Forum Moderators: martinibuster
What are the other methods? (Not my strongest point)
Having said that, quality reciprocal links from related sites will not hurt; one way links from established sites will be better, and a *few* links from *Quality Directories* are well worth the effort of reading their guidelines.
But never forget that 97% of directories are best avoided, and 98% of "submission services" will hurt more than help, and will guarantee you spam email for life (and beyond).
Just remember Quality Matters more than Quantity, and you won't go far wrong.
If there are directories which can trash sites, then why not put together a list, submit your competitors to them and propel them into SE purgatory.
IMO, at worst, links from questionable directores will be given little, if any, weight. Every now and then, I submit to a directory not really knowing its credentials. More often than not, they have a good Google pr. I submit to a relevant category. Am I in trouble?
The problem, as ever, depends on your outgoing links.
If you reciprocate a link to a bad neighbororhood, or otherwise join a 'link network', then you could be in trouble. And as many of the so-called directories are no more than link farms, then that's no small risk for the unwary.
You are also right that most directory links count for virtually nothing anyway; most have no Google ranking - and neer will; indeed, most give up trying in under a year.
They are free scripts, and 25,000 people a year think they can load up and become the new Yahoo!
So Quality Directories, not Quantity. Spend two hours preparing well-crafted, guideline compliant submissions to 15 Quality directories, not spend ten cents a sub submitting to 400, of which 390 will list you with all the other unsorted uneditied, forever ignored, listings, while the ten quality directories rejected the submission, as it ignored their guidelines.
And the 390 will spam you forever to 'upgrade' or insert a 'voluntary' reciprocal link.
Finding them is time consuming and probably boring but it can be become worthwhile if done well. Obviously, out of the SEO friendly directories there are quite a few that require paying an inclusion fee son bear that in mind.
I suggest you to try searching in google for "seo friendly directories", "free directories" and so on. You will eventually find a few lists of directories with their PR at the time the list was made. Forget all the directories with PR4 or less. Then put the rest in a spreadsheet and visit them one by one. Take PR in the home page, PR in the category page of your choice (I normally try 3 different categories in 3 different areas) and basic submission rules (if they allow you to chose your title, length of the description, max number of submitted pages, etc...). After a few hours you will end up having a list of quite a few directories that should help your seo efforts.
Of course, please note that this is only the beginning of a Link Building campaign and that, depending in which market you are, you will need much more work to achieve results.
One you get above about fifteen quality directories, you reach the law of diminishing returns, and it becomes pretty much a waste of time; time to move on to other work.
Start by prioritising free directories; look for specialist ones on your niche, and local ones in your area.
You do need to ask yourself "What Is A Quality Directory?", and remember that it is pretty subjective.
Toolbar Page rank is crude tool; many very spammy directories artifically inflate toolbar page rank (or fake it) for a few months to get suckers, then go off and start a new one. Also, even Quality Directories have to start somewhere, and many newish ones will not yet have the page rank they will grow into. Plus newish directories will likely offer free submission, as they need to aquire 'ctical mass' before they charge. there's plenty about that charge from early days, and they remain pretty empty. Then they get abandoned.
I'm not saying ignore TBPR; it has 'barometer value' - but it is a crude tool.
Look closely and check that they apply the rules they claim to. A quality site that edits your submission will almost always be better than a c*** one that posts whatever c*** gets thrown at them!
Good Luck!
[edited by: Quadrille at 5:40 pm (utc) on Feb. 5, 2007]
"seo friendly directories" - search for that, and 99% of the result will be "Google un-friendly link farms". No quality directory needs to call itself SEO-friendly, and none do!
If I search for "SEO friendly directories" I am certainly not looking for the directories themselves but for a list of SEO friendly directories. I can see a couple of useful lists on the first SERP over here in the UK.
If you are talking about directories where you "pay for inclussion" I can confirm that there are not even 15 of them out there I would pay to be in. There are certainly more than 15 free ones that are worth an inclusion request.
Toolbar Page rank is crude tool
I do know it is a just a reference and it cannot be taken as the last truth but, to be honest, it is probably one of the best tools we have to measure the benefits of a directory.
many very spammy directories artifically inflate toolbar page rank
(or fake it)
[edited by: Digimon at 6:44 pm (utc) on Feb. 6, 2007]
I can see a couple of useful lists on the first SERP over here in the UK.
If I search for "SEO friendly directories" I am certainly not looking for the directories themselves but for a list of SEO friendly directories. I can see a couple of useful lists on the first SERP over here in the UK.
Look again. A list of link farms isn't much more help than one link farm.
If you are talking about directories where you "pay for inclussion" I can confirm that there are not even 15 of them out there I would pay to be in. There are certainly more than 15 free ones that are worth an inclusion request.
Maybe I wasn't clear; there are more than fifteen Quality Directories; there's just no point (these days) in getting listed in more than 15; your SEO time would be much better spent on more valuable work.
Artificially inflating the PR is buying links. That is fine. As far as they don't get caught or stop doing it all good with me.
That's your choice; my point is that a directory that inflates its page rank is often - very often - a directory that stops doing so once they've taken your money. And a few hundred other peoples'.
Maybe my programming skills are not good enough here but the principle of faking PR is redirecting googlebot to a different page via cloacking. How can you implement this for the whole directory? (note that I have recommended to check in a few categories).
I just would not rely on toolbar PR. I agree there are no 'better' measures - but you can get as good a 'feel' for a site, it's quality, where the Adsense is, the editing quality, the number of listed sites in a category; the proportion of cr*p sites ... and no risk of being conned, by doing so without looking at the Little Green Bar.
In most cases, cr*p directories shout CR*P fairly loudly, While Quality Directories never mention 'submit links', never swamp the ATF area with adsense, and never, never, never ever ask for a reciprocal link.
Yes, another crude tool - but much, much more reliable than the Little Green Bar!
[edited by: Quadrille at 4:34 am (utc) on Feb. 7, 2007]
Maybe I wasn't clear; there are more than fifteen Quality Directories; there's just no point (these days) in getting listed in more than 15; your SEO time would be much better spent on more valuable work.
I can indeed prove that using the directory list that I have compiled (around 45 directories) with a minimal investment (the paid ones are very few) I can set the foundations for a Link Building campaign ensuring my client's site start aquiciring relevancy for the different KWs we are targeting. The ammount of impact in rankings will obviously depend on the market. However, rest assured that having your page in a relevant category, with a on-topic page title, surrounded by other related sites with loads of related keywords in the descriptions is a very good method to start acquiring relevancy.
That's your choice; my point is that a directory that inflates its page rank is often - very often - a directory that stops doing so once they've taken your money. And a few hundred other peoples'.
[edited by: Digimon at 11:12 am (utc) on Feb. 9, 2007]
I've reread what I've said about numbers, and it is muddled; apologies. I misread a comment and responses have not been clear enough in my view on numbers of Quality Directories.
Please let me try again. There are many thousands of directories out there, probably in the hundreds of thousands.
Of the 'paid for directories', there are certainly well over 15 that I would call Quality Directories, and which will certainly help your site - and do no harm. But I would look first at the FREE directories; if you can find about 15 Quality Free Directories, then you probably don't need to spend money.
Of the many tens of thousands of free directories, the vast majority are MFA, link farms, bad neighborhoods, spam traps or worse, which are just a waste of bandwidth.
The proportion of free directories that is worth a second look is tiny - but that's still a significant number of directories.
As to how many to get listed in (paid or unpaid), I cannot 'prove' you don't need more than 15 - any more than you can 'prove' that you do need more than 15. Looking for proof in SEO is even more futile than wholesale directory submission.
First principles would suggest that in the absence of proof of benefit (some evidence would be nice!), then going for hundreds cannot possibly be a wise move, when there's plenty of other things you can usefully do.
But more than that, if you read around on the subject of directories, the weight of circumstancial evidence is that directory links are not so useful as a while ago; most people recognise that there's life outside ODP, for example, where two years ago the consensus was to be obsessed with it.
Every forum has tales of people who have got hundreds of directory links and got nowhere - granted, most of them would have been cr*p directories, but the law of averages suggests that they must have picked up some good ones.
Just read around; I believe the views I've expressed are much closer to the consensus than your view; directory submission, done right, is a time consuming procedure that can certainly help your site with SE recognition, and in some cases with referrals. But as it is a resource heavy activity, you need to weigh up that activity against others; there's zero evidence that I've seen, circumstantial or otherwise, that very large numbers of directory entries are any more helpful than about 15: you will find it hard to find more than 15 that give many referrals, and 15 will more than 'make the point' with search engines; Google was never impressed by repetition, and I'd be surprised if Yahoo! was. There may still be a higher number with MS, whose link recognition is probably still lagging behind Google.
I have no objection at all to paid directories; I know some fine ones which will probably send many more referrals, though not carry much extra weight with the SEs. Yahoo! Directory, for example, has been a great help to many people. But it's then a matter of value for money; will those referrals justify the fee? For me, no - but your mileage may vary. Some paid-for directories DO carry a little extra weight with the SES, either through longevity and reputation, or because they reinvest some of the cash in SEO and promotion, or both.
I don't have proof, and nor do you; and I cannot post 'helpful' urls here. But I strongly suggest you read some of the experiences and suggestions around; things have changed a lot over the last year, and directories have a brighter future now that 'seo friendly' is more widely recognised as 'link farm'.
Directories can be a great help, and all you need is Quality and common sense to get that help.
[edited by: Quadrille at 7:14 pm (utc) on Feb. 9, 2007]
