Has anyone ever used a specific page (instead of home page) when building links in directories?

[BruceA]

Hi Cole

Yes, we use content page specifc URLs for any links we feel appropriate.  Directories are not a highly thought of any more as a good SEO practice, as this became repositories for links links etc.  This adds no real value to the user of potential user of a directory.

If the directory is something like Yel, we would want only parts of our site to link to their category heading where we are listed under.  So we would not want our generic home page linking to a specific heading in Yel, as this is not useful to the end user, who would click the link and then have to start to search for what they really wanted.

Specific links at this level are liked by Google, because the link is 100% relevent to the user

Hope this helps

Bruce

[GPainter]

There is no giant naughty list I'm afraid but the best advice i can give is as follows:

Will a user, find & use the directory?

if you think a user is going to find you through the directory (like yell.com etc.) then its a good link if you're just putting a link there for back link sake it's probably not as safe as you could be.

e.g. So if there is a local directory of all the best named companies called Pixel! and users are regularly using the listto find their favorite pixel company this would be good because the user is finding this link helpful but

if its a directory of all of the company on the internet - It's not so safe. Local directories (or very niche) tend to be a bit safer than most others too.

Hope that helps a bit more.

I think I found your site by accident the other day, small world!

[RobertFisher]

Cole,

I see a couple of red flags here that you may want to be aware of. You state: "I figured this would be a good way to build some page authority up for deeper pages for small businesses that can't seem to garner any attention with content / links."

From this and from your profile showing you working with an agency, this work appears to be client work. First suggestion is this: For any business you are doing SEO for, start with "While we would all like overnight results, SEO will not provide that. You must be patient or risk having your entire site disappear from the search engine results because you/we did things to expedite the process that the search engines consider negative. We understand that some of your competitors may do these "negative" things and they may get away with it for a while; but, as your agency of record we cannot put you in harm's way for the sake of having you rank quicker."

Can't seem to garner... with content/links. This is where you derail the issue in that you are trying to gain attention and I would assume that means rank improvement. You are wanting a directory to provide this "attention," and if the small business is a restaurant in Lafayette and the directory is Yelp, then you are probably going to be OK, and I would want a link to the menu page specifically.

While there is no list of bad directories per se, there are really only a few that are truly relevant to a given business IMO. The problem will arise in the number of "directories" you are using for this practice. The biggest negative will be around the link velocity for a given business. So, if your business has no links (attention) and two weeks from now you have put them on 30 directories no matter how great they are, you are creating a potential problem for them.

So, instead of "directories" I would suggest for your purposes you use some specific sources (I am only suggesting these as a substitute to what I fear may be less obvious directories.): BBB, Angie's List, YP, Yelp, CitySearch, etc.

Be very careful as well with any directories that you maintain some sense of control over the listing. There are directories that will put you in a sidebar, etc. in a paid listing and it generates a link from thousands of pages; you do not want this to happen to a client and it does.

I hope this helps you out, good luck,

Robert

[ColeLusby]

Thanks so much to all who responded.

Robert, your post was very insightful in how I approach businesses.

[max.favilli]

Could you articulate some more the "its a tricky like to walk"?

This kind of deep linking is something I have still not understood, and your answer intrigued me. Can you explain better?

[GPainter]

It's a tricky line to walk - I mean that really you can go either side of Google's favor and whilst you might end up with the desired small boost you might also end up with a penalty. I recommend you check out Robert's answer below its very helpful.

[max.favilli]

I had already read Robert answer.

I was not referring to directories submission.

I was wondering why is a tricky line to deep link in general. We have  back link campaign in place, but doesn't involve directories. We publish a guest post a week on blogs and sites with at least Page Rank 2 and Domain Authority 25, we always post 500/1500 words articles related to our business and we diversify the backlinks using deeplinking to product pages, category pages, according to the article content.

And I was wondering if there some cons about deep linking that way, or in general, or in which specific cases.

[GPainter]

It was more in reference to directories & deeplinking. You also have to look at it from a what looks natural point of view, its pretty common when you link to a website that you link to the homepage so if you have a site that has an equal amount of links throughout the site, does it still look normal? Generally though  wouldn't say it was bad it was more in regards to deep linking with directories etc.

Might want to be careful with articles aka "gust posts" as there was some trouble around them not so long ago.

[max.favilli]

I understand you point and it's also my main doubt, is it natural or not? And... Will google algorithm find it “natural” or not? Which is not necessarily the same thing.

I fact, from my personal perspective if I write an article which talks about a specific product, I find a link to that product page with additional info quite natural, linking to the home and expecting the reader to search for the product to read the additional info doesn't sound natural.

But so far these deeplinks didn't move the needle in term of ranking for those product pages, so I assume google algorithm doesn't find them “natural”.

Has anyone a similar experience to report?

[RobertFisher]

Max,

Let me try to clear up this "deep linking" question for you. First, I do not use the term deep linking and am not sure the entire goal of it. If you are going out trying to set up links in some way and direct them to specific pages, IMO you are going to a lot more trouble than it is likely worth today.

Your content should be able to get you links. If your "deep" pages have good content they will get links, Period. Here is an example and it is one that for us was really irrelevant content. 
One of our people did a post and included something on 3-D printing. We do not own a 3-D printer, I would not know how to use one, etc. Yet, we got people linking to that. Another was about 18 months ago or so, we did it a post on responsive design. The post was done just to talk about responsive design. We did not send it out to people to get links, we did not submit it to article directories, etc. Yet, it is one of our most linked-to pages on our site. The reason seems to be due to the image and people wanting to use it. BUT, we did not set out to get links.

I would worry a lot more about ensuring you are creating content regularly and that it is not just content for content's sake. Make it readable, interesting, engaging. If you are "deeplinking" whatever that practice is, you are trying to create links to specific pages and I just think that is a waste of time 99% of the time.

Best