How many Directory Links Do You Need?

[Joelt]

We all know the importance of getting quality links.
I just spent the day adding one of my sites to free directories with a decent Page Rank. Does each directory link add value to your link campaign? Do search engines count directories as quality links. Is it necessary to get as many links to directories as you can?
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Joelt

[DVDsPlusMore]

Originally Posted by Joelt

We all know the importance of getting quality links.
I just spent the day adding one of my sites to free directories with a decent Page Rank. Does each directory link add value to your link campaign? Do search engines count directories as quality links. Is it necessary to get as many links to directories as you can?
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Joelt

Great question. I just went through a similar exercise a few weeks ago and can share my experience. From what I have seen and learned, not all directories are of equal value (by a long stretch).

First, some will take your listing and yet never list you or provide feedback. A black hole of effort, if you will, or perhaps a mechanism for collecting email addresses? (Hint: create a dedicated email address for this effort).

Others will list you, but veil your link behind a script that does not share any ranking. You might get some traffic, but it doesn't help your ranking within Google. Others will use tags to discourage search engines from following links (like yours) found on the page.

Still others will insist on a reciprocal link. While fair in concept, it feels risky to me since Google frowns on exchanges where there's little/no value to your user. Your mileage may vary :-)

My best listings have come from scouring this site -- http://www.isedb.com/html/Web_Directories/ They have a great list and allow feedback from happy and unhappy webmasters. I also had good luck here -- http://www.webproworld.com/viewforum.php?f=34 Many directory owners post here so there's good accountability.

Good luck! You are trying something that requires effort but can/will work to a certain extent. Don't lose sight of the other things you should be doing -- this is just one approach amongst many.

Best,

James @ DVDsPlusMore

[sfowler]

If they want money, forget them! If they want a reciprocal link, give it to them, but check if their link shows up. If not, dump them after a suitable period of time.

[howabout]

Here here to James's comment. This is just a small part of what you need to be doing. Don't get too caught up in it all.

[greeneagle]

howabout,

I agree, I have never run a linking program on one of my Sites, yet I get several Google Alerts a week that indicate they have recognized new links that are being picked up organically.

Ken

[mgillis]

I've had both success and nada from directory listings.

I am employed in 2 ways currently.

The primary employment is for a software company. When we launched the new product, new website, whole new marketing campaign, I scoured the web looking for ANY place to list/submit. The previous site was not optimized in any way and was literally a blank page when it came to the engines. It helped a bit to get started, but not substantially, and there is a huge gap between the number of directories that we are listed in and the number that drive traffic. What drives traffic to this site is the marketing alliance that we are creating with like-minded companies, major search engine results and PPC programs.

The secondary employment is helping small businesses (usually family or independantly run) optimize their simple pages for search in certain areas. Here is where directory listings help most, but I am extremely picky in where I put these companies. I look for places that specialize in what they are offering, I look for regional directories as most of these companies only offer their services within a certain area. So far I've gotten and kept all of these companies on page one of the majors without ever submitting to the majors.

Basically, in my experience blindly or mass-submitting to the many directories out there really isn't helping. One targeted listing is worth 20 blind submits.

Good luck!

[cbp]

How many links do you need from Directories?...

If you want to rank higher than Google for the search term 'search engine', you will never have enough.

If you want to rank higher than the local 'mom & pop' store for a non-competitve term, then a couple of links should be enough.

CBP

[sfowler]

A lot of them are Java, or otherwise worthless. I am trying to get a list together of the links that work. They cost nothing but a few minutes of your time.

[OneMoreBite]

I don't know if there is a "rule" as to how many directories is best. The important places are obvious, such as Google, Yahoo, etc. Dmoz is nice, if you can get them to look at you. ;-)

The best way to get noticed by the search engines is to write and post articles in your subject at places like http://www.ezinearticles.com

Kathryn

[Joelt]

Thanks for the feedback. What about directories with a PR of 6 or more. Wouldn't search engines's see that as a back-link from a high ranked site? Or do they differentiate regular sites from directories?

[OneMoreBite]

I don't know if there is a "rule" as to how many directories is best. The important places are obvious, such as Google, Yahoo, etc. Dmoz is nice, if you can get them to look at you. ;-)

The best way to get noticed by the search engines is to write and post articles in your subject at places like http://www.ezinearticles.com

Kathryn

[sfowler]

The directory home page may have a pR of 6, but by teh time you have drilled down to a sub-sub-sub-category, it will probably only have a PR of 1 on that page.

[Artyom]

Well, my experience tells me that it really depands on your site topic. If it's profit or non profit, if you have a huge competiion or your site topic is really unique. You better have unique non-profit site to get good traffic from directories (or I'd say any traffic at all);-)

If you look at any directories stracture you'll see they mostly contains two parts - free and chargable. You ask about directories with high PR? Well, only BIG directories have such high page rank and it's obvious, if you'll be listed among hundreads other sites your chances to get any traffic is zero nomatter how good your title and description. So here we go - chargeable part...Hm...At this point you start guessing if you can afford to spend several hundreads a year for a chargeable placement at BIG directory...My suggestion is simple - don't you ever spend money on placing your ad a general directories for fee. What I'm saying is if you run web development site place your site ad for fee at web design / web masters dedicated directory only!

My logic is simple as long as a start point for many people is a Search Engine it's likely they will find a directory dedicated to, let's say, web development first then any particular website which offers this service (it's easier for directories to get high ranking - a lot of target content, huge amount of pages) So, surfer finds a directory at SEPRS goes there and....you see? If you place your ad (bunner, text ad) at this direcory (dedicated to some particular topic) you chances to be seen by this visitor are much much higher then if you place your ad for fee at general directory.

Bottom line - it makes sense to pay for ad at target directory only.

[Conficio]

Originally Posted by sfowler

A lot of them are Java, or otherwise worthless. I am trying to get a list together of the links that work. They cost nothing but a few minutes of your time.

What do you mean by that? Can you point to a Java example or to another worthless directory?

Thanks

K<o>

[theiceman]

Originally Posted by cbp

How many links do you need from Directories?...

If you want to rank higher than Google for the search term 'search engine', you will never have enough.

If you want to rank higher than the local 'mom & pop' store for a non-competitve term, then a couple of links should be enough.

CBP

Yes, but if you are listed under a category in that search engine, like "wedding photographers", wouldn't that be help you for that search phrase?

ice

[Lambo V12]

Artyom,

That is an interesting idea about advertising on a specific directory.....

Have you had any luck doing this???

Thanks,

KJF

[Lambo V12]

Originally Posted by Artyom

Bottom line - it makes sense to pay for ad at target directory only.

That sounds like a great idea.....

Have you had any experience with this?

Thanks,

KJF

[cbp]

cbp wrote:
How many links do you need from Directories?...
If you want to rank higher than Google for the search term 'search engine', you will never have enough.
If you want to rank higher than the local 'mom & pop' store for a non-competitve term, then a couple of links should be enough.
CBP


Yes, but if you are listed under a category in that search engine, like "wedding photographers", wouldn't that be help you for that search phrase?

Of course it will help.
The original question of this thread was:

How many links do you need from Directories?...

There is no straight answer... if you are in competitive area, then there will never be enough. If you are in a non-competitive area, not many will be needed to rank well.

CBP

[chabbs]

As an owner of a directory I can only say that directories should be part of any marketing strategy. It's usually a good place to start with when marketing a brand new site. Directories that do not have cgi redirects are better choices because they give you one way links to your site. Most directories update their indexes regularly with fresh listings and newly added categories and that keeps the spiders coming back regularly. Which is great for new sites.

Q: How many links from directories?
A: It should be an on going process. Submit regularly to directories and continue building your presence on the web.

Q: Does each directory link add value to your link campaign?
A: If the directory has a direct link to your site with no cgi redirect then you will benefit from it. A direct link will pass pr to your site and that will add value. Sometimes with directories there is a trade off between pr and traffic. The deeper you get in the subcategories the more specific the category and the more relevant the listings. For example Entertainment » Music » Music Artists » Ashlee Simpson. The subcategory Ashlee Simpson will probably have little or no pr but the chances of that category coming up in Google results are greater because you now have a category that is specific to Ashlee Simpson giving greater weight on the keyword Ashlee Simpson. What ends up happening is that a site will get indirect traffic from a search engine. This is especially good for sites selling products as the directory acts like a filter and passes through people who are interested in buying that product, helping the site owners with their conversion ratios.

Q: Do search engines count directories as quality links?
A: If you've submitted to a directory that maintains the categories and has listings that are relevant to that category then the search engines will count it as a quality link. Avoid sites or directories that have all kinds links on the page that are not relevant to each other. Yes directory links can be quality links.

Q: Is it necessary to get as many links to directories as you can?
A: It should be an on going process. Submitting to directories not only helps in your link campaign but also helps with your presence on the web.

I believe that paying for a submission to a directory has its advantages and is worth the money. Obviously I'm talking about quality directories. Do a little research on the directory before paying the money and you decide if it's worth it.

I hope this info helps a little. Good luck.

[mySunSite]

I see GreenEagle has mentioned that he has Google Alerts for new links - how do you do that?

Anyway, if anyone here is looking for a free directory, I've got one here at http://www.mysunsite.com/The_News/Ne...ctory_Listing/

[theiceman]

Originally Posted by cbp

How many links do you need from Directories?...

If you want to rank higher than Google for the search term 'search engine', you will never have enough.

If you want to rank higher than the local 'mom & pop' store for a non-competitve term, then a couple of links should be enough.

CBP

Isn't what matters, as far as relevence, the category your link is listed under on the search engines? Wedding photographer websites listed under "Wedding photographers" on any search engine would be relevent, wouldn't it?

ice

[Artyom]

Originally Posted by Lambo Bull Rider

Artyom,

That is an interesting idea about advertising on a specific directory.....

Have you had any luck doing this???

Thanks,

KJF

Well.. here is the most recent case. Among regular web site design, we do adult web design as well (I hope I'm not shocking anyone who knows me at this forum:-))) So, we have a special site for adult web design services - http://envisionextadult.com and we run a chargeable ad at
http://www.webmastervault.com/design.shtml So far we have a very quality traffic from this site and as you see he is a pretty visible by a number of adult web design related keywords at Google.

Anyway it's really upto you if you have a budget for such an approach. Like every directory has its own prices for such ad. What industry do you work in if it's not top secret of course;-)

[Tropical]

I have to big up http://www.webproworld.com . It is because of these guys that my site got some sort of attention and ranking google. Thanks webproworld.


http://www.freewebs.com/successfuldating/

[AlexDP]

Originally Posted by cbp

If you want to rank higher than Google for the search term 'search engine', you will never have enough.

Don't want to argue with you cbp but the first term on Google for search engine is SearchEngineWatch. Yahoo list temselves first followed by Google but I take your point. It depends on how competitive your keywords are.

Alex

[arpecop]

"spendind all day" is really good think
I had not nerves to do something so much time
and you are not waste your time there will be no minuses for your sites
keep good working
excuse my bad english

[Gary Golden]

Really if you think about it the PR on a directory is important to an extent, a high PR ranking is no guarentee of visitors as I have seen high PR pages that only show 20 or 30 links so what good is it if there site is not seen either.

Another important factor is the keywords pointing to this site, there are a lot of sites that only rank high on one keyword, meaning on the first 2 pages, any further down really does not do much at all for your site.

Directories are important if it is a quality site with a 5+ PR main page and even more important if this site ranks high on a bunch of keywords. Most web business admin's understand the value of keywords though most web user are still not to that stage. Knowledge online though is growing exponentially so look for all online users to know and use relative keywords for their searches in the future.

The directories that I hate are the one that do not manually check links and in most cases I will not even submit to them. In the past when I have I constantly get e-mails that they cannot find their link so after a few of those e-mail I just delete them.

[I am Nick]

Good thread!

This might explain why my DMOZ listing for tvvgroup.com does not show up as a BL. I am in the category clothing and textiles, deep under consumer goods/ import export/ etc,. I do not think I use any of the words in this thread on my webpage, but instead other similar ones like manufacturer, garments, jackets, pants, factory, china, etc,.

Anyone who can confirm my worries?

BE / Nick

[cbp]

This might explain why my DMOZ listing for tvvgroup.com does not show up as a BL.

It doesn't explain it. Backlinks in Google are a random sample of the links that they use, so you can't reach that conclusion.

CBP

[I am Nick]

Originally Posted by cbp

It doesn't explain it. Backlinks in Google are a random sample of the links that they use, so you can't reach that conclusion.

CBP

Ok, somewhat good news, as I can leave it for now! However, I did not see the DMOZ BL for a year or something now. But I guess it could not hurt getting some more keywords on my site.

[greeneagle]

my SunSite,

Google Alerts are here:
http://www.googlealert.com/

Sign up to be notified of www.mydomain.com, www.mycompetitorsdomain.com, or specific keyphrases. I wouldn't advise anything much vaguer.

Ken

[Tropical]

Guys where can I find information about site and search engine optimization?

[wednesday]

Originally Posted by Tropical

Guys where can I find information about site and search engine optimization?

Here is a good start. ;)

[Tropical]

Thanks brainwash
How on earth did I not notice that?
???

[Joelt]

I'm adding directories for the links. Every link from a directory would count as a "vote". The whole point of a link campaign is to acquire new links. Directories offer links - so a link is a link is a link. PR makes a difference, but directories are a link resource. However, I wonder if Search Engines give less weight to directory links.

[Tropical]

I have tried a few directories and I must admit that I am disappointed with the results. Although most of them ask for a recipro link, they never seem to want to return the favour. For me directories dont work. If anyone has any good resources, kindly share,there are too many deceiving webmasters online.