9 replies to this topic

[Chint™]

Quite new to SEO and this forum (but heard its one of the best for SEO advise), just wandering is it worth enrolling in a web directory such as Yahoo its costs around $600 and dont know if it worth spending the money to improve on PR. If is worth it how many web directories should I enroll with enough to make a big impact with PR????

[ukdaz]

If is worth it how many web directories should I enroll with enough to make a big impact with PR????

That depends on the level of competition you face. The more competitive the keyword the more links you will need (plus highly optimised content, thats relevant and treated as an online resource).

Daz

[Chint™]

The industry is quite competitive so would I look at signing up to 20 or 50 free directories??

[fisicx]

Anything you can do for free is almost worthless. Signing up for 1000 free directories will not help. The links you need to get are those that will help your ranking, submitting to free-for-all directories will bring no benefit to your website.

What you should be doing is concentrating on building an informative and interesting site that people will want to visit. That way the more important directories and social bookmarking sites will want to list you rather than you chasing them.

In any case, because you note that the industry is quite competitive do you really think that signing up for a few directories is going to make any difference whatsoever? Do you not think that your competitors have already done this?

[holga]

Worry about building a quality website first that will engage your prospect. Create some viral content (that is quality content) through a blog or some articles that will hopefully get you some attention, then in turn will hopefully bring in some good links.

If you say the industry is competitive its gonna be tough to become "the number one" - people are happy with who are they are with, in most cases - so why will they change? Unless you offer something "remarkable" of course ;-).

[Chint™]

fisicx Posted Today, 06:55 AM
What you should be doing is concentrating on building an informative and interesting site that people will want to visit. That way the more important directories and social bookmarking sites will want to list you rather than you chasing them.

This is a bit of a catch 22 situation, how do you get people to recognise you with just a great website with no great PR to influence people coming to your site??

[AbleReach]

how do you get people to recognise you with just a great website with no great PR to influence people coming to your site??

PR, in itself, does not guarantee traffic, and PR's effect on rankings is not what it used to be.

Start with targeted, less competitive terms that your viewers want, and work from there.

[kdfisher]

I was talking with an on topic industry related potential link partner today because he called me. We had exchanged links about two years ago and I was interested in another for a new site. The new site only six weeks old has a PR3 I'm told. Told him "ah, throw that silly green bar out the door"

I was also considering some free directories because it worked a few years ago, but times have changed I'm beginning to see.

[earlpearl]

There has been a lot of discussion about directories recently.

In general today, many believe, and have tested the effect of directories. Many no longer believe that the mass of free directories no longer work for ranking in google.

I believe that. I added lots of them for several years and they seemed to stop working in google 1-2 years ago.

Some also argue that there are a certain level of authoritative directories that work. Many would claim that the Yahoo directory is one of them.

There are a lot of sources and discussions about link building. There are some strong, link oriented sources on the web.

this is one I refer to often: http://www.jimboykin.com/

here is another great source: http://thelinkspiel.blogspot.com/

Before either spending money or randomly adding free or very long lists of directories that are either free or low cost I'd read up on link building.

In fact I'd use the search tool here and see what this great source says about links.

Dave

[freediver]

I have a site included in DMOZ in 1990s, back in the time when dmoz was adding sites by themselves, they were not submitted. It was a long forgotten site and recently I put some analytics to it. I was surprised to see it has about 150 unique visits each day. However not one visit for past one month came from dmoz. I think that should be the whole point of a web directory. My site ranks in google #1 position for a whole set of keywords and that's where the traffic comes from, however none of those users went to dmoz to try to find it. I think the same is with yahoo.

My opinion is that visitors are more important then rank or links. I have recently started experiment in my blog to see how much visitors blog directories actually give you. So far the results have not been stunning but I will post about complete results in a week.