Directories and Domain Authority

[KempRugeLawGroup]

I read all the time about how directories have very little weight in SEO anymore, but in my field, a lot of our competitors are propped up by paying for "profiles" aka links from places like martindale-hubbard, superlawyers, findlaw, nolo, Avvo, etc (which are essentially directories IMO) yet all those sites have very high DAs of 80 and above.

So, are links from these sites worth it? I know that's a vague questions, but if Moz's algo seems to rank them so highly, I'm guessing that's reasonably close to what google thinks as well...maybe?

Thanks for any insight,

• Ruben

[DmitriiK]

Hi there.

My take on this is that having links from directories wouldn't hurt, especially if you use those directories substantially, for example for reviews, or communicating with clients. However, make sure that directories is not your only backlink building campaign.

Hope this helps.

[MiriamEllis]

Hey Ruben,

What I would consider these types of sites to be would be industry-oriented citations. And you definitely want those. Do you want to pay for citations there? It depends on how they perform. Pay for links ... no! Earn links ... yes, probably. You might like to check out this recent video over at LocalU that is talking about the value of links:

http://localu.org/blog/video-deep-dive-on-links-and-local-marketing/

I think it presents a really no-nonsense approach to judging the value of links for local businesses.

[Chris_Hickman]

Ruben,

In my experience posting to directories does not have any negative influence on a site. Keep in mind the quality of the directory does matter. It is beneficial to have a site listed on particular directories. However, if you're going to spend the time building visibility of a site, there's better ways to spend your time.

Another idea would be to create business profiles for the site. These are opportunities to create a profile with a phone number, URL, and a description of the site or business where keywords can be used. Again certain sites are better than others, so choose wisely.

If you would like more information on this please let me know.

• Nick