We've been up and running for 3 years, and have periodically submitted to various directories. To this date, I can't ever recall seeing a backlink or a unique visit from ONE of them. One of our sites has been up and running since 1998, none for it either... Interesting? Weird? Dumb car guy doesn't know what he's doing? Discuss....
Many directories do not link directly, but as www.directory.com/link.php?id=12312 so its not really a backlink. Also I mean when is the last time you found a site via a directory. Only yahoo and googles directories have ever brought me traffic.
Is this 0 backlinks at all or just 0 backlinks from google (from directory submissions)? Or, your site has 0 backlinks from anything? One of my clients sites is 7 years old next week and they only have about 13 inbound links in Google, yet still rank top 20 for a very competitive keyword (32,000,000 results for the keyword).
Are you tracking correct the stats on your site. I am using for checking a new directory and then add in the the database a website of mine. The website has traffic only from directories and Google searches. Ok is not a lot of traffic but still quite a lot of backlinks.
It doesnt look natural..you know what I mean..google knows about directories and if you getting backlinks just from them, but nobody doesnt link to you its a signal "UNNATURAL"...directories are good, but it shouldnt be the only backlinks..Anyways I dont know about your websites PR, but it still possible that you would pick up some of the PR..
i'm not sure how well link directories get indexed etc - maybe check out the directory before submitting. Then again - there is an alogirthm that google uses to determine if soemthing is a backlink or not. For example our article site - www.articlesnatch.com - has thousands of articles in circulation - but most of them aren't counted as back links in google.. not sure why... but type in link:articlesnatch.com and then just search for articlesnatch.com and you will find a lot more pages that have that phrase on it. Matt
directories are shit, face it, sometimes even when PAYING, i still dont get the actual 'backlink' that im trying to get from the PR page. With that being said, go out and email some webmasters, the old fashion way, thats the best way to get high quality backlinks IMHO. That or USEFUL, UNIQUE CONTENT!!!
How are you checking your backlinks ? are you using google, yahoo or msn ? Are the directories you've submitted to been web directories ? Online yellowpages can be a different type of operation you see
I have gotten backlinks from directories in Google. But they need to be from the well established directories with lots of links into them. Also, as a general rule, the directories that require a fee and really have editors approving each submission will get you a good backlink.
i also took a submission from a member here in DP for my ProxyZ to submit it to 500 PR4+ directories but it does not have a PR but Myspace Tool which I myself promoted has a PR4 very funny