The Thing About Directories

Vary Anchor Text - Plain Sensible
Deep Links - Most directories will offer exactly that
Check Quality - To a degree yes, but if it's just a directory and not cloaked to other content etc when all is said and done the layout is gonna be pretty much the same across all of them.

What may be the distinguishing factor is the traffic you directly get from them.

I'd expect some from DMOZ or Yahoo, but not neccesarily worldswonderfullinksdirectory.dom

At the same time, although worldswonderfullinksdirectory.dom maybe crap, it may be huge a few months or years down the line. Personally I'd say it's worth the hassle in going for most, if not all of them.

Even if it does do you some harm, how much will it balance out in time?

We still carry out directory submission for our clients - based on the kind of criteria you talk about here. Even with these current changes I can't see penalties coming when done at a manual pace.

It is slow progress though with directory submission and I have trouble seeing how companies based in Europe make this a viable offering. This does take time/effort, and let's face it - it's boring work once you have built up the lists.

It's no coincidence that so many of the firms doing this work are based in India.

I have been more impressed with some of our more unconventional approaches to link building – blogs, software releases and PR. Knowing that you can get a few thousand links within 48hrs for some activities is a hell of a lot more exciting than directory submission. The main problem we have had is determining where that sandbox line is – when the link building is natural but at that kind of pace.

i think it could be problematic if a disproportionately high percentage of your inbound links are from directories, and if the links in those directories point to sites that also have a disproportionately high percentage of links from directories.

In that sense, directories can mess up your related: results (FWIW anyway).

if the goal is to artificially replicate a natural growth in popularity of a website in order to boost rankings the question isn't about having too many directory links, but having too many too soon. If a website's link popularity were to occur naturally then links would be spread out across a variety of website "types" and would have varying anchor text and would occur at a generally proportionate growth rate. If you have "natural" as the base of yoru link generation efforts it would be very unlikely that you would get into trouble with any of te links.

In terms of traffic, i actually have seen benefit from having some of my websites listed in directories.

I think that we have to keep in mind, however, that the best directories (Yahoo, ODP, etc.) take awhile and are unpredictable in how long they take to list you. This will help you beat any \"unnatural links penalty\" because it spreads things out a bit.

Compared to other linking methods i find using directories hassle free and less time consuming and it’s very low risk(one of the few methods recommended by Google in their guidelines – like any of you care)

When a directory allows anchor text other than the official name or allows deep links i take full advantage. One downside is making submissions is boring and time consuming, which is why I hire someone to make them for me. They can do about 15-20 a hour.

Find using directories works well for many sites, but then i don’t compete in the big boy stuff.

Check the quality of the directory you're submitting to

Thats the most important part imho. We have a rough grading system in house, we start at a perfect 10 and then deduct for certain things, site needs to score 6 or more before we will submit [as a rule]. More than one hyphen in the domain name -1, require a recip -2, adsense -1, adsense on home page -2 and so on.

I'd rather a directory was in a good neighborhood and was free of pop-ups, javascript and flash; I'd prefer a directory to get income from adsense than silly fees - and almost any other advertisng option - I'd deduct points for things that matter, like silly fees for 'sponsored listings', old pals act getting better pages and so forth.

An honest diretory is entitled to offset their costs, and adsense is a transparent way of doing it.

If you're paranoid about Google, however, I understand your feelings...

I'd deduct points for things that matter, like silly fees for 'sponsored listings', old pals act getting better pages and so forth

Thats cool with me, we each have our own ideas of quality signals. I think the most important thing to do is make an honest judgement, I have a couple of directories with adsense on the homepage, they are crap. Wild guess but I would imagine you do too?

If you're paranoid about Google

I wish my paranoia was so limited.

...that "adsense on home page" thing. Actually i happen to have a directory which has AdSense ads, and on the front page too (possibly another type of directory than the two you have, but nevermind). I gave it some thought when implementing AdSense, as i didn't feel that the front page was suited to carry ads at all, but i ended up including them in order to give the pages a consistent look.

I think you're right - ads in general doesn't really belong on the front page. On interior pages they're useful, but on the front page they're really working against the site, and not with it. I'm off to give it a far less important placement right away, and perhaps i'll even remove it from that page.

That said, i wouldn't subtract points for that - in the directory area there are other signs of quality that would weigh higher to me than an ad more or less.

I would look entirely at their listings and some of the sites they link to, as that's their product: What kind of categories do they have, who do they list, how do they list, does anybody review, are there PFI, how easy is it to submit, and will they actually refuse to list sites. Do they seem like specialists or are they just a me-too thing including far too much or bringing together unrelated stuff. A directory like Dmoz has some of the right features, but it's too big and the size alone makes some of their strong points less strong if not obsolete.

-looks a lot better now :-)

I'd prefer a directory to get income from adsense than silly fees

most time I see adsense on a directory I immediately think

"oh great, another sleeze directory"

now some directories are useful and integrate ads in a good manner, but most directories with adsense are complete crap.

Guys, Adsense is everywhere. It's on crap sites and great sites and everything in between. It is no indication whatsoever of quality. That's what your eyes are for. Bravo if it works and is implemented gracefully.

As for using directories, yeah we still make very good use of them and essentiallly our criteria has not changed one iota in four years. If the directory is qualit,y we submit. (Anyone paying attention can sort out quality from qurap. Simple things like TBPR, look and feel, time in existence, etc. help greatly.)

Agree that therea are far more lousy directories at this point in time. But again that's not hard to suss out. The old rules that applied four years ago apply now, except that now, G seems to be forcing sites to behave in certain ways even if it's against their nature (e.g., older high quality reference sites with little reason to add more pages better find reasons to add more pages, lame as that is). It's like moving a 20 year old bottle of wine from one side of the rack to another, just to feel like you're taking care of it. Doh!

It is no indication whatsoever of quality.

Does Apple have it on their homepage, Dell, The BBC?

Your three examples are not directories, how on earth can you use these as an example on a thread about directories ??

within the realm of general directories

without adsense like 70% chance of it being garbage
with adsense it goes up to like 90%+ chance

I guess it depends on whether we are talking Real Directories of Scrapper Directories here, both of which can have, or not have, advertising including Adsense. Whilst Adsense has certainly spawned a plethora of band-wagon-jumpers, I don't believe it should be an indicator as to the quality of the directory concerned. This should be discernable regardless of the revenue generation on the site.

how on earth can you use these as an example on a thread about directories

A web site is a web site and quality is quality.

Where do you set your ambitions, to be much of a muchness or a shining beacon of quality in a web increasingly over-run with shite?

I don't believe it should be an indicator as to the quality of the directory concerned

I don't think it is *the* indicator, just a pointer. The scoring system was devised to allow a staffer to pre-secreen the gazillion directories out there so that I could then spend the time on looking at them. No one factor can get the score down to below 6 [except in one special case], it has to be a combination. So...adsense on homepage -2...www.billy-bobs-bestest-directory-add-url-here.com -1, require a recip -2...I'll pass.

I'd prefer a directory to get income from adsense than silly fees

Has anyone heard that Google may value IBL's slightly higher from AdSense enabled websites.

Has anyone heard that Google may value IBL's slightly higher from AdSense enabled websites.

based on the number of crap scraper sites and rubbish in the AdSense program that might explain some relevancy problems.

From a strict SEO POV you don't really need a quality directory to get a quality link. So, if a quality link is what you're after, ads are irrelevant. Especially the AdSense variety which is inserted by means of JavaScript, and hence not even being spidered. In fact, AdSense ads means less competition in the SE's from other links on the page. Also, the look of the pages are totally irrelevant, and the usability of the directory is so too.

All that matters are inbound links (to give your own link some value), spiderability, and amount of outbound links per page. And, of course, easy inclusion with maximum influence on your own listing. For maximum benefit you should be able to get multiple listings as well.

So, for pure SEO purposes, a directory that would not suit my personal definition of a "quality directory" will actually be better.

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Now, if you factor in that there's such a thing as users, and you don't want all your traffic to come from SE listings, then you will need to identify a directory that has some additional characteristics.

1. First, it will need to have users, which implies that usability is important.
2. Second, those users will need to be able to find your site, which means that the overall structure of the site should be well laid out.
3. Third, you might like it to stand out from the rest in some fashion, as that way it is more likely that there is growth potential (in terms of users) which will bring more users past your listing than with a run-of-the-mill directory.
4. Forth... no, i'll stop here. I think i made my point...

The number of quality directories (using AS) has grown arithmatically.

The number of cr*p directory sites (using AS) has grown geometrically.

So what.

Plenty of good quality sites (to an amazing degree actually) do use AS. Plenty of good quality sites don't.

So what.

Our goal - four years ago - was to make use of quality directories as a part of a larger marekting program. Still true. The only thing that has changed is the percent of cr*p directories. (That's also true of cr*p content sites BTW.) So what; not my problem? Just ignore the crap ones (not hard to do) and focus on quality. Same as it ever was. We only ever approach the sites we view as having merit. That has not changed.

... by the usual anti-Google yawn. The presence or not of adsense, when many directories are ankle-deep in shite, is almost a troll post - and has taken this thread away from a useful discussion.

There are plenty of useful ways to assess directories, like (for example) their content, and - very important - their submission conditions (my directory categorizes directories in that way).

Another key point, especially for the "I Hate Google But I Love Google Page Rank" dimwits, is the form of outgoing link provided by the directory.