote does not count. Do you not think search engines know this? Do you not think that although they tell you to submit to directories, they know that the links from directories are submitted by the owner of the webstite?

They do know. And if you do not get links from other sites, these links will not help. Additionally, as a programmer I can tell you that when you judge the anchor text, description around the text, position of link in the page, and the website content you can get enough information to judge if the link is natural or not. And search engines have always stressed that they want natural links - links other people have put on their websites.

 

Are you the only directory they have submitted to? It could be a tactic to promote their service by submitting to directories because they know so many people own directories. Couldn't it. Free traffic (in the form of directory owners) And then when you mention there doing so here even more free traffic because they know you will do that. Just imagine how this news will spread like wildfire. Even if they submit to a few more directories, you will have directory owners talking about it not only on forums but on their websites and blog. Massive free traffic. After all a Yahoo Inc submitted to a directory.

 

your circular logic makes so much sense....I think you are a little confused and very much a newbie with a chip on his shoulder.

 

Yes v7 you could think so because you live in a third world country and are having a great time making money by ripping of clients with your aviva directory. Good luck

 

There is always an underlying factor in why we do things. We ALL know (minus a few) that submitting to directories will help us in the serps, it has been shown time and time again. If directories were not helping anyone, then why are there so many and free ones at that. They are not making any money because their submissions are free! Also, you can submit to Jayde all day long and it will not help. Most of their inner pages have no PR and they have like no traffic. If you think that submitting to one PR4 directory is going to help you that much, then you need to make sure that the category you submit to actually has some PR and you do the anchor text properly. I bet that if you go linking naturally with your website name and I use anchor text for a keyword that we are both using and submit my links to directories, I will wipe your a$$ in the serps. It is a fact of the matter and the truth. It might be hard to factor in when you do not understand things or they are over your head.

 

jg123 does not own aviva directory, and the crazy thing is that I just submitted one of my sites to Aviva last night and I already am receiving traffic from it, but that must be a lie because it is dead, right????

 

The below excerpt was found on your website. A website...mind you...that seems to preach the value of delivering QUALITY content.

So...that said...why do you support Article Directories but not web directories...I'm curious as to how you differentiate between the two...one being better than the other.

Not trying to drag on a thread that is useless, misplaced, misinformed, and somewhat insulting [yep...I'm a directory owner too], but I'm curious as to your thoughts relating to submitting the same article to hundreds of article directories and how that is different from submitting to web directories

 

1. None. I never claimed I got traffic directly from directories.

2. Free directory links were the only ones I solicited for this particular site. You misread my post. I did not submit to social bookmark sites. Someone found me (either in a directory or Google/Yahoo/MSN SERPs) and posted it to Digg and apparently people liked it a lot because they voted for it naturally. I didn't know about it until a week later lol.

Checking the stats from the Social network traffic and the stats from the normal SERPs traffic shows an unmistakeable difference between gawkers (social traffic) and folks who interact with the site (SE traffic). YMMV.

 

Yes you are absolutely right I am the one who knows nothing about online marketing and you are the guru. They do not make money because they are free!<- Ever heard of advertising. Jayde took my email and sends me advertisement layden emails. So they are not making money right? I am just so dumb?

What makes you think I only submitted to jayde? I said

Forgive me for my dumbness. But I think I used the word "directory" in it's plural form. Or maybe I need a lesson in English as well because I do not know anything and there are people here ready to wipe my rear end in serps?

Let me know and I'll pay you $10000 if you can get up website in the top 10 on google with your directory promises.

 

Yes I support article directories. I am talking about directory directories. Those with a little snippet at the end of links. And article directories are not directories in the real sense. They are websites with categories like "about" where you do not pay people to write but give them links back to their websites. If you follow the logic that they too are directories then any website with categorization would have to be termed as a directory.

You feel insulted? Why I haven't insulted anyone. All I did was express my opinion. Do I not have right to do so under "Freedom of Speech." If my research shows that they do not work am I a culprit to provide that information? Let me know and I will just talk about what everyone talks about and not try to present some new facts I have come across to the people for their betterment. A statistical argument is one which I came looking for and what I received were insults. I feel like I have entered upon, what people cal, scrupulous businessmen who cannot take something which goes against their wishes.

I feel no shame in being proven wrong. I WAN'T to be proven wrong so that I can go submit my website to thousands of directories.

 

Well, that was my mistake then. I misread it! Anyway, can you pay me half because my site is on page two for "online electronics store" in Google. It was number 7 two weeks ago, but I haven't marketed it in about 6 weeks. Here is the link so you can look
http://www.google.com/search?q=online+electronics+store&hl=en&start=10&sa=N

Its overdrive electronics by the way and it was all marketed with directories, both web and article. I think that page 2 is good enough for at least $75000, right!

 

Here is another, first page, number 9 with the likes of Sony and Circuit city
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=consumer+electronics+online&btnG=Search