Link DIrectories - Is it a Good Idea with recent Panda Updates
-
Yo!
I have been doing a tonn of research on a few of my top competitors and have noticed that a decent percentage of their links are from link directories. Most of these directories seem organized and the links on the pages are relevant to the selected category. These pages offer both free link submission and a paid feature link submission.
My question is that is it a good idea to submit my site to these directories with the recent Panda update(s). I have read a bit about it, but still do not fully grasp the overall picture of it.
Any thoughts or suggestions?
-
Hi guys, some good answers above, however in regards to Panda I do not believe link building is directly connected. Are links from Panda hit sites as valuable as they used to be? That is still being debated and I am yet to see any clear tests on it. Although commons sense tells me links from pages Google deems poor should have less value!
However you can read a little about it on question 3 here: http://www.sugarrae.com/link-development/link-building-with-the-experts-2011-edition/ (although it is worth reading the whole article!)
-
what happens if after your article what got a couple of links, you still dont rank...what then?
Then the article is probably not as good as it needed to be. It's then time to figure out where you missed.
-
Ask those who did link to the article what made it stand out to them.
-
Ask other experts on the same topic what information they would find helpful enough to cause them to want to link to an article.
-
Ask yourself "how can I improve?". Could you add images or videos or graphics? If you already have those items, can they be improved?
-
Can you add more details? Or perhaps summarize points better? Can you tie in to current events which would make the article more relevant to what's happening in the world today?
-
Is the article supported by experts? What evidence do you offer to support the article?
Look at a great SEOmoz article you may have linked to and measure the differences in quality and presentation.
Millions of articles are read every day. If you wrote a quality article, and I mean a truly great article, and others are not linking to it then either you need to publicize it more (tweets, etc.) or you picked a topic with such a narrow focus that it will take a lot of time to build links for it.
@Grotbos, there is no harm to submitting your site to FREE directories outside of the loss of time.
You are right that we have all seen sites boosted by these directories in the past. We have also seen many of those site owners in this Q&A site with the standard "Help! My site rankings dropped and I don't understand why" questions after their links have been devalued. Most directory links do not offer any value to users. SEs knows this and are adjusting accordingly.
-
-
Also @Ryan and techbattery. Techbatteries question regarding panda has also not been answered clearly. Could submitting a site to these directories have a detrimental effect due to the panda update from Google?
-
Hi Ryan
I agree with you 100%, but that is a bit easier said than done, even once you have written this great article to find people to link to it is the next challenge (A big one). And what happens if after your article what got a couple of links, you still dont rank...what then? I agree with your perception of directories 100%, but if google still values them (which in many cases it looks like it might), should we just neglect them all in all? We obviously do not want to prioritize directories over quality content, but the questions is does google still value those links? I would love to know this from someone who has run an experiment, as I do believe directories can sometimes be helpful to increase number of links and get good anchor texts. If someone could give me proof (besides the user argument) that directories don't help at all, I would appreciate it.
-
Link directories are a poor method of link building. Ask yourself, as a user, do you like link directories? Do you use any of the ones on the list? Do you know anyone who does? If the answer to all these questions is "no", then why would you want to spend time and money to be added to one of these directories?
Take all the time and effort and write the best article ever on a single topic. I notice your user name is techbattery so I will use a battery example. Write an article on cell phone or ipad batteries. Make the article relevant to anyone who owns one of those devices. "Best Ipad Battery for you" could be the title. Talk about different battery types, charge life, shelf life, can you overcharge them, why do they get so warm/hot, etc. Make it an article that everyone who owns an iPad will want to read. Let the world know about the article.
Ideally everyone who sells or owns an iPad will WANT to link to your article. The value you will get from that article will exceed anything you get from your link directory efforts.
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
-
Relaunching a site that has had thousands of posts linking to the same 20 articles. How to properly setup internal linking?
I'm in the process of relaunching a music news site (www.prefixmag.com) that once did quite well in search (over a million monthly search visits in its prime). The site got crushed by Panda, etc. and we stopped updating it. I'm starting to do more research but one thing that I noticed was we have modules in the right rail (desktop) that are found on all of our article pages that point to the same posts. (Edit: Added attachment. The links in the right rail under Editor Picks, Features, News, Media, etc. are found on every page of the site). In other words, we have thousands of posts that all link to the same 20 or so articles. Should we not do this if we're not trying to emphasize these posts in Google? Assuming this is the case, what is the proper way to do internal linking? Do we simply setup a sitemap and link to it? I'm hoping to have the thousands of articles we've published over the years have a chance to rank in search again. Also, we have a number of posts that are thin in content should those pages not be submitted in the sitemap? Thanks in advance! 2KmX0
Link Building | | leggo0 -
Are followed links from these high authority domains any good?
Hi Mozzers, I have a link building question, in 2 parts. I am in the UK. We have a large local directory network over here which involves some high authority national news domains. Basically, you get a citation for free but if you go "featured" as well as the benefit of being returned top for keyword searches in the directories, buried under a tab on your page are deep links to your website, and they are followed. What are the risks/benefits of this? Are followed links from other high authority domains like Visual.ly and Behance worth it? They are easy to get and I've always believed an easy link usually isn't a good link. Thanks in advance!
Link Building | | Silkstream0 -
What is a good ratio of total links to linking root domains?
Is 100 total links for every linking domain too high? I suppose I could also look at ratios of sites that are doing well in the rankings.
Link Building | | ProjectLabs0 -
No inbound links ?
Hello I just got SeoMoz, started the whole thing and compared myself to my competitor. I'm writing for mayor national newspapers in latin america, been featured a few major sites, and got a whole lot of links directing to muy site. I recently moved domains about a month ago from rxmagaizne.mx to rxmagazine.co. Is this the reason i'm not seeing any links ? ibIPY.png
Link Building | | timi-do0 -
Why aren't links to my site from YouTube showing up in my link reports?
Our company is paying for a service to create hundreds of videos/month for us with links back to our primary domain. If I go to YouTube I see the videos with the links, but YouTube does not show in my link reports. Why not?
Link Building | | jtroia0 -
Is purchasing internal page links from directories worth it?
Since data suggests that only the first link on a page to a singular URL is counted, are the deep links purchased from directories worth the money/provide any value?
Link Building | | mj7750 -
Good Link VS Bad Bounce Rate what wins?
Hi all, this is only my second question on SEOmoz since becoming a member over three months ago so sorry if it’s a little bit basic. As small part of one of our websites promotion we have been giving really good advice on good authority blogs/forums related to our product website. One of the sites we have offered advice on is from a US website and we added a link to our guide for the problem to our UK site. In hindsight the product solution is not branded the same in the US so our bounce rate is over 90%. So the question is when is a link from a related site not worth the high percentage bounce rate?
Link Building | | jtay1230