Are Directory Links Devalued?

[thejenn]

Authored by: Bruce Stone

Full Text: http://www.searchengineguide.com/art.../0113_rc1.html

A Snippet:

In the past year directories have been springing up at an astronomical rate. Many to make a quick buck off the back link frenzy. Don’t expect a link from the majority of these directories to have any value.

[ekrimen]

Bruce says:

> In the past year directories have been springing up at an astronomical rate.

Do you mean sites like del.icio.us, or something else? Do you have a few examples? When I think of directories, I think of dmoz.org and http://dir.yahoo.com/ .

Thanks!

-- Ed

[WoW Man]

I can’t list the websites, it would be rather unethical but simply looking into the directory topics of many major webmaster forums will show quite a display of new directory announcements and a quick look at them will speak for itself.

[Robert]

Welcome to the forum, Bruce!

[intyerval]

Hi All,

I agree thejenn 95%.
There is DMOZ and 2-3 directories more that count. But there is a long line in front of their closed door. And, my opinion, the door is closed because editors like do keep it this way, from personal reasons.

When a link is relevant for my site?
I think when it comes from a site related to mine and when it is surrounded by relevant content.

There are a lot of directories gathering all kind of links from Arts to Yoga. They have categories and subcategories of course, but no relation between the content of my site and the content of the site that includes the directory. In majority of cases the parent site has no content. Going deeper, the page that has the link pointing to me is somehow related to my site, but the surrounding content is very poor.

Moore, there are many free directories containing thousands of links. I think that the contained links have zero value as inbound links and in many situations they can be considered like a kind of (self) spam.

May be if the directory has a very small area such as diabetes, golf, diets, coins, etc it would be more useful. Especially if the webmaster includes a section with some relevant content. If the link pages of directory have only 10 links/page is nice. If the owner adds some relevant content to every link page is better. But who cares?

[thejenn]

To note, I didn't write the article.

Bruce...why would it be unethical to list some of the directories that you're talking about?

[Ralph]

I agree with the concern of linking with directories. What happened to the term “Link Farm”? Most directories are just listings under many and various headings. If one believes the forums with the best guessers, we are supposed to be targeting our linking to be relevant to the topic of our site. Am I reading something more into this or just so far off base as to be irrelevant?

[chester]

What do people think of link building tool like Zeus? and are there a minimum of incoming link that will help your site a better PR?

[Robert]

Welcome to the forum, Chester!

With link building tools it's fine to use them to locate sites that may be a match but I wouldn't use the automated emails.

Instead visit the sites it finds and create personalized email messages for each site you wish to contact.

Here is a good article on link building:

Let's Talk About Links

[john238]

I think these are the directories that popup with hardly any content in them. Webmasters build them thinking that they will get a good ranking in the search engines and make some good money from them.