Why is Business.com a valuable link when they are all nofollow?
-
Earlier today, I received a $50 off coupon for a Business.com listing. Back when I was really learning about directories, lots of people recommended getting one of these listings because editors actually review it to make sure the website linked is of good quality. Even the SEOmoz Directory Guide regards it as a good link.
Now, it seems like every outbound link from Business.com has a 'nofollow' tag right when they link to the target website. Furthermore, the actual business listing doesn't even link to the website! Let me take, for example, web design companies:
http://www.business.com/internet/web-design/
This directory has tons of 'nofollow' links. On top of that, if you take any of the companies listed and do a search for their business page, the business page doesn't even have a link to their website! That doesn't exactly seem like it's worth $300 a year...
Any chance there is something I'm missing here? I'm not fully understanding this, it seems.
-
As you already know Yahoo directory, business.com and DMOZ are sites that require a review process and in the first two a large financial investment that prevents spammers from taking advantage of low hanging fruit. They have a do follow attribute when it's part of the directory not the ads. Google trusts these sites.
-
Hi Echolls,
You probably were looking at the sponsors. Those are paid links which are deemed as nofollow. If you scroll down to the directory listings you'll see the follow links with those are people who paid to be in the directory.
Example:
<div class="g3-dl-block">
<a href="http://www.digitalbrands.com" target="_blank">Digital Brands Inc.a><p> Web development firm that creates online and mobile brands in competitive, high-volume verticals. p><a class="g3-dl-prettylink" href="http://www.digitalbrands.com" target="_blank"> http://www.digitalbrands.coma>div>
As far as the value, that comes down to industry. In our industry the major directory is ThomasNet however you only see them in SERP's occasionally on really low traffic keywords, but their site is highly linked, very authoritive and used throughout our industry. So the value of the link is not just SEO but also leads. Picking up 1 job from them can pay for itself. Make sure you not only evaluate the SEO value but the marketing value of each potential listing.
Hope that makes sense.
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
-
Disavowing Links
I need some advice... I've noticed our link profile has increased with many comments links --- something I certainly have not pursued manually. I'm new to disavowing links. However, before I go ahead and disavow them, I'd like to ask how harmful these links are and would you recommend this is something I can do myself (relatively novice SEO) or if you'd recommend someone who could do this for a reasonable cost. In one instance, the link from this comment thread is with the anchor text, "porn"... Certainly not something we want to rank for, haha! I look forward to your advice
Link Building | | LukeBTDT0 -
GWT Lists URLs with links to my site, but those URLs don't have links to my site
There are a number of URLs that show up for my website in Webmaster Tools as having links to my site when in fact they don't. I know this to be a fact because I actually wrote some of the sites that Google is saying are linking to my site and I know there isn't any links on the specific pages to that site. For example, the site in question is: https://www.liftproducts.com/ As an example, Google is saying that about 100 URLs from https://www.lift-tables.net/ are linking to it when, I'm fairly confident that there is only 1 link to it found here: https://www.lift-tables.net/info.php?countrytabs=3 Yet Google says links exist on this (and many more) page: https://www.lift-tables.net/liftproducts/max-lift/lpt4w-030-48.php I thought at first it might have been due to linking to a image file directly instead of locally hosting it, but after checking the source, that's not the case. I am also seeing this type of non-linking being reported on sites I have no clue what they are. For example, some Spanish site about tandem bicycles is being listed as linking to liftproducts.com: http://206-225-85-34.dedicated.abac.net/tandem/inc Yet I can find no evidence of an actual link existing. Am I missing something here? Any insight of why this is happening and how I can clean up my link signature would be appreciated.
Link Building | | Nivik231 -
Link Building
I'm having difficulty creating a solid link base. I would prefer to only have links that are on relevant sites that are likely to drive traffic rather then just adding my company page to site directories. I've checked out the whiteboard Friday edition of link building and have also used the new Moz analytics that helps recommend sites to link to, but all the recommendations were directories. So, could anyone hold my hand and guide me through the world of Link building? Your help, as always, is much appreciated. Thanks everyone Dave
Link Building | | david.smith.segarra0 -
Linking Analyse
Hello, Im doing a research on the link-building analyze of 2 sites. What I want to know is whats the most important fact to analyze in the Open Site Explorer. And also can I see all the links connected to those sites in the Open Site Exporer or should I use other program to verify that? Tks in advance! Pedro Menezes Pereira
Link Building | | PedroM0 -
Cannot see links
Hi there, could please anybody advice on this issue. I got some links during last 2-3 moths but cannot see them in http://www.opensiteexplorer.org How long it usually takes for links to appear there? Does it mean the links doesn't work for google? All the links are good from the SEO point of view.
Link Building | | fleetway0 -
Internal Linking - 100 plus links
Hi Everyone, I have a question of how the on-page links are being counted. Say you have a page with a warning of having too many on page links (100+). How are all of these links counted? Let's say there are only 5 links on that page. Do the links on each of those pages count too and so on and so forth? I just want to make sure I have wrapped my head around this correctly. Thanks!
Link Building | | dirigodev0 -
Link to those that link to you? Worthwhile?
We have thousands and thousands of sites that link to a domain we are working on, many with low page authority and high domain (bloggers, forum posts, etc). Has anyone experimented with linking to the pages that link to you (not from your site) but from other means in an effort to boost their quality? I'm not sure what method we would use, maybe some relevant blog comments or social votes. But curious if this could be an effective method.
Link Building | | iAnalyst.com0 -
Links on portfolio with nofollow?
Hey guys, everyone know that to get better PR you need quality one way links.. my question is should I put nofollow to the links to the websites on my portfolio? since those website have the link to my page? ideas?
Link Building | | onyx8080