As I was browsing a few high quality directories I notice a 'large' site that was appearing in the 'latest links' page on a a few of them. The site was www.officedepot.com So the lesson is: Even of you are a $15billion, 50,000 employee, 41 country-wide global brand, you still need directories to improve your online business. Some of the directories I checked were: www.romow.com www.2yi.net www.apahcinc.org www.redpines.org All of the listing were links to inner pages using keyword rich anchor text.
no they don't need directories, they just hired a marketing company selling them on what they sell as the importance of additional marketing. Which is useless to an authority site like the one you are mentioning. But regardless, the 4 mentioned ones are very good examples of web directories and what a directory should be like. But those are the elite 3 percent of what you see here.
Anybody that runs a business 365/24/7 full time is running a serious busines Many Directories will have Reviews for Fortune 500 Companies et al It goes with the territory like Mike says its called Marketing
Exactly, and marketing means more than starting a thread on DP, which most members here don't understand.
Wether its an authority site or not, the fact is it isn't ranking well for the keywords it is choosing to use in anchor text. It isn't even in the top 100 for some of them. So I disagree with you, and repeat, it needs directories to improve its online business. And yes, its not the CEO of office depot himself clicking submit, they hire folks.
But they only selected 4 and I can tell you from experience that those are very good examples of directories, which 97% of the ones shown here will never come close to becoming.
We don't know how many they selected. Maybe you should put '97% of directories are shit' in your sig instead of posting it in my thread Just a joke,
It's reality. Just telling ppl that they should not get their hopes up. Buying a $.99 .info and uploading the free version of phpld won't get homedepot to buy your link for 50 bucks.
Sure, those 1zillion QBC directories tarnish the reputation of the directory market. I'm just drawing attention to the other spectrum of the market. I just found another listing in a smaller directory: http://www.allthelink.com/detail/link-4474.html I'm sure theres lots more.
All companies need anchor text links, authorities or not, authority sites with no anchor text links using the search terms they are targeting will not rank for their search terms. Directory listings are not useless to authority sites by a long shot. I see many UK authority sites that do not rank for any search terms and loose out on a lot of traffic because they have no directory listings or anchor text links, if you look at www.pru.co.uk it is an authority site and a large, reputable UK company, they have no directory listings or anchor text links, they don't rank for anything in the search engines and they have an Alexa ranking of 180,000, it is a similar situation for all of Prudential's websites, a few good quality directory listings would get their sites to rank for big phrases.
actually have you given the thought that some of these HUGE websites were added manually by the owners of the directories? We do that u know anyway, u do have a point and i fully agree that directories are still very much relevant. Recently got a submission from Bank Of America to my directory, which really encouraged me as it means that we are not deceiving ourselves and big players in their industries do see the value we provide
Can't agree with you more Dave. SEO is as important as SEs on the NET. Besides - Authority status does not guarantee high SERPs just for every toher thing on that site. Whatever the site is --it has to have targetted keywords optimized through anchor texts and what better than directories to provide them the right PLATFORM. This goes with my long -thought after theory that the main role of a directory is not to rank itselg --but to help your client's site RANK BETTER. Once you see your clients are ranking high --and your directory has some role to play in it --you get mental satisfaction
I am sort of against adding big companies to my directories , unless they apply, an I am particularly miffed when the submit for free , an this happens a few times
Unless you have a directory that's specifically for business, I think it's best not to add to many businesses when seeding a directory. They are perfectly capable of doing their own submissions, and tend to make up the bulk of them anyhow. I try to focus on adding nonprofits, charities, educational websites, and the websites of enthusiastic hobbyists. Of course, finding good non-commercial websites for all categories isn't always that easy.
I agree. That's the same method I use. If a commercial site wants a listing they have to submit. I've long lost count of the hours I've spent trying to sift through totally crap MFA sites to find good non-commerical sites.
There are usually non commercial ones that you can find for each business category, for instance I added www.realtor.org to my American Real Estate Category, I have added a few businesses as a last resort because I could not find anything relevant to the business category (this is a last resort though, after all you are loosing out on a potential submission).
Last week my site received a submission from Office Depot here... http://www.bramptonlistings.info/1008/Inkjet/ Lets hope its not the last.