Directories and Social Bookmarks for links? Rookie Question

link building using directories and social bookmarking

[The_Grunt]

Hi all,

Very rookie SEO question. Say for example, I want to submit a URL to a bunch of directories.

I submit www.domain.com to the directory. Is that it? Should I not revisit that directory again.

If I wanted to get some links for inner pages on the site, like www.domain.com/productsxyz should I go back a month later and submit the inner URL?

I have read that you should only submit one URL to a directory?

Same with social bookmarks? Should I keep going back, start with the homepage, a few weeks later, do it with the inner pages?

[Planet13]

Submitting your site to free directories has very little value, if any at all.

It is much better to spend that time either emailing "legitimate" web sites and telling them about your site and suggesting they link to you (known as link begging), or spend your time improving your content, or your facebook presence.

[The_Grunt]

Thanks for that. I had an idea about that, so I don't think I will waste my time doing it now after all.....

[FranticFish]

Some directories are worth it. Those that are provide the quickest and easiest legitimate links, and for less competitive terms that can be enough to rank a site OK. For Google Places in particular, there are certain directories that really do help.

If you're new to this, just stay away from anything 'SEO-friendly'. You can hurt your site (especially a new or weak site) with these sort of links.

Depending on what niche the site is in there may be directories targeted to that market (trade sites, B2B sites etc) - and there are also local directories (county, city, town).

Simple rules of thumb that might help when evaluating:
Uses own(custom) CMS? Plus point.
Pages rank in results? Plus point.
Has community features? Plus point.

They really are 'entry-level' links though. They're not hard to get, so they don't count for much. As Planet13 said, you'll get far better links by getting a good content strategy going and networking with other site owners.

[driller41]

I have dome a lot of directory submissions recently. I submitted around 25 sites using a certain piece of software - quite nice software btw, I submitted the sites to around 2000 directories and got around 250 links per run using mixed anchor text.

So far the results have been zero, nothing has budged because of these links, perhaps as the links age there may be some improvement but so far nothing.

I would like to try to extract the links of half of the submitted sites and generate backlinks to those directory links using the other half as a control test.

Then I can put directory links in the bin if this test fails.

[FranticFish]

Yeah, that's SEO directories. Haven't used them for 5 years now, but when I did, using the approach you've mentioned (varied anchors), it would take 6/9 months to notice anything.

I read here fairly recently that someone (Cain IV perhaps?) had tested them fairly extensively and concluded that they were, at best, completely useless on their own.

But that's SEO directories. There are other sorts.

[driller41]

As part of a link campaign I think they are valuable - 10 minutes to create 200+ ilnks is worthwhile if they start to work over many months.

I think trying to generate backlinks to them is the way to go.

[The_Grunt]

Interesting replies. Hmmmm, I have my content such as articles, now I am thinking "ok, now what", and more importantly, how many times a week I should do it.
I know directories are probably useless at this stage, but is there any worth revisiting directories with inner landing pages from the same domain, or is this a no-no?

[martinibuster]

My approach for years has been to avoid any directory that describes itself as SEO Friendly. That's the kiss of death indicator, in my opinion, that lets me know that the directory is in the business of selling PageRank and missing all the things that for me makes a site link desirable: traffic, influential in my niche, useful- all the things I want. I don't want a link from a site that bills itself as SEO Friendly.

I like a niche directory that not only doesn't bill itself as SEO Friendly, I even appreciate it if it isn't SEO Friendly. There have been so many changes that it wouldn't surprise me that redirected links from high quality sites (independent of toolbar PageRank) may count as a citation. Even if that redirected link does not count as a ranking citation, if there are signs that people find that directory useful, that it sends traffic or has some influence, then it's worth it. Link building is not just about ranking for keywords.

[Planet13]

To build upon what FranticFish mentioned (and what I neglected to mention), is that you can find "directories" that aren't really directories.

Often, they are just a single html page of "resources" or "links" or "helpful sites" that are on a site that is run by a hobbyist or an enthusiast.

Be helpful when approaching these sites; Find out the owners first name by browsing their site, use a tool like Xenu link sleuth to find broken links on their site. Then email them and tell them thanks for the good resource. If you find some broken links on their site, then mention, "Oh I found a few broken links you might want to fix," and then add something like, "Oh, I hope you won't mind adding a link to our site while you are at it."

Anyway, that is one way to do it. Painstaking work, but the results are USUALLY worth it.

Hope this helps.

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Also, as martinibuster pointed out, avoid any directory that says SEO friendly in it anywhere.