Building Links through Directorys?

Will it help in Yahoo and MSN?

[Muffin_man]

I know that theres a whole lot of hype about the
value of directory listings, I was just wondering what the
value of a directory link is, because:

I am about to launch a small website and plan to target
MSN and Yahoo, my target keywords leader has 200 backlinks.

I was browsing the web and found a deal were they manually submit your site
to 500 directorys for only $99. If I can get such a huge amount of links will this allow me to outrank my Yahoo and MSN comp?

Also worth noting is that they also offer to manually submit my article (which they'll write) to 300 article directorys all by hand for $99, and they'll write it for $140. What do you think?

Am I getting ripped off or is it the deal of the century?

[sugarrae]

If it sounds too good to be true...

[SuddenlySara]

Plan on launching your site for your visitors that want what you have. On each spacific keywordpage get some incomming links about that pages subject...Think more related to your subjects instead of thinking seperate directory...Then let the Engines find you and catelog your site the way they do it....And so on...

[letsjoy]

yes it helps to some extent in all SE's

[Animated]

"I was browsing the web and found a deal were they manually submit your site
to 500 directorys for only $99"

sounds like a link farm and those things can have your site be banned

[OddDog]

I have seen an indian company offering 2000 directory links for 350USD.

These are not link farms.

I would question there impact though. Little relevance, little or no trust rank ect.

I tend to do some limited directory submissions as part of the inital mix. Then I get more theme specific.

[Robert Charlton]

...500 directorys for only $99

I'm waiting for another one of those emails that offers to "submit to 500,000 search engines for $39." That's real value. ;)

[thelastmuse]

Believe me, I've tried that "submit links for $99 only" and what they do is they submit your sites to useless directories. I say focus on the BIG THREE and you know what I mean: Yahoo, MSN and Google. Don't waste your $99 on this. There are several free SEO tools available online and you just have to search "SEO Tools" on google. You can do it yourself.

Link exchange is the way to go. Make personalized emails to your target and link them first before you even ask them to link you up and show them where they can see their link on you site.

[MrSpeed]

I say go for it. I am getting ready to try one of these sercives on a throw away domain. My only concern is how quickly you get the links.

Does it raise a flag to get 250 links all in a week?

[econman]

Yes, it might raise a red flag if you suddenly got 100's of links on the same day.

But, that won't happen. Among other things, there is a difference between "submitting" and "getting." Assuming they do what they claim, you will be listed in some, but not all, of the directories where they submitted your site. The fraction will vary with many factors, including how good your site is, how desperate the directory is to show some growth/activity, the sector in which you are operating, etc.

[artdog]

econman nails it

I did this once and actually got very few links on pages that were not worth being on.