Revisiting The Use Of Directories

[austtr]

I've been seeing and hearing a lot of advice recently that I should be focusing on improving what my site offers, rather than focusing on link building. Fair enough....

One way I could improve my visitor's experience, and add value to my site (a destination guide) would be to incorporate a directory of useful sites that provide information and resources beyond the scope of my own site.

Only sites that I personally select will be included. There will be no pay for placement, no link swap required and all links will be nofollow.

However.... there was a time in the not so distant past when Google wiped out most directories. A lot were crud and deserved to go, but there was some serious collateral damage at the time if I recall with quality directories being hit as well.

So has anything changed? It it possible to have viable directories, incorporated or stand-alone, is this era of hyper-sensitive reaction to link profiles?

[karlyoung]

I think if it is a "genuine resource" and you no-follow all the links it shouldn't be a problem.

It would be interesting to see though. Many websites have resources pages anyway - Google should see that you are not passing on link juice/ authority onto others.

[CaptainSalad2]

This is the biggest problem right now and why new sites stand no chance, your hand picking sites, adding links/sites to your site that are good quality and useful, so “editorially giving links” but then no following them.

You don’t need to nofollow links that you editorially add to your own site that aren't paying you... There needs to be a sticky on this site to explain when and where to use nofollow because the fear around the use of this tag is preventing new sites from gaining ground in my experience!

[austtr]

You don’t need to nofollow links that you editorially add to your own site that aren't paying you

That's the theory but when the likes of MC make statements to the effect that if you cannot vouch absolutely 100% for the link you insert, then nofollow it. Not a position I agree with or wish to follow but its their playground, their game, their rules and they also happen to be the sole umpire.

As you say, this nofollow paranoia is putting yet another hurdle in front of start-up sites who are the most dependent on links to get some initial traction.

[ColourOfSpring]

You don’t need to nofollow links that you editorially add to your own site that aren't paying you

You know you hand-picked the links, but an algo has no way of knowing it, and Google seem to be defaulting to "paid link" more often than "that link is a genuine one" by the amount of collateral damage taking place around the web.

[mrengine]

Less linking is good for Google because its less of an opportunity for people to find what they are looking for outside of search. However, a directory can have some value to visitors but I would not count on Google seeing things that way. One would assume that linking out to high quality sites adds to the overall score/worth of your site. But quality is a hit and miss target with Google. Too many nofollow links and then how Google scores your site goes down. The average webmaster has been placed in a situation where they simply can't win but stand a lot to lose. I'd avoid the directory or just block it from being indexed altogether.

[austtr]

Too many nofollow links and then how Google scores your site goes down.

Is that your opinion or a known fact?

[robzilla]

a directory of useful sites that provide information and resources beyond the scope of my own site.

Doesn't sound like anything anybody could reasonably object to, does it? And no, don't nofollow the links; just check them occassionally to make sure they're still helpful.

Case in point: [webmasterworld.com...]

[CaptainSalad2]

You guys who think linking to other website editorially, that your visitors will appreciate and you aren't being paid for STILL need to be nofollow need to step back and think about what your saying, think about if everyone has that attitude and nofollow everything?

Forget G turning up the power for brands they wont need to, your doing the job for them because I would bet no one is "nofollowing" links to amazon....

Im not complaining because basically if everyone does this it makes my life a hell of a lot easier as I will require less links for my own sites, but really nofollow isn't for this purpose IMO :)

Also bear in mind it’s the linked site that will get the hit not the linker if there was a hit to have, which I would personally doubt if done editorially!

[netmeg]

I don't have a directory, but I have lots of outbound links on my sites - 500 to 1000 links each. None of them are nofollow (except for a couple affiliate links). And no link penalty has ever come close to me (so far).

What I do:

I only link to relevant, authority sites, and the link has to be specifically relevant to whatever's on the page (not the site - the page)

I never use keywords in my anchor text (it's usually a "click here" or "event site" or "more information")

Several times a year I run a spider tool on my sites and remove any of the links that go 404 and inspect the ones that 301 to see if they're still relevant (I don't have time to test each link manually, but I'm making an effort to keep link rot down) If there's a replacement link, I add that back in.

And that's it. The users click on the links a ton, and the sites do well in search, and it all seems to be working fine so far.

[mromero]

We run a small, plain regular html directory on one of our sites and it is well used.

We only nofollow to known and established business houses that we know our users would benefit from.

The intent is strictly to help our users find the information and connection that would help them.

In the past we ran a good CGI based directory within our website, but discontinued this after the software stopped being developed.

I am currently looking for a good script without any success.

The WP based plugins and themes are simply too fragmented and not solid in our view.

The other PHP based ones are radioactive as they were used or are still being used by not too nice webmasters.

[mrengine]

Is that your opinion or a known fact?

Purely opinion based on Google's past and likely future focus on link penalties. How Google algorithmically judges the value of a link varies greatly from reality and acceptable practices today will more than likely lead to a negative effect tomorrow. If you recall, Google used to recommend that webmasters get listed in some directories. Google was even so bold as to copy DMOZ and label it as the Google Directory. When Google quit duplicating DMOZ's directory, they really turned down the dial on all directories except for the major hybrid directories like Yelp that have a large following outside of search. Therefore, if Google gives little (if any) value to the links in directories, having one residing on a domain would likely devalue the domain regardless if the links use nofollow or not. If it were me, and I absolutely had to have a directory on my website, I would do everything to keep Google out of it.

One must assume that Google, a for profit entity, is not revealing all of their intentions to the public. Every link you create is a lost opportunity for Google to service that user in their search engine. I hate to sound so paranoid, but Google's actions in the news lately leads me to believe their intentions are mostly to gather and serve data across not just search but anywhere else that offers a potential for profit.

[EditorialGuy]

If you recall, Google used to recommend that webmasters get listed in some directories.

Sure, because that made it more likely that a new site would be discovered and crawled by Googlebot with a reasonable period of time.

Today, a site owner can just upload a sitemap or submit a site with "Fetch as Googlebot" in Webmaster Tools.

[netmeg]

Well also, they fairly quickly amended that to be CURATED directories and not just any old place that would take link.

[roshaoar]

What are today's free curated directories?

[netmeg]

Free curated directories suitable for any website to apply to? No idea. Maybe there aren't any (at least I don't know of any reputable ones)

Depending on your niche though, you might be able find smaller niche-specific directories you could apply to. Ones that actually send you traffic instead of just existing to boost rankings. Of course they might not be free (free is worth what you pay for it) and you'd have to expect a nofollow on your link, but if you get quality traffic out of it, that could still be a good deal.

[aristotle]

I know of a site that has one page containing a "list" of hundreds of links (at least 500) to other websites in the same general subject area [call it widgets]. There's very little text on this page except for the link anchor texts, which are mostly the names of the linked-to websites. All of the links are dofollow. This page normally ranks in about 3th or 4th position in Google SERPs for a search for "widget websites".

This is not a large site (only about 20 pages), and it certainly isn't an "authority". Yes, it's true that there isn't much competition for the term "widget websites" in this case, so getting on the first page of the SERPs isn't all that hard. But the point is that all of these hundreds of dofollow outlinks have apparently not caused any kind of penalty or ranking demotion.

This is just one case, of course, but at least it seems to show that a site doesn't automatically get penalized for having hundreds of dofollow links to other sites.