Directories

[Brian Turner]

The trouble is that too many free directory listings can potentially put you in "bad neighbourhoods". Seen some chatter on this about sites going the volume route inviting Google to delist them.

Maybe true, maybe not, but I've personally only submitted disposable websites to mass directory submissions, and the results have been good for MSN and Yahoo! but little or nothing from Google.

In fact, less than 1 year after the first wave I did, one of the websites I had submitted was struggling to reach PR1.

[mbm]

I do not have good experience with the directory listings.
There are enormous number of directories, most of them useless I think. Their big number just devaluate the links value. Similarly like the links in the forum signatures Google is probably just ignoring the links from such directories. Only one from thousand might be worth to apply. DMOZ, YAHOO and similar of course are extremely valuable, but not the majority of directories.

[altyfc]

Originally Posted by Brian Turner

I think directories are certainly an interesting part of an overall SEO strategy - but for actual marketing purposes, I think most directories are likely to offer little direct traffic - the benefits as mainly from lots of links which help raise your own site's profile in natural search.

2c.

Of course this statement was made a year ago. How valid do you think that is today? In particular, the bit about directory links helping improve your profile... do you think that's valid or could it actually be the reverse? What does Google want from us these days?

[Brian Turner]

I think links from mid-tier directories may be useful, but that links from bigger name directories probably count little - I have a sneaking suspicion that when Google previously tried killing PR to directory sites, the actual solution they hit upon was to simply not parse PR from any of the larger ones that could be perceived as selling links, let alone PR.

Not sure about the mid-tier ones, but periodically (ie, once a year) submit a range of sites to a range of them, but tracking their actual impact on Google is difficult.

Another point about directories - a number of even established directories often have very low PR on their inner pages (ie, less than 1), and some internal pages aren't even cached, so these issues are definitely worth checking out before submission.

I actually had a list set up earlier this year, which included a range of top tier directories, but after running checks on internal PR and page cache, realised I probably wasn't going to get much return on my money.

[cloudy]

Don't put all your eggs in one basket. Do directories by all means, but do other things too such as articles. Free classified ad sites are worth a go too. Backpage Ads helped us a lot, but sadly no longer take overseas adverts.