Is There Any Benefit In Getting Links From Directories?

Do Link Directories Work?

In a follow up to my last post I wanted to discuss whether we thought there was any real benefit from submitting your site to the directory sites.  We believe in general that answer is yes, there is a value in getting your website listed in several main directories, but not every last one. The hard part is figuring out which sites google and the other players actually value.

From our experience there are about 4 main directories that we consider to be the top directories to be listed in. They are:

Yahoo.com

BOTW (BEST OF THE WEB)

DMOZ

Business.com

Listing in these directories doesn’t come without a price, and I mean that literally. The Yahoo directory will cost you $299 per year and BOTW and Business.com will cost about the same. DMOZ is a free directory but getting listed in that one will take about 6 months, if ever.

If you have the money to invest in these directories it can be very valuable  because they will help give you a great base to build on. In addition to the authority of the link, they also provide relevancy to the search engines insuring your site is what you say it is.

So with those top directories out of the way is there any benefit in listing in the scores of other directory sites? This is where it gets a bit more cloudy but we still say yes. The trick is to find the directories that Google and the other search engines actually care about. Often link directories become outdated link pages that hold absolutely no value for the public because every type of site is listed without any real focus on actual value. Our Tip? Find sites that have been cached recently on the pages you are looking to submit to. Anything above 45 days is probably not worth your effort.

Remember there is no magic pill in SEO and SEM. If you want to be successful in the Internet market you must provide some real and actual value.  When we are finding lists of current directories we will often reference Compete.com to measure traffic which gives us a great indicator of the value of our link. Link directories can provide value in the way of links as well as actual traffic so investigate your directories to see if they are worth the time of submission!

Remember that SEO and SEM is a marathon, not a race. Just because you have access to 10K link directories doesn’t mean you should submit them all at one time. Search Engines want to see a steady flow of increased traffic. If they see you get a thousand new links overnight, they will be sure to investigate further.

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