Forum Moderators: martinibuster
I have a straight link from business.com. The links from Y USA directory are redirected but the mirrors in other countries are straight links.
As far as PR, I don't know what to tell you. Only the search engines really know. Just because it shows up in your backlinks doesn't mean it's counting or discounted. But if I were to speculate I would say that those were decent links to have behind your website.
If anything, some people look there when seeking authoritative sites to link to, or for authoritative information.
...
As for me, I pay to be listed on a page that is going to send me some clicks because there are live visitors on that very page my site is listed.
I don't care if the page has a pr9 or a pr0, my money doesn't pay for my site to be listed on domainabc.com in order to gain traffic from enginexyz.com, as that makes no sense. I pay to get listed on whatever.com in order to get traffic from whatever.com and if anything else comes of it, that's just bonus.
Thus I usually do not ignore smaller directories which charge anywhere from 10 to 40 dollars as a one-time fee, but that's just me... Now if you've never seen or heard from them, you might be skeptical, maybe re-visit them in 2-3 years.... Even then, it really doesn't matter, any money you spend on this, you take your chances so don't spend it if you can't lose it.
Meanwhile, Galaxy has a pr of 0 but I get a few clicks from them and it wasn't expensive to get listed. And I really don't care if galaxy increases or decreases my site's PR on google because I paid galaxy in order to get traffic FROM galaxy.
Meanwhile pr is nothing but another neat concept used to mesmerize everyone into building another Tower of Babel. woooooo, look! Peee arrrrRHHH!
I wonder what the next big engine will think of?
Buy links for the potential traffic and link building onus. When people buy links, they are actually buying or renting space on a website (yes it's that simple) and along with that comes a risk of whether link A sends that visitor or you get noticed etc etc.
The aim should be to minimise that risk as much as possible, just don't buy based on PR, or you could be in trouble if the site you bought the space from loses it's rank. But what this all really boils down to is Hypnotic games by Google, and manipulation of the meaning of quality by webmasters. That's why I call it the foolbar - being as it fools people into thinking somethings of quality because the green bar says so. A rather nasty cash generating tool for Google.
Just buy links for traffic..
But reality is something I can't afford to ignore. Links affect Google results. The emporer IS naked. I didn't make the web, I just live in it.
It's important to look at the quality of a link, regardless of the PR. PR 1? No problem! Some PR 1's are better imo to PR 6's.
Should I care about PR or just links that bring traffic". My thought is that it is a philosophy to say that you don't care one bit about PR.
Well, the subject of philosophy is about Reason and Arguement, and like anything in life people have opinions and that's about it. I admit that many DO approve of the 'Toolbar PR' as it'ssome kind of status given to websites - say, Site owner builds site and gets a Rank, which could be seen as a reward.
Reward for what exactly? The site owner may not have built the site. Reward for gaining links? Now, now lets be sensible about this, links aren't exactly difficult to come by, and if the links don't provide either the right traffic - then the reward must be based on a bunch of useless links. You see where I'm going with this.......
The toolbar is merely a tool to draw people in,paint a false and innacurate picture of what may or may not be worth something - and that worth is usually debateable as many opinions can be made.
Now,haveing said all that, I doubt I'm about to be hypnotised or become philosopical about something I understand so well. But, many don't have this understanding and thus either fall for this scam, or sell it. Being philosopical about anything can't force me to become confused, and yes, I can control my emotions and always delete emails based on unprofessional sales techniques, especially when selling links which are based on something so debateable and worthless.
I only care about rank in Google serps. PR indicates something. That something correlates with links which is correlated with serps.
SO.... I feel strongly that my original question in this thread is a perfectly valid one. If you like logic, here it is laid out...
A site with no inbound links will not rank well in G. A site with a million quality inbound links (along with at least semi-related content) will rank well. Therefore, it is necessarily so that at least SOME links or some combination of links have provided value as it relates to G serps. Can that possibly be denied?
To ask "does this particular link have a value as it relates to G serps?" is a perfectly valid question which has an answer.
I do not care about the toolbar.
For instance, when I check a certain site, I will first see the homepage, then judge whether it's right for my needs and the very last thing I check is the toolbar rank or the links, as both these AREN'T why I visited the site for. I visit sites for information and not because they have high placement in the serps.
People are just as worried by the serps, like the PR, it's controlling and can have a dramatic affect on ego, as well as effect (result) on traffic levels.
Ultimately, worrying and trying to resist serps is pointless and a waste of time. It's clear many try to force their way up the serps by link swaps and purchases, and it has little effect, unless you cheat the system. But if people cheat, then they have nothing worthwhile anyway, as anything worthwhile and 'of quality' should take care of itself - wouldn't you agree?
PR indicates something.
Toolbar PR indicates close to nothing and is 100% useless as a metric. Toolbar PR is only a shadow of real PR, which is only known at Google iteself. The following will demonstrate just a few of the reasons why I say this.
That something correlates with links...
Some links count less than other links
1: QUANTITY
The toolbar PR is not a measure of QUANTITY of links. Quantity of links is part of the calculation. A website with a PR 3 can be significantly more authoritative than a web page with PR 6 simply because of the quantity of inbounds (from hundreds or thousands of PR 1 or 2 and 3 pages).
2: QUALITY
Nor does the toolbar PR correlate to the QUALITY of links. A PR 3 link from a .edu or major news organization may count more than a PR 5 link from an SEO site that bought one link from a PR 7 website and twenty directory links from a fictional SEO site called weakest links. Why is that? Because the PR 5 site is in a neighborhood identified by Google and Yahoo as likely to contain link manipulators.
which is correlated with serps.
The assertion that PR correlates to serps has ZERO basis in reality. Just do a search and check for yourself.
Uhhh... okay. Then so is Webmasterworld. I couldn't possibly disagree more.
Honestly I feel like I am making a clear point and asking a clear and concise question and your answers have little if anything to do with what I am talking about. You are entitled to your opinion but I wish we could at least discuss the same subject.
But I appreciate you taking the time.
MB, again, I have to respectfully disagree. I do understand and accept your point. But just because something doesn't have a 1:1 correlation, doesen't mean it has NO correlation. PR may be wildly inacurate. Even so much so as to be useless to us. Fine. But I see clear correlations. GENERALLY (not always), a PR7 site with content that is equal to a PR1 site will rank better.
Do you believe that links have NOTHING to do with serps?
Do you believe that they have NOTHING to do with PR?
Look, I truly truly do not care about PR. I'm sorry I got on the subject. All I care about is ranking and the exploration of how links correlate with it. I was using PR as a shorthand way to describe a links effect and if that is the problem, I apologize. ALL I care about is serps. Not PR.
But whether directory links are paid or free, it all comes back to acceptance and rating by Google - does it not.......
Anyone agree that all these free directory links are a waste of time and can be damaging to a website's acceptance and ranking by Google? Not to mention further link development issues.
Google and Yahoo love it when you manipulate links... Really!
1: Anything you do to promote your website beyond creating an easily spiderable website and making sure your keywords are on the page will be considered an attempt to manipulate rankings.
A:Reciprocal links and Profiling Link Manipulators
I know we are discussing directory submissions, but bear with me, the implications around recips have a direct relationship to understanding the answer about directory submissions.
Reciprocal links have been around for a long time and Google and Yahoo have nothing against you doing that. But it is becoming increasingly clear they won't allow you to use that to influence your ranking.
So go ahead and do your recips. I don't think you will be punished. But to a certain extent, it may not help as much as it used to. The chief reason it won't help much is that because recips have been abused to manipulate rankings, G and Y are mapping linking networks and coming up with profiles of sites that are likely to be link manipulators.
Here is the part about Link Manipulator Profiles
This point about a profile of link manipulators is very important. There are signals of no-quality that identify websites that are likely to be link manipulators. Both Yahoo and Google are doing this to different degrees of success.
Directory submissions
>>It is a FACT that a business has sprung up around web directories, marketed exclusively toward webmasters. Their clientele is not the web surfer. They never promote themselves to surfers. That is because most directories on the web are made for selling links, not for sending surfers out to useful websites.
Since it is a FACT that most directories are in the business of selling links, what view do you think the search engines will take toward directory links?
>>Since the purpose of purchasing a directory link is generally to manipulate the amount of inbound links for ranking better, will your site raise a yellow flag in determining whether it is attempting to manipulate links?
>>If you submit to a list of common directories that known link manipulators are likely to use (like lists found on SEO websites like weakest links, cough cough), your site will then join company with thousands of other known link manipulators.
Google and Yahoo regularly graph link relationships and through analysis can ascertain relationships between sites and identify who is a link manipulator.
In conclusion, er... ah... what was I talking about?
There is more to say but my hand is getting tired of typing and I've got other things to attend to. But I hope this helps you identify the scale of what you are up against and helps you understand what I mean when I say the toolbar should not even enter this discussion at all. There are very deep considerations that are not being considered by the average SEO that is contributing to the poor rankings of many websites.
The short answer to your question is not good enough. You have to understand the reasons that lead to a simple yes or no answer. I hope this will help you determine what that yes or no answer is.
We can sit here and name a bunch of directories but every damn SEO reading this forum is going to go out and replicate that pattern. That doesn't help anyone.
Good luck,
;) Y
Getting a few decent links gives me a far greater buzz than what Google has dreamt up.
I am a bit surprised you can be ranked #4 for a "popular keyword" with only 5 links. How popular is "popular"? How much links do your competitors have (those ranked #5 and #6, for example)?
i was at first surprised myself, but the keyword i rank #4 on google is from 2,350,000 results for that word,and despite that its a business website with not much content but the keywords are in all the important places such as title etc.. and even in the domain.The links to me 2 are from within the site and 3 incoming links from other sites with the keyword in their linktext, and the other websites in top 10 most have more links but they dont have the keyword in them,but they have more content.this website is about 4-5 years old and Google prefers older sites to new ones so that might play a point too.
