Hi, since Google has removed it's suggestion to submit to directories in the webmaster guidelines, is it now useless to submit to directories? All in all I have submitted to over 2000 directories and have reciprocal links with 200 directories. Recently my page rank has gone down from a 3 to a 2 at the last PR update. All the directories are decent- no bad neighborhoods, although there are a lot of PR0 pages. Does this make a difference? What if I just deleted my directory reciprocal links pages, would that do me good or worse? So, Are directory submissions worthless now? Can you be penalized for reciprocating with directories? Or is it now that google just gives less importance to backlinks from directories? One of the interesting things is, since my overall page rank has gone down across my site, I have actually also had a significant increase of unique visits to my site as a whole. How do you explain that?
The reciprocal links might have hurt, otherwise i don't see that submission to dirs. can do the damage.
Simply removing the directory submission suggestions from Webmaster Guidelines provides no clear indication of what Google likes or dislikes. Yahoo is a direct competitor and DMOZ has some corrupt editors. Google is in the right to not promote these. Porn, Viagra pill sites, casinos, etc., are all in DMOZ. But is DMOZ a bad neighborhood? And I agree with matrixsoftwarez. Lose the reciprocal links except for those that actually send you traffic. Otherwise, they are of little value to SEO... Submitting to directories is still fine. All that has happened is that it has become more difficult to get PR. Over time this happens. Even DP lost PR.
Here is a fairly good article on the subject http://www.toprankblog.com/2008/10/seo-basics-directory-submissions/
well to be honest I don't agree with losing the recips large areas of the net are built on recips and they havent done any mass purge of recips to help them improve their sites rankings as to directories being worthwhile well I think they still are everyone needs to start checking the indexed pages, cache dates and content of directories and not relying on PR to be the guide to a good site there has been a general change in what is needed to achieve a higher PR from the last few updates as you can see by how many bigger sites have lost PR PR on directories has been targetted especially because of link selling its harder now to get higher PR on a directory because most directory owners submit to other directories which dont have the same PR so its a knock on
Its useless if you submit to them with the same title and description in all, its useless if your chasing and paying for pr and its useless if you expect direct traffic to come from the directory. The benefits i cant be bothered to list theres plenty and they are mentioned continually.
Directories seem less useful now then social media sites. I would not stop submitting to directories but as stated above their benefit has been drastically reduced.
Absolutely wrong, assume that google doesn't loves directories any more. But still they are economic and effective way of building your links, if google doesn't passes pr benefit then serp benefit stays for sure.
Drop the recips, never turn down a free one way link. Reciprocals never really help you much anymore.
the only thing useful it it helps to get you indexed very often.. and also if a website is a from particular directory which is of Good quality it might help you more..
If that's their only purpose then they can't be very useful. Submitting to digg and using a DP sig link will get you indexed quicker.
ahhhhh yet again another misinformed Im tired of talking about it and even showing proof that they still are useful Do what you want.... Dont cry when it takes you forever to get a link or traffic from somewhere goodbye malcolm