I know I’m going to be hated for this one since many of you will own directories/blogs/article based site. However, I’m a little confused Its seems Matts Cutts has said out right that people should report paid links mattcutts.com/blog/how-to-report-paid-links "paid articles/reviews/posts should be done in a way that doesn’t affect search engines" Yet at the same time "Directory listings are fine providing the purpose of the fee is for a selective review" Does this mean the directories should be adding paid links with no-follow, how much is a reasonable price for a review? Although google may NEVER penalize any site for submitting to directories, I feel the power of directories will become less significant over time, and am looking to the future of SEO. The reason I believe this is because the is no defined price of a review (it will change form person to person), directories aren’t really a fair way of making a site rank high on serp results (a large company can pay thousands of people to submit sites, and write articles) Although writhing articles, and submitting to directories still remain an important part of SEO... will these remain an important part of SEO... surely not forever. Significant links for relevant sites and Anchor text I feel will remain important for awhile, but directories link out to so many various non related topics Content will remain important... What about things like the number of revisits from the same ip address.... surely this is a nonbiased method of ranking (but still fake able). This may or may not be the case for the future of SEO, but one thing I feel is certain. Directories and articles will not remain the future of SEO for to long... better to spend time on link baiting with good content, then wasting time on artificial back links
Directories and articles for awhile now have been losing their SEO weight. They will never truely die off, but will server less and less purpose. I personally never use them, then again I never have articles I'd want to submit publicly. Good opinion none the less.
I have a site with 400 backlinks from free directories (most with no pr at all) only. It's a pr 3 and sits on top of the three major search engines with keywords in a relatively uncompetitive niche. The site is two months old. This leads me to believe that the weight directories carry is still solid. Will it be diminished in the future? My crystal ball is broke so I don't know. At least to some degree directory owners review links, including paid submission reviews. I'm sure this must help to build trust in the search engines. After all, they are human reviewed backlinks. This thread is a good example of link bait. "The end of directories" would surely invoke opinions on both sides of the aisle.