Do links from a linkdirectory still matter
-
Hi everyone,
I'm checking out some competition for a webshop and i found a website which was quite high in Google for a searchterm, when checking it's backlinks why it was that high in google (His Content was rubbish, so it wasn't that).
I only found out that it has loads of linkdirectory links, does this mean it still matters these kind of links, or does it mean the competition is just rubbish?
Regards,
yannick
-
Just wanted to leave a quick note saying that SEOmoz has upgraded the Link Directory! You can view a post Cyrus wrote with more information about the directory updates and link building via directories at http://www.seomoz.org/blog/seo-link-directory-best-practices
-
I wish we had a vocabulary that could differentiate between the link farm type directories, and the high quality directories. We still use high quality directories, and we use this thought process. If the directory is one we would want the client to be found on, no matter what effect it might have on the sites ranking, and the other sites on the directory are decent quality, then of course we use it.
Local directories (if your client is a local type business) can be very strong. News media sites are great if they offer a directory style listing (with or without follow links).
So high quality directories that are there to serve the purpose of making it easier for viewers to find good quality sites, yes. Low link farm type directories that clearly exist for link purposes only- no.
This may not pan out to be a perfect SEO process ( Matt Cutts did say a link can not hurt you) but we feel long term it is a better and safer process ( Matt didn't say that a bad link profile couldn't hurt you).
-
Depending on the nature of the site (business, cause, informational site, etc), our linkbuilding strategies vary widely. Go for quality no matter what. If the directory is quality and established why not? I'd research directories even closer now that Google has their eyes out but they are still viable.
-
I would say that links from link-directories do still matter! It depends on the directory of course; good directories like dmoz certainly give a site some value whereas spammy directories can hurt your site. You can not say for sure - but a good way to find information on the directory is to see if it will rank for it's title or some copytext put into quotes and go from there. You might also want to check out to which other domains the page on directory links.
It's definitely a two edged sword but to put it short: they still matter.
-
Link directories will probably still matter, some. That value it provides is depending on which directory, how old the link is, the anchor text etc. They haven't matter very much ever though, and after Panda even less.
If you run the URL through SEOmoz' latest toy 'Keyword difficulty' (http://www.seomoz.org/keyword-difficulty) you should get a pretty complete picture of why this page is ranking for that term.
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
-
Best competitor analysis tool comparing my links with competitor links?
Hello All, Can anyone tell me best competitor analysis tool comparing my links with competitor links? Tool which define quality of links either low quality or spammy links etc? Thanks!
Competitive Research | | devdan0 -
Why are my paid vendors not showing on our links?
We pay a hefty amount to site that claim to bring in leads. ie... Cars.com, Edmunds.com, Cargurus, and I also have my dCard (digital business cards) with links to our URL. Why aren't they showing on our PA or DA? Could it be our web host? We have on;y 2 options for web hosts per Acura (a compliance thing) Please help with any thoughts or answers to this. I see many other dealers with strong links who use the same companies. Our site is http://findlayacura.com and thank you for any help. We appreciate it greatly.
Competitive Research | | ModernPallets0 -
Are aboutus.org links good?
Greetings Mozzers, I've posted several clients on aboutus.org sometime ago and it doesn't look like it is showing up on OSE. Its been well over 5 weeks. I have looked on their profile and none of the links are rel="nofollow" is there another thing I can check that would take all the juice away from them? Or does someone know if this is a good place to use? Thanks for any advice and clarification!
Competitive Research | | MonsterWeb280 -
Open Site Explorer Date of Links obtained
Hi is there anyway to compare a competitors profile over two time periods ie, 6 months ago, then today for example. I have the sites within a current campaign, i would like for example to find a competitors back-links they have obtained in the last 6 months. As some of my competitors have 1000s of links to its difficult to see what they have been upto thanks
Competitive Research | | Will_Craig1 -
Two links with the same quality but different effect
Hi, the website I'm working for is loosing rankings for one specific keyword and since there haven't been any bigger onsite changes I assume it's the back links. The company bought some exact anchor text links in the past, so I went through those. One specific one attracted my attention: It's a site wide link which creates over 80% of the back link profile to the specific website. There was only one catch: part of this bought anchor text campaign is another highly targeted anchor text which is not negatively affected by the rankings. Still I didn't like the feel of this so I ran the seomoz keyword difficulty report. And there I discovered an interesting pattern: For keyword A we are the only ones in the top10 with such a high percentage of exact keyword usage. But for keyword B, which didn't loose rankings our top10 competitor have an even more over-optimized keyword usage or much weaker back link profile. So now I wonder if it could actually be the case, that we loose rankings for keyword A since our competitors have a more natural profile, but for Keyword B it has no negative effect due to the worse competition. Thanks in advance for your help!
Competitive Research | | RomiSverige0 -
Certainty or Uncertainty of SEO / Link Building
Hey there I'm new to both SEO and Seomoz. I have this personal site I've been working on SEO wise (slowly since I started learning from 0) and I have reached a point where the only missing thing for me to do is build links. However, the competitors for my site have thousands of links. From all I've read on the web regarding SEO&LinkBuilding, including articles in this site...the old method of spamming links wherever/whenever possible is now being penalized while the practice of manual/hand-built links of higher quality and lesser quantity is rewarded. So I went ahead and approached several linkbuilding companies and one thing that struck me was the level of uncertainty regarding the chances of getting a site to get to the first page. I understand there's factors you cannot predict or control, such as what your competitors are doing on the SEO front...but ultimately, I'm curious as to how do you effectively gauge the possibility of getting to the top page of any keyword combination? Especially when dealing with clients... since apparently whoever 'guarantees' you anything is a fraud or uses blackhat techniques...how do you pitch the 'uncertainty' to the client? Likewise...how do you know if you can make it to the top page or viceversa? Cheers
Competitive Research | | Sotkra0 -
8500+ seomoz errors and still rank one for high traffic keywords
I plugged a competitor into the campaign manager that is ranking #1 for many target keywords like "sprinkler parts" (18k broad, 720 exact) and "sprinklers"(550k broad, 4400 exact) and #2 for "sprinkler"(1mil broad, 8100 exact). This site has over 8500 errors on SEOmoz - I have spent a good deal of time fixing errors on all of our client websites and have gotten them down to 0 errors. I am just wondering if I have been wasting my time and if the errors that SEOmoz reports on even make a difference. How can a site rank for such high traffic keywords when it has 4k duplicate content and 4k duplicate page title errors? The site has 75 linking root domains according to opensiteexplorer. any help on this would be greatly appreciated!
Competitive Research | | Splashme-1391910 -
Should I pursue this LINK?
I can get a link from this site, but it has a DA=39, Dmr=3.37, Dmt=3.39 and a Page Rank=0
Competitive Research | | b4tv0