Forum Moderators: martinibuster
I'm submitting my new site's pages to many directories. Before submitting, I make sure that the site doesn't have links to adult content or gambling sites. I make sure that the site has some page rank, even if it's only for the home page. And I check to make sure the site has been cached in recent weeks.
Is that enough? Or is there more to worry about?
According to William Blake, it could be "Thy Heavens Doors are my Hell Gates" but he didn't know about the internet when he lived, so perhaps he's not that important on the matter. Actually, a bad neighborhood could be loosely defined as link strategies which are non-relevant to the contents and/or business and/or topics of your website.
If you sell icecream and your link in any directory is put right next to gambling websites, and is categorized under comedy and bizarre while it is described with the most irrelevant words you can think of and none of the links to your site, are actually relevant and/or descriptive of its contents (comparative analysis, google does that alot) and it happens consistently all over the internet, there is a good chance that you're in a bad neighborhood and have used a not so smart linking strategy. Think, before you do.
Sincerely, and have fun,
I'm submitting my new site's pages to many directories.
I'd be a bit concerned with the many directories. There really aren't that many "good directories" out there. There are hundreds of thousands of "average" ones and most of those are not going to bring the value you are expecting.
Bad Neighborhoods
Think of the Internet as a whole as a Bad Neighborhood. Then focus your efforts on finding the Good Neighborhoods.
I'm submitting to directories because I'm having a heck of a time getting links in my financial-related niche.
I'm checking out the directories to make sure they have some sort of page rank and recent caching.
Until I can find sites in my niche willing to trade links, I'm really not sure what else to do.
Who ultimately decides how good a site is for linking purposes? We do, the users. No point in being all paranoid, it will just stress you out, just link to relevant websites and you should be okay.
After all, you can tell a spam site from one that delivers can't you.... So only link to on-theme ones.
Here endeth the lesson.
DMOZ has categories for everything from art to zoology. So does Yahoo.
If the lesser directories have the same type of categories, how does that make them "bad neighborhoods?"
I've only been submitting to directories that offer free submissions. However, some of these directories charge for "premium submissions." The costs vary from a few dollars for a one-time submission to several dollars a year.
The Yahoo directory charges $299 per year.
What's the difference?
The sites that rank well in my niche are holding on to reciprocal links like they were gold, and will usually only trade with other high PR sites. That's a short-sighted strategy, but that's where we are today.
So, what's the alternative? No links?
But a lot of those are pay for listing directories.
If the lesser directories have the same type of categories, how does that make them "bad neighborhoods?"
I don't think the category setup defines bad neighboorhood, but it may play a part.
As for the free general directory reciprocal link thing, I stopped sending links to any of those a while ago. More risk than reward IMO.
The lesser directories have nothing to offer where traffic delivery is concerned - so what is the only thing they got left? Noone buys their listings, they can't be found easily for they have no advertising, they aren't major companies so they end up trading on pagerank. The idea is to drive up their ranking, and once it's I dunno, PR 6 or something, can then sell that as a benefit (selling PR) and make some profit doing that, but this way isn't what a directory is about. I figure Google might see this as an improper model and gives people the wrong impression of the directory industry, maybe these directories are cons, email extractors or spam sites, but they aren't good for links that's for sure.
"premium submissions." - I see nothing wrong with this, after all the directory has to cover costs or it dies basically. The problem occurs when what is offered, isn't delivered, so the better the directory, the better service and results from it. A good, well run directory will always out-perform a link dump, pr trader any day, and I see no risk for a $100 a year - it's nothing in real advertising terms anyway.
Personally, I hate all this PR and recip trading - it's just sending out the wrong message and I keep well away from that. I've used this method and it got me nowhere, my links on these directories yeilded little to zero results and so didn't buy into these directories. Why would a legit company want to risk being associated with a poor website or directory? Most large corporates I know just go with the pure branded directories and engines, and there's probably a good reason why.
Directory links are more for Brand Awareness than the traffic sent, it's a 'quality link/advert placement' that's demanded, and if it sends a little target traffic, then so much the better. But I don't see a bigger need for directories than that for the time being.
<<<<<<<So, what's the alternative? No links? >>>>>>>> Ofcourse you need links, no business on the face of the earth will get anywhere without them, unless they have millions to play with (but those mega sites get tons of links anyway), my point is the naff directories won't stand out, er, so will eventually shut down and the problem of bad neighbourhood directories will be no more or at least of so little threat - so why worry.
If you seek out what looks like a good resource, then place a link. If it looks dodgy, then don't put links there.
[edited by: Maxnpaddy at 12:10 pm (utc) on Sep. 16, 2007]
And I'm not sure a crappy directory would fit the "BN" bill, the best example of a "bad neighbourhood" I've come across was that "stop smoking" site that had hidden links to all sorts of Pharma types, IIRC it appeared "healthy" enough (PR, pages indexed) but caused a drop to a third party site that was linking to it....
If a site gets loads of links to boost PR by linking TO 'bad sites' -then they are manipulating links for personal gain.
So sites that manipulate links could be in a bad neighbourhood group?
