Outgoing links to directories

[cyberbear]

I just got listed in About.com finally. I offered a link on my sites pages for a directory listing and they went for it.It got me thinking about Yahoo,ODP,NBCi and Looksmart. I know that some webmasters will submit the section of the directories they are listed in to various search engines looking for increased link popularity. I also realize that outgoing links are important in addition to incoming links.

Finally, my question is it worthwhile to insert a button, text link to all the directories you are listed in? Should I do this on the home page only or all the pages?

Thanks.

[skirril]

Hello,

ODP takes your listing for free, puts it in a category (perhaps two) and then forgets about it. For odp you do not need any outgoing links. You also wont see ODP referrals as such, since many dirs take ODP or a subset of it. You'll see the referrals from strage sites, until you realize that they have taken a part of ODP.

Yahoo will take your money, put you in the category you want, list you there as 'new' for a week (before all others), then alphabetically. The bigger part from referrals from yahoo will come from searches, after this week, not from you being in a certain category. Again, no questions asked about the structure of your site.

Altavista and Google, otoh, will look for link popularity, but they'll count incoming links, not outgoing ones. Again, no need to point towards them.

No idea about NBCI/Snap and About. atm I dont get referrals from them.

Just a word about feasability to pay for inclusion. Recon that eg. 1% of traffic is actually paying customers, or customers who provide feedback. Now, since I am listed in Yahoo, my traffic has more or less tripled. Means I get 3 times as many requests. Now, if I sell blue widgets for USD 5 apiece its clear I need to sell considerably more than if I sell red widgets for USD 2500 apice, to pay for a submission. But just look at it as 'marketing cost', with a payoff in mid- to long term.

[Brett_Tabke]

Hi cyberbear, the trick doesn't work as well as it used too. The big one it worked with for along time was Infoseek, and then Google. Not sure currently if that is still case with Google. I tried it in early (dec), and the spider did visit, but it may have found another link to get to the page. (it may not have followed it out of a referral log at google). So at current, I'm not all that sure, that it still works. But can it hurt? I try to send each engine a couple referrals everymonth just in case. I think you would lose more traffic by having the buttons on your home page than you would gain back.

The real long term value of a directory listing, is not the searches at the directory itself, it is the benefit of having your link categorized and available for other surfers to raid when building their directory. The odp link is worth more than the yahoo link in that regard.

[cyberbear]

Thanks Brett

I am just going to put the text link to About.com as I did offer the editor this. With About.com you are really at the mercy of one editor for each category.

I agree that ODP is just about the best overall and I am very grateful to them for sending me lots of traffic."Thankyou ODP"!!!

I will just submit the directory page to certain search engines every few months and see how it goes. Google already crawls ODP but and not sure if they crawl the Yahoo directory. I will also do the same for the rest. Thanks again for your help.

[ihelpyou]

I do believe Google will find and then crawl every directory it can. It definitely crawls Yahoo. You are always better off to let Google find your links on its own. Might take a little longer though.