Yahoo Dir - is it a quick fix for authority and link juice?

[Whitey]

We have a site that needs a big link juice boost to assist the content being indexed ( as well as using dynamic site maps ) and ranking. It's been suggested that a listing in the Yahoo Directory will do this.

I'm sceptical. We used to use Yahoo years ago and dropped it , but i didn't use it for this purpose.

Even though Google TBPR is a poor metric , I still look at it to provide an added sense of the IBL / link juice power , and what we're looking at is no more than a PR4-5 for that section of the Yahoo directory. To push 45,000 pages in a single folder i feel we need a PR 7 link.

But am I off the mark. Has the Yahoo directory got that much authority that the link juice will flow and benefit the site. The site is already TBPR5-6

[anallawalla]

I haven't noticed a PR boost on account of a Yahoo dir link but it could seem that way if the number of links were at the cusp. However, I have seen a large network of parked domains use this effectively by building hubs (resembling topical blogs) and submitting them to Yahoo dir.

[eatcarrots]

Not all of the positions in Yahoo Dir hold the same weight. Somehow, if you can get a link on a page that's not so deep in the directory, I think it would be worth more, compared to one of these subdirectories four levels deep with hundreds of pages of links.

Also, I don't see Yahoo directory links show up on the Google link profile for every site that has a Yahoo link. I know Google purposely hides a large portion of the link that they know about, but I'm sure that the links they do show are atleast recognized to be good. Since Yahoo dir is assumed to be one of these 'good' links, I'm surprised it's not usually present on a links check.

[jaffstar]

Not all of the positions in Yahoo Dir hold the same weight

Ageed. Some sections have high PR and only a handful of links. I just cant be pushed to pay that listing fee... That money is better spent in other places.

[CainIV]

I know that a listing in the alt health section for us paid off well in pagerank. I am sure the directory passes pagerank, and the value of the directory trust is certainly there, but if you are looking for raw 'stopping power' in terms of pagerank flow, there might be better options, such as donations pages.

[Planet13]

@ CainIV

but if you are looking for raw 'stopping power' in terms of pagerank flow, there might be better options, such as donations pages.

Could you elaborate on what you mean by "donations pages"?

Thanks in advance.

[wheel]

The local university here organizes science fairs at the schools. I'm a proponent of education, so I donate to them.

In unrelated news, the university has a page where they list everyone who donates to their science fairs, and gives a link to their business.

Pretty simple to reverse engineer that process; go looking for places that have donation pages.

I've seen some donation pages on big projects that have crazy backlinks and PR. But be careful, I suspect that some of them don't do anything for you. If the donation page is full of unrelated internet businesses I would assume the page is tainted.

[Planet13]

Thanks for the clarification!

[SEOPTI]

No, it is not a fix. I spent $299, the editor decided to add my site to a category which is not listed in Googles index. (only the .ca TLD is listed for this category)

I picked a different category with the submission but the editor probably decided my site sucks and it should be listed 5-6 levels deep.

Congratulations Yahoo, smells like scam. It took me one hour to go through their horrible internal link structure to submit a site.

[SEOPTI]

It's funny, in their confirmation email they don't even tell you where they have buried your $299 site. It's all guesswork with Yahoo, if they have put the same efforts into their search engine their market share will soon reach 0%.

Amazing b2b customer service!

[Web_Savvy]

We routinely develop large (database driven) sites with thousands of pages (often tens of thousands).

Our experience at getting these brand new sites deep crawled and indexed (but not necessarily ranked) has always revealed findings that are in sharp contrast to the popular belief that small directory listings count for nothing.

(Already ducking for cover before I write this:)

We find that a few hundreds of such directory listings (obtained with a bit of care - not via typical 10-cents-a-pop submit shops) always work in terms of getting our sites deep crawled and frequently recrawled. To add icing to the cake, we also find that soon afterwards, organic traffic (mainly from longtail keywords) starts building up too (reaching as high as a few hundreds a day on some sites).

Your Milage May Vary, but this is - and has been - our direct, hands on experience, for many years running. HTH

[Planet13]

@ Web_Savvy

We find that a few hundreds of such directory listings (obtained with a bit of care - not via typical 10-cents-a-pop submit shops) always work in terms of getting our sites deep crawled and frequently recrawled.

Are you linking from the directories to your index page? Or are you linking to internal pages?

and could you clarify your strategy for determining which directories might have value and which might not?

thanks in advance.

[Web_Savvy]

Are you linking from the directories to your index page? Or are you linking to internal pages?

Both.

which directories might have value and which might not?

We're not much bothered about this since the sites we submit are our own and we know for sure that the 'random mix' of directory listings does the trick in terms of acheiving our objectives.