How important are directory submissions to my off-page SEO?

[MatthewBarby]

Hi Guys,

One area of my link building that I carry out is looking for online directories and social bookmarking websites to submit my website to. I do this in order to gain some backlinks to my website. What I want to know is are they really worth my time, and if so, which types would you say are the most important?

I have obviously been through many directory lists, both on SEOmoz and on other websites, and also performed various searches to find relevant directories to my website. I just feel that posting up a link that lies deep in a directory online that, more often than not, have very low PA and lots of outbound links will offer very little in terms of SEO. If anything, this could really bring down the quality of my links and be detrimental to my website, right?

This is a subject that I have been thinking about for a while and especially with the recent algorithm update from Google and the attack on many web directories that are, lets say, 'not playing by the rules', I'm worried that this will have a negative impact for my website.

Let me know your thoughts guys and if you have any tips on how to get higher quality links from these kind of submission then I'm all ears!

Matt.

[DenverKelly]

In my opinion online directories still have value and are one part of creating a link profile for your site. I would recommend you look closely at the inbound followed links of your key competitors who rank well. I almost always find online directories in the link profiles of my high ranking competitors.

Directories specfic to your topic or industry are more valuable, of course, as they also have the potential to drive traffic.

In theory linkbait is the optimial and most espoused method for gaining inbound links, but the effectiveness of this strategy varies depending on how interactive folks in your market tend to be. I doubt there is a more active community involved in creating linkable content than the SEO community.

Having said that, whether you are attracting links to your content or not, you should actively build high quality, well researched content. This will bring traffic and possibly links.

Hope this helps.

[MatthewBarby]

Thanks Mark,

I have been spending quite a bit of time looking through my competitors' linking sites so it is good to know that that wasn't in vain.

I completely agree with you about linkbait, it can be very hard work and the success rate is very different each time (which can be great at times but extremely frustrating at others!).

One thing I have always wondered is that a lot of SEO companies will offer, lets say, 500 directory submissions to clients each month. Do you think that a lot of these links are just worthless links, and if you don't mind divulging, how many directories would you say you submit to on average each month? (just so I can get an idea of the scale of what I should be aiming for).

Thanks again.

[emerchantpay]

Hi Matthew

I`d say directories especially general are adding very little value. Be sure not to dig too deep into these. More specific niche directories are a little bit better and you can hope from them to get a little bit more relevant traffic to your site.

Better direct your efforts into creating any kind of good content (article, infographic, video etc.) and try to make it popular .. it might go viral or at least attract several good links that you`ll have no other way of getting.

Cheers

[DenverKelly]

I'd use directory listing strategically - you don't want 500 listings showing up this week. If someone is delivering 500 links I would be concerned because it would certainly not have a natural appearance.

Directories are a part of an overall strategy and my approach, for what it's worth, is to add a directory listing slowly - perhaps one or two per week - and vary the anchor text and link to different pages of your site to vary things up.

I'd love to say that great content gets linked to and I'm willing to be converted, I just don't see it all that often in the real world.

Can someone point me to some small or medium sized business websites (non-SEO related) that have great inbound links generated almost entirely with content and linkbait? I'm continually open to learning.

[Cyrus-Shepard]

Yes, most of the 500 will be worthless junk, and can actually hurt you.

In general, the easier it is to score a directory link, the less value it becomes. It's a completely inverse relationship.

[Cyrus-Shepard]

Hi Matthew,

My advice on the matter has changed a lot over the past year. These days, it's still okay to build directory links, but I suggest doing it only with directories related to your niche.

General directories, in my mind, are best to stay away from altogether.

For example, if you run a nursing home site, you could probably find a dozen high quality directories of nursing homes and assisted living facilities. These would be great!

The general rule of thumb is if you build directory links, make sure you build "normal" high quality links along with them at an equal pace. Try to build one naturally given editorial link for each directory link you build.

Hope this helps! Best of luck with your SEO!