Link Directories - Good or bad?
-
I've just done a search on open site explorer for a competitors site that has is ranked number one. Most of their highest authority backlinks are from link directories. I just read an article on here saying to stay away from directories that state things like 'seo friendly directory'. Many of my competitors links are from these kind of sites! Will it harm me to get links from such sites? It seems to be working for my competitors.... confused.com!
-
It depends. Directories are not all bad. Think about it beyond the SEO perspective - any business should list itself in directories that would bring customers. One thing you should never do is pay for a directory listing - that's a paid link and we all know how Google feels about those.
Regarding your competitors, there are so many other factors that could be contributing to their rankings (domain age, keywords in URL, site architecture, unique linking domains, quality of on-site content, social media sharing) that I would not consider the directories as a major source of juice.
-
"good mix of link directories and natural links"
Exactly, that's what I was missing in my first reply.
You're still going to need those legitimately earned backlinks to go within your link portfolio. Just replying on 50,000 directory submissions might get you a burst up front, but that will fade away very, very quickly.
-
I believe the link directories are fine within reason. Don't rely only on link directories but submitting to them I have found did any harm. I think if you have a good mix of link directories and natural links you will be fine. I would avoid low page rank directories.
-
I am yet to find any harm in these (assuming you don't post to ones that carry bad links, ie. outbound links to gambling sites, xxx sites, etc).
If link directories were so bad, how come some of them are as respected by Google as they are (PR7/8/9's).
Just don't go overboard, and don't expect a whole lot from them. Get your keywords right, and use approx. 10 different keywords/phrases throughout. Also throw in your brand name as a set of anchor text.
So, let's say you found a package to submit to 1,000 directories. Chop that into 10 different anchor text's (max, and 10 might be pushing it), so you'll now get approx. 100 links to different pages of your site with different anchor texts. And don't forget to use your brand name for 100 of those.
Like you said, every time I do research on competitor's backlinks, they always, and I means always, have thousands of links in link directories, and are top 3 in the SERP's. So I have found it hard to believe that it's a bad practice, even though every SEO guru on the planet will try and tell you otherwise.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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
-
We are moving to HTTPS and wanted to know if our link building efforts were in vain or will the link juice pass to HTTPS?
We are switching to HTTPS and want to make sure the links we've gotten in the past will still transfer since they are pointing to HTTP? I'd hate to go back through and ask people to please add an s to the link.
Link Building | | bryant25560 -
Are CPAN (perl modules distributed hosting) links bad?
In the past, we contributed to CPAN and have a lot of links from mirror sites as a result. These are legitimate links but I'm wondering if they are holding us back. For those that aren't familiar, CPAN hosts code modules that are freely distributed for Perl programming. The code library is hosted on many mirror sites across the web in an effort to distribute the load of requests for modules when they're installed. The page that exists across multiple sites links a team member's name to our website. For example, http://cpan.mirrors.uk2.net/authors/00whois.html, http://ukdebian.mirror.anlx.net/CPAN/authors/00whois.html and http://www.mirrorservice.org/sites/cpan.perl.org/CPAN/modules/by-authors/00whois.html. Same content, different website. Thoughts? Is it worth pursing or disavowing?
Link Building | | knowmad0 -
Is building a Link Network from scratch a good idea?
My SEO agency are suggesting that they will build a Link network from scratch by buying domains and building blog sites on them. All sites that link to my site would in theory be 'clean' and as we build up their authority we increase the value of the links to my site. One of the upsides is taht we would have complete control of all the links. This does sound a bit spammy but in theory could it work?
Link Building | | Johnnyh
Any input is much appreciated. Regards John0 -
Does the twitter link shortening service reduce link value (strength).
We have many SEO team members that use Twitters link shortening service, will this reduce the strength or value of the page to be indexed? I ask this cause the displayed URL isn't the actual page it is going to and would like to make appropriate changes to improve our company's SEO For example: http://t.co/zHu8vIcjPx is going to page http://4wheelonline.com/atv/QuadBoss.107503 Thank you for your assistance.
Link Building | | WebRiverGroup0 -
Penguin Recover: Remove links vs Burry Links
The best is to do both. However with those with limited resources, would building more links with branded and naked URL anchor links be a better solution than painstakingly asking every webmaster to remove links.
Link Building | | reprisemedia10 -
What is the best company to use when building links to feature on multiple directories online?
I am looking to build links for my clients who are in a very competitive industry 'airport parking', can you advise where I can submit their URL to generate good quality links without being penalised?
Link Building | | shami0 -
Buying links
I have 2 websites to pay monthly to gain links from, number 1 is on the homepage of a directory, it has a PA of 90 and DA of 88.
Link Building | | myloseo
the link will be on the right hand side along with 55 other featured sites.
these links are there throughout the whole site. number 2 is from a website with 20 max sponsored links on a page and will be one of the sub pages on the site with a PA of 74. How valuable if any would these links be? My current pa on the site i wish to send the links to is 26 Can i expect my PA to go up by much? Also i currently have 317 links from 7 root domains on my site will this effect the rank of the paid links? Thanks in advance0 -
Link Building: No linked to content in industry
Hello, I'm doing link buidling for a small ecommerce niche. There's no resource content in the niche (looking at OSE Top Content) that has attracted backlinks (on any sites) How should this effect what resource content I should create. Thanks!
Link Building | | BobGW0