Which directories to use?
-
I've recently has a conversation with a colleague regarding which directories to use when link building. In her opinion we should use only the ones that are relevant and nothing else. For example if you're working on a travel website, you should only submit either to travel directories or local directories (based on the business location). In my opinion yes we should submit to these directories but then you'll reach a limit and then you need to submit to general directories that have the "travel" category, even if the business is in NY and the directory is in India, as long as it is a good directory and has the relevant category.
What is your opinion about this?
-
The link is dead, it goes here http://www.whitelistproject.com/
-
I agree with most of what Tom pointed out.
Directories in general are outdated and not many people use them. Thus they have no value and rightly so.
However, this is not true for every industry. There are some animals out there for some industries like ThomasNet (Paid), Designt2Part (Paid), Eng-Tips, Efunda, are all good for manufactures and engineering. The difference here is these sites actually add value to users looking for companies and services.
Additionally, DMOZ.org still seems worth while getting but I wouldn't fret if they don't add you.
Hope that helps
-
The problem is not the client, but the marketing agency I work for. They do link submission to directories and if I want to work there, I have to do it too. I'll have a look in to that list, thank you.
-
Who's the SEO consultant here? You or the client? If they won't listen to your recommendations and want to rely on crap tactics, let them get on with it themselves.
If you must use directories, I would do as your colleague says and only use industry specific ones, or location specific ones. General directories are not only link-farms but they will not be able to pass on strength to your website due to indexing issues.
Check out the SEOMoz Directories list for some of the 'better' ones out there.
-
Thank you but this client really wants directory submission so I have no chance. Can you please answer my question? Thank you.
-
My advice would be not to use any directories at all.
Directories offer very little user value (no real web user uses directories any more - at a push they use very local ones) and consequently they offer very little SEO value. What I have seen consistently since the turn of the year are links coming from directories being completely devalued. It has been a common theme in the Moz forums that people experience ranking drops for homepage keywords, with no apparent penalty. A look at their link profile shows that the majority of their links are coming from directories, pointing to the homepage. They're low quality links and Google has been quite proactive in devaluing directory links on the fly every month or so.
There are infinitely better ways to earn high quality links to your website. Don't bother wasting your time and money with directories and focus your efforts elsewhere. Start creating content that is going to accrue high quality links over a sustained period of time.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Use a domain .com.br helps in SERP for Brazil searchs
Hi, I am from Brazil and here the domains finishs with .com.br my website finish with .com and is http://solaristelecom.com this situation prejudice me in the ranking results of the searchs in Brazil area? Regards, Leandro
Link Building | | lmoraes0 -
A lot of blogs use wordpress or blogspot, are these blogs still useful for SEO in terms of linkbuilding, or should they be avoided?
I am very new to linkbuilding and SEO as a whole, so please forgive my ignorance. Reaching out to bloggers is a common tactic, but I've found a lot of people tend to blog with the assistance of wordpress or blogspot. I was wondering whether these blogs are still useful for SEO or if it is best to avoid them? Thanks in advance, Lewis
Link Building | | Samstore0 -
Thoughts on using the disavow tool for removed links?
Our website has been penalized by Google for the past few months due to unnatural links. We have spent the past 2 months submitting link removal requests to the domain owners with success. However, the Google Webmaster Tools "links to site" has not updated the list. I understand that they update the list of links as they crawl the website, but it has been 6-8 weeks on a lot of them (mostly our biggest offenders). We attempted to send a reconsideration request anyways, hoping Google would see that even though it is still listed, the link isn't actually there. We received a response that it is still in violation, but I believe it is because the webmaster tools links have not updated and perhaps this is what they go off of. Would you recommend submitting these domains to the disavow tool even though our link has already been removed for the past 6-8 weeks? Or even just listing them with the "#" comment tag so they can see they had been removed? Or would you continue waiting for it to update? Of course, we would like the penalty removed as soon as possible and were concerned that the list hadn't removed these websites the past 6-8 weeks our link had been removed. Example: This domain shows we have 3,397 within this website. It was an affiliate that had this URL forwarding to our pages: http://www.binet.lv/go.pl?PID=49276714O2422 . This no longer forwards to our webpage and the affiliate has been expired, but the GWT still shows them at the top of the links list. I also noticed a lot of sites left the links up, but added the nofollow attribute. These are still coming up in the Links list and does not decipher between which do and do not have nofollow. Could the spammy sites with our links as nofollow still be hurting us? Thanks for any help and recommendations!
Link Building | | shopbloc0 -
Why are reciprocal links still being used widely?
Looking at my competitors backlink profiles they all seem to have lots or reciprocal links and banner exchanges etc... I thought that only one way links really had any value. The reciprocal links they do have appear to be pretty spammy but the sites are still ranking well? Should I be adopting reciprocal links and banner exchanges. I know these strategies worked years ago but surely not in 2012?
Link Building | | SamCUK0 -
To list in paid directory or not to list in a paid directory?
Can anyone give a yes or no as to whether paid directory listings are any use from an SEO perspective or is money better spent elsewhere? Thanks!
Link Building | | ebowdublin0 -
Can we submit our website irrelevant directories and resources?
Hey, Can you tell me if it is a good practice to submit our website to a "quality" but an irrelevant web directory? For example, i run article writing service, so it is good to submit my website to a directory that's not about article writing services? Thanks in advance! Mohd
Link Building | | Sizmic0 -
What are the best paid web directories?
I'm not sure if it's worth the money, so first I don't want to try with Yahoo dir, but something a bit cheaper. I have a foreign site, but everything is translated ti english as well. I stucked at te second page for my keyword, so I tought I give this method a try. What do You think?
Link Building | | joo1 -
Anyone have a list of paid directories?
I want to get into some good paid directories, but every list I have found out there is either just a top ten and repeats the same ones or is a list of 500 where I know most are worthless. Has anyone submitted to paid directories that has a list of good ones that are actually worth submitting to?
Link Building | | DanDeceuster0