Are They?? On another, very popular web design forum I had a question about putting some ads on my website. Well, the thread turned into a discussion between me and another poster (who, by way had some rather impressive credentials listed at the forum) about PR of sites and links that are listed on them. It started when I was advised to place the rel=nofollow tag in my links pointing to the advertisers site. The reason, I was told, was so I wouldn't be penalized by Google. I would also not pass on any PR to the advertiser. The rest of the discussion was about how it's a waste of time to submit to directories and to do link exchanges, regardless of the PR of the site because PR is never passed on the the linked site anyway. Now I'm very new to this SEO stuff, and would hardly consider myself an expert. But after this statement I began to wonder about everything I've read on SEO. All I've ever seen is, "Submit to high PR sites and directories." I guess if it was some little forum I wouldn't have given it a second thought. But the guy was listed as an authority in SEO. So, to sum it all up: What the heck is this rel=nofollow tag and If I have my site listed at a high PR directory or exchange links with a high PR site does it help me or make no difference? And if I give another site a link, forget the rel=nofollow tag, will Google in fact penalize me?
Google still follows nofollow tags, they just don't distribute any PR for them. Even if you don't get PR, you can get traffic from that link. Other search engines do not utilize nofollow in the same manner, so nofollow links on related sites will still help you in their rankings. So yes, nofollow links do have benefit. If you are doing a link exchange and someone does nofollow, do nofollow back. Otherwise don't tag it nofollow. Submitting to directories gives you 1 way backlinks to your site which is good. Not sure why they said "it's a waste of time to submit to directories"
if you are making link exchnage with good and honest sites, it's a good way to build backlinks and i dont agree with the opinions with directories
Yeah, I agree with you a quality links and relevance site will help your site and directory is still useful.
Building recipricol links is NOT dead, just ask people who rank number one for competitive search terms. Most will tell you that recipricol linking has been a strategy they've employed to get to the top, the same goes for getting links in directories.
There's so many ideas floating around about SEO that even the so called "experts" can't agree on everything. On another note some people sit around these forums and call themselves experts just because they've racked up an impressive post count. Not to say that everyone here with a high post count doesn't know anything about SEO, but I wouldn't consider anyone an expert unless I know they've got multiple sites listed high for competitive keywords.
i dont know about the link exchanges, i heard google knows about the link exchange and its not very useful now, but i think its very useless to add ur link in very new so called directory. now a days everyone is building his own directory, i dont think its any useful..
The guy does not sound like an expert to me! Link exchanges and free directories still pass pr. There value to SERPs is open to question.
I agree that link exchange are not that hot today, but I personally think that instead a webmaster should go for articles exchange. I use 2 sites which are one for links another for artilces www.interlinkexchange.com www.articles-exchange.com
directory submission and link exchanges are working alot to increase the page rank and increasing the backlinks for site.
I stopped submitting to directories and exchanging links years ago. There are better things you can do with your time even if the did work.