How many Directory Web sites still active?
-
After a long period, near about 6 years I want to know what kind of Web Directories still active? Is that kind of Directory links help SERP for gaining Ranks?
-
Haha thanks. I thought all the CAPITALS and italics made me sound a bit crazy so thanks for the vote of confidence my SEO Moz brother. I hope the OP doesn't waste his precious money on dodgy directories.
-
I have tried to upvote your response ten times, unfortunately works only once. Spot on.
-
No way. Avoid at all costs. Directories are completely useless for linkbuilding in 2018.
DIRECTORIES DO NOT WORK IN 2018 - you will harm your site. Directories are not the same as local citations. Citation building is very important for a new site and you can do this manually with Moz Local or Get it done for yuou by Whitespark. They are pretty cheap and do a decent job.
And I'm not just being a nay-sayer I've actually tested about 30 out all pointing to homepage and deep pages inside my site and it harmed them or didn't make any difference at all. They were mostly paid and all used to have a good reputation but it's a bad strategy. The only one that's remotely decent is called Joe Ant - that's showing up as a green light but it's referring no traffic at all so google's likely just ignoring it.
And in the future as things move on - more and more directories are going to get de-indexed and having links from de-indexed sites hurts your rankings. I did my little test in January this year so it's bang up to date and I spent £1,350 on paid directories ranging from £5 a pop to £20 to some that were £250 and they were national and local and none of them worked. I ended up having to disavow them.
There are much better ways to get your first few links: Linkbuilding to stand the test of time and how to get your first 50 links
Also there's a great little tool called SEO Profiler - it's super cheap and has lots of bugs and it's pretty crappy compared with Moz or the big boys but I use it for three things: 1) top three position benchmarking, 2) it has a great schema builder that creates J-son and schema for you by magic and 3) it has this exhaustive list of 'starter backlinks' that is a great place to look for link opportunities that are nice and easy if you've got a new site or are starting out.
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
-
How Does Google Treat Scapper Sites?
I have seen several sites that have data or some type of information about a website. Often the site appears to be trying show the value of a site. How does Google treat the links this scrapper type sites give? Should these types of links be ignored or should they be disavowed? Here is an example: http://www.sitetracer.com/www.tourexperience.com
Link Building | | Firestarter-SEO0 -
Does link wheel still work ?
I'd like to ask if link wheel still work ,if yes, when i can see results?
Link Building | | engmtamous0 -
Subdomain, Subdirectory or New Site?
Hi, we are currently exploring a new business sideline to our normal business (we are an emergency property & auto locksmith service). Our site has been established since 2005 (ish) - lockcity.co.uk The new sideline will also be another roadside emergency service but has nothing to do with keys/locks. In our marketing, we will be explaining that our new service is a trademark of Lock City, which will help customers understand why a Lock City van will be arriving. It doesn't make sense for us to have another page on the lock city web site to advertise this service, so wondered if you can recommend if I make a sub domain or create a new site? I understand that I am starting again with a new site, so the subdomain seems more favourable at the moment - but will this leak link juice from our existing business? Looking forward to some expert advice! Many thanks Regards, Abi
Link Building | | LockCity0 -
Shopping comparison sites for ecommerce Seo
Does anyone use shopping comparison sites to drive traffic to an ecommerce site? If so does that improve your organic ranking or result in the first page being dominated by comparison sites?
Link Building | | DavidLenehan0 -
What are the best back links for a review site?
This is specifically for reviews for web hosting or VOIP services. Very technical. Where should I look for sites to get backlinks from?
Link Building | | Aqua0 -
Are my new resource sites worthless?
I have ended up with several hundred sites which I purchased off the seo company I use as they went belly up. I purchased them as I had spent a small fortune buying links for the years and I thought that if they went under all my links would be lost. When they transferred the sites into my accounts in go daddy the owners names changed to one owner! Therefore google either know that I own them or at the very least know that only a few people own them as I had four go daddy accounts. Previously they were all registered to different people. The registrar details have since been changed to various owners but I guess the damage is done. I have gone from pos3 pg1 to pos3 pg2. I ranked highly for lots of terms and they have all dropped. I don’t want to be using black hat techniques and my intention was to continue to build content on these sites with a view to adding links to other relevant sites in the future. Not all of them link to me and they do link to lots of other sites that the seo company did work for To be honest my only concern short term was not to loose the links. Now I feel the links are considered worthless by google and I don’t know if I should keep the sites or throw them away! I think all the sites need redesigning and updating and this is what I intended to do. However now that google have seen that they once were owned by one person have they become worthless?
Link Building | | draeseo0 -
Backlinks from PR sites not showing in Open Site Explorer
Hi, Over the last year I have used a range of different PR sites to post news articles that link back to various pages on my site. However, barely any show up as link backs on Open Site Explorer, neither follow nor nofollow links. Can anyone explain why this is and whether or not the dofollow links count towards SEO if they are not picked up by OSE?
Link Building | | pugh0 -
Should we focus on Directory Submissions
When reviewing our competitors links in Open Site Explorer I noticed that many of them have directory links. We are an online retailer of gourmet food gifts. So should we focus some of our link building efforts on directory submissions?
Link Building | | agolomb0