You very much advocate getting PR at all costs, but take a look at this http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/061218-142634 more specifically this part, This tends to be in total opposition to your advice? Are you saying directory owners should ignore Matt Cutt's and follow your advice? You also say 'avoid directories that require registration?' why? directories that requrire registration are often more diligent in maintaining high quality content. Sure, this 'extra time' will be a pain in the butt for people who make a living out of submitting to directories but well worth it for people who want to submit to quality content directories? Respect to you for posting your ideas, and I don't want to undermine your views, as you say in your post, these are 'your' views, and people might disagree with them. I read the entire thread before replying and could see quite a few self confessed newbies who thought your advice was the correct way to go, but in reality you may be inadvertanlty ill advising them? Maybe I'm wrong, perhaps the link above is way off the mark? If you genuinely have the interests of the newbie readers of this thread in mind, which I'm sure you do, then you won't take offence at the counter argument I've put to your post. It's not to court controversy its merely to work with the thread to give a more 'global' perspective. By that I mean the pro's and con's of seeking high PR as your thread predominantly focuss's on. The frustrating thing is that your advice is faultess under general rule, the problem is the fact that Google's attitude to backlinks, whether reciprocal or paid, is quite different? Which direction should we follow for even though we may disagree with Google, the fact is they are the most important factor here. The question ultimately posed is, would your advice and methods fall foul of Google's stance?
There are just so many examples of people buying links and achieving high pagerank that even though people like Matt Cutts recommend against it, it still works. Often to not buy links is sort of like saying don't advertise anywhere except google. Nothing wrong with advertising on google, but for google to create a situation where you can't buy links is more self serving to google, not the website owner. Obviously, engaging in widespread link farms is not good, and often this is all the more reason to buy links from quality sources.
Anyone that has owned, operated, or submitted to directories will agree with the overall message of the original poster. While you may disagree with some of the assumptions, the total message is clear... don't create a directory and put little to no effort or though into it and think that you can make money! There are just far too many directories out there that are thrown together in 10 minutes that just think build it and they will come. Take the time to build up your directory and there are people willing to pay!
So are you recommending that people ignore Matt Cutt's words? What's your advice on this David, I for one would be interested to know, do you suggest that everyone stands up to Google as they are 'to use your words' self serving. What are quality sources, do you know of some you can share. Ignore the fact I have an alternative script, this is not about me, it is about providing qualified information for the public.
It is in Googles best interests to tell you not to buy links, and Yahoo1 have had far better link spam detection filters than google for a long time. It always made me laugh that Yahoo can identify link spammers and fancy link networks, but Google just didn't have a clue, yet their algo is built on the back of links Literally (back rub) Matt is not the free agent he once was, and for a while now has toed the party line giving out advice, and stating things as fact that flew in the face of what many seasoned web people were experiencing. I would of course say to read and listen to what MC has to say, but do not take it as 100% gospel!
Yes, this is a good explanation Old Welsh Guy. Thanks for clarifying. I think Matt Cutts is a pretty cool dude, and I enjoy reading his blog. There will ALWAY be a gray area of what we know to be search engine optimization, and SEOers with experience know very well that understanding this gray area is the essence of SEO. Matt Cutts will tell you from his "Google-employee perspective", but limiting yourself to only his recommendations would be short sighted, and I would expect even Matt would agree with this assumption.
Yeah, these are only my suggestions and I am not expecting of anyone to follow my advice word for word. You can definitely apply some of the things I listed if you feel that they will help you make more money from your dir. I believe that you got a pretty good answer from other members regarding Matt Cutts so I will not get too much into that. I will just say that if you want to make money from your dir you need to buld many links to it. If you don't want to do it because you feel it's wrong, then don't start a dir. My suggestions are for people who want to make money from they directories, and only for those people. Why directories with PR6 and PR7 have many times more submissions? Because people generally submit based on PR. So if you want people to submit to your directory you need higher PR, and to obtain higher PR you have to to buy links. As for registration, I said do not require registration if you don't have a quality directory people will definitely want to submit to. And I really dont see why would a directory that requires registration be more diligent in maintaining high quality content? You can offer registration on the link submission page where you can put user name and password fields. This type of registration is totally fine. But don't require people to first register, then to confirm email, then to log in, before they can submit a link. Everyone is free to do as they wish with their directory. I just tried to help out a bit with some of the things I observed while submitting.
Some of that makes sense, but too be honest. Price depends on your marketing skills, you could charge $50/year for a link on a PR0 directory if you know what your doing...? Am i right?
OK nice tips everyone. I love the opinions of the Pros replying to this thread. Heres my question. I spent a lot of time for my directories improvements. These are category descriptions, editing link descriptions and upgrading mods. Now on the link buying side I bought lots and lots of links from quality sites. We can start naming a few here. Aviva, Uncover, Searchmonster, This is our Year, Tolra Micro and other high PR/PS/Traffic Sites. My site stats improved in a months time and PR prediction qualified as 6. Now the question ? Is this valid and what the theory of most of you said that penalize link buying is bad even though they are quality sites and sites that have been in the net for quite a while. They are relevant links. Are this Bad or Good ? Can someone give me a Straight Answer and in English Please. This is just an experiment as to where your site goes from here with link buying. Thanks
omg this is a really good point of view after this if i want to create 1 directory i will take of your suggestion as 1 of my priority task before i proceed
I believe your PR will go up regardless if links are relevant. In my opinion, irrelevant links will still transfer PR, but not give you as good rankings as relevant links. The site in my sig got from weak PR4 to PR5 just from recent directory submissions I made. Just don't get thousands of back links in matter of days. This will look unnatural to Google and it might discount those links so your PR might drop. This is why it might be easier to build links for directory than for a site. You need to raise your PR, and this can be achieved through irrelevant links as well, as you don't have to worry about your rankings. Irrelevant links transfer PR, but don't give rankings boost as relevant? I would like to hear someone's opinion on this one. I always wondered if this is the case.
I bought mostly direct related sites such as directories and webmaster related. You might know that as we see each others post at Link Sales. For now I am just crossing my fingers till next update on what might really happen. As I see it Google fetched up the quality links instantly. Yahoo had it and MSN so its all about quality backlinks of related ones. I guess.... But I am not a PRO I only took chances so this is just a neophyte opinion whatever happens the gain is I took care of it in the best possible I can with pretty much $$$$ invested and time involve for improvements.
Yeii - now i can make $9000 my first month oops Very nice read - long, but not Boring at all ! Hope this helps out starters.