Directories - Bad or Good for Link Building (Discussion on Penguin)
-
Hello,
I would like to hear everybodies opinion on directories for link building now that penguin is out.
Here's a good background post: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/web-directory-submission-danger
Do you think their out?
How do you still use them?
Which ones do you stick to?
-
Thanks Cyrus. That's close to what my intuition told me. I'll try to keep the niche directories in the 4:1 or 3:1 ballpark.
-
Excellent! Thanks for the further explanation. I knew what I did worked but was not sure if it was short term. I did make the mistake of submitted to a few non editorial directories early on but I will not get any more of those. Industry specific makes the most sense and I have two real good general directories.
I will have to research were else I can get links. I am guessing blogs are huge so we are developing a blog on our website over the next 2 months. Also we are adding social sharing to our content in hopes of getting additional links.
Boo
-
Hi Bob,
Great question. I wrote a post a few months back about this when SEOmoz re-released it's Directory List - most of the advice still applies today:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/seo-link-directory-best-practices
I don't think directories are inherently bad for SEO, although their value has certainly diminished over the years. That said, I generally stay away from "general" directories and stick with niche specific directories. Some general rules to follow:
- Make sure the directory is editorial - if they accept anyone, you don't want to be there.
- Be sure to make directories only a small part of your overall link building effort. An old rule of thumb used to be 2 regular links for every directory link. I might go 4 to 1 just to be safe.
- Be wary of directories that let you choose your own anchor text. Not only are these directories usually lower quality, but over-optimized anchor text can lead to penguin dangers.
- Check the ratio of MozRank to Page Rank. The closer this ratio is to 1, the less likely the directory has been penalized. For example, a directory with a homepage Mozrank of 6, but a PageRank of 1, probably has had an algorithmic or manual action taken against it by Google.
- Niche specific directories are best. If you run a nursing home, try to get in directories of nursing homes.
In short, it's fine to use directories, but be cautious, and use them in moderation. Think of them like sprinkling salt over your larger link building efforts.
-
Bob, your question is irrelevan "How do you get enough links without including some directories" because today it's ALL about quality and not quantity.
Now on a different note based on my experience. We did lots of directories way back and many of them show in the WMT as if they are pointing hundreds of links to my site. These sites are very simple and made to the point of links, they don't use rels properly (next, prev, canonical etc.) so Google thinks I have cross sites links from them - I only want to remove these links these days... Only use directories that you think are serious.
-
Based on results for my "new website" that didn't have but a few links..... and being new to seo for my company....... I highly recommend industry specific directories and some high quality general directories. Not being experienced I may be walking the edge but for a new website it gave our website a very big jump across all SEOmoz factors.
My Domain authority(doubled) and Page Authority (33%) just shot through the roof because I added several new reputable high ranking directories. I also added two or three industry specific links.
Two of the best general directories BOTW.com and Business.com and one industry directory have not been added yet for some reason. . Hopefully those will show up soon and help me a improve a little next month. It has been an exciting journey so far on this new adventure in SEO.
-
with the exception of a few real sites like BBB or yahoo (who does not guarantee inclusion) I would stay away from directories.<<
I like your line of thinking. How do you get enough links without including some directories?
-
no directories provide traffic. google is a directory, why would they want to show crappy directories inside their directory. it's strictly a SEO play and with the exception of a few real sites like BBB or yahoo (who does not guarantee inclusion) I would stay away from directories.
-
sign up due to the potential value of traffic from it<<
Could you give a couple of specific examples or explain this
-
Meny directories are still providing link juice, and it tends to be the least spammy ones.
I would say the best rule of thumb is any directory you would sign up due to the potential value of traffic from it is going to be relitivly safe to go for as it will be providing real value and thus less likly to be crushed by google.
Directories for links sake is more risky.
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
-
My wordpress site generating bad links
Hello Everyone, I have wordpress site Which is from last 20 days generating links like For Example http://www.domainname.com/game/965/wiki/キャラクター図鑑_レアリティ(★★★)_【ID:675】ワッツ・ステップニー htttp://www.domainname.com/nkpghfu_13356_gvgjq_tfjhnkt_jsj_296_82566_673_567_245 This is screenshot of webmaster tools http://prnt.sc/ccwh0e can please any expert check & Tell How this Link i am getting, Also What are steps i need take for removing this Errors, As it is harming my sites Flow As well As Rankings. Thanx in Advance
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | innovativekrishna10 -
Disavowing Affiliate Links - Domain or Actual Affiliate Link?
Hi everyone, Hope you're all having a great day, I have a question in regards to a site which I am about to disavow. Over the past 2 months a certain page of ours has dropped from the 2nd page, all the way to the 7th. I haven't been able to diagnose why, however, yesterday I discovered that a site has been using an Lafitte link on his sidebar, the link is a do-follow. Webmaster tools indicates that this site has linked to us over 24,000 times. I understand that this link could potentially ruin our rankings - however, in terms of disavowing, what is the best approach here? Do I disavow their domain, or do I disavow the actual affiliate link also? The link is placed within an image, once the image is clicked it redirects you to another link for a second then redirects to our money site. We have got in touch with our affiliate program and they have made the link a no-follow, however, we are pretty certain this site is causing issues for us and we want to go ahead and disavow. Thanks, Brett
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Brett-S0 -
What Links to Disavow?
I am looking through my website's link profile that I pulled directly from Google Webmaster Tools. What is the best way to determine the links to disavow? Maybe the Webmaster Tools list is not the best list for this process but I really need to clean up the links that are hurting the site's SEO. Does anyone have any insight?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PartyStore0 -
Link Building: What Can I Reasonably Expect from SEO Firm
Dear Moz Community: I am considering hiring the SEO firm that conducted a web site audit for my company. The audit was very serious and thorough. Out of 400 domains linking to my site, the audit identified 40% as toxic, 45% as suspicious and only 5% as good quality. The SEO firm believes the poor link profile is very much holding back organic ranking and traffic. I am considering signing a six month contract to have them remove the toxic and suspicious links and also, build new quality links. Basically I have the following questions: -The SEO firm hopes to build 5-10 very high quality incoming links to my site per month. Is this a reasonable number? They claim that quantity is much more important than quality. -In the six month campaign, I will be paying for one month of research by the SEO provider before the link building kicks in earnest. In fact I will only get five months of link building despite paying for six months of service. Is this fair? -Is the removal of toxic links and the development of 25-50 new quality links and enough to improve ranking and traffic over six months? The site currently receives 4,000 visitors from organic search results per month.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan1
Note that at the moment the site has only about 20 "quality" links. I would hate to exhaust my budget after six months with no tangible improvement! I would very much like to hear of anyone's experience or input regarding reasonable expectations regarding hiring an SEO firm for link building campaigns. Thanks!!!
Alan0 -
Directory Quality for Citation Building
Hello All, Just started to work on a new clients site that has been hit with multiple google penalties. I was looking at their backlink profile and noticed they have numerous links from what seem to be very low quality directory websites. My question is, when building citations and looking for directories to submit to, what makes one directory more credible then another one? If most of them are just publishing links and business information, why does google consider one credible and the other spammy? Clearly with some it's easy to tell if they are credible or not, but with some it is not as easy. Should you only really be submitting to the best of the best or are some lower lever ones ok too? Have read a few things on this topic, but most is older and just want to hear what people have to say on this today. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Whebb0 -
Links from new sites with no link juice
Hi Guys, Do backlinks from a bunch of new sites pass any value to our site? I've heard a lot from some "SEO experts" say that it is an effective link building strategy to build a bunch of new sites and link them to our main site. I highly doubt that... To me, a new site is a new site, which means it won't have any backlinks in the beginning (most likely), so a backlink from this site won't pass too much link juice. Right? In my humble opinion this is not a good strategy any more...if you build new sites for the sake of getting links. This is just wrong. But, if you do have some unique content and you want to share with others on that particular topic, then you can definitely create a blog and write content and start getting links. And over time, the domain authority will increase, then a backlink from this site will become more valuable? I am not a SEO expert myself, so I am eager to hear your thoughts. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | witmartmarketing0 -
PDF for link building - avoiding duplicate content
Hello, We've got an article that we're turning into a PDF. Both the article and the PDF will be on our site. This PDF is a good, thorough piece of content on how to choose a product. We're going to strip out all of the links to our in the article and create this PDF so that it will be good for people to reference and even print. Then we're going to do link building through outreach since people will find the article and PDF useful. My question is, how do I use rel="canonical" to make sure that the article and PDF aren't duplicate content? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobGW0 -
Are breadcrumbs any good and Should I insert links on the Item descriptions and specs?
Hi All, In my e-commerce site in each product page I have the breadcrumbs on top which show the root categories that lead to this product. However, I saw once that Google even if you use several anchors from page A to page B Google treats only/mainly the first anchor. This means that inserting contextual links on the product text, the product description, that leads to the category page (which is an important landing page) is irrelevant/ambiguous since the link is already in the breadcrumb on top. What do you think? Should I insert contextual links on the item description or is it worthless? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeytzNet0