Directories and Bookmarking

[WebRiverGroup]

Our company has a wide range of linking strategies. Currently, our SEO team members are linking to directories more than anything else. Are there any advantage to this or should they put there effort elsewhere?

My views on directories: these links are easy to acquire and offer little push to our SEO efforts. It appears that Google is no longer taking directories in consideration and essentially they could be hurting our rankings.

What should our company do; should we stop linking to directories all together or keep it to a minimum. Also isn't bookmarking on the same lines as directories? What is the best way to handle this?

[TomRayner]

I very much hold the same opinion as you.

Directories pass very little strength, if they pass any at all. Primarily for the reasons that you have said, but also because they really offer very little to the user (when's the last time someone used a directory to find something?)

What I think we've seen lately is Google targeting directories and devaluing the little strength they had relatively quickly and regularly.  This should be reason enough not to pursue them as a tactic.

But then you have to consider the negative effect. Directories could very well harm your website.  We've seen directories in the past be deindexed, and links from a deindexed domain can be a negative ranking factor.  There's nothing stopping Google deindexing more directories in the future, in my opinion.

I'd move far, far away from directories as a linking tactic and explore other inbound tactics, such as content marketing.  As for bookmarks, I'd pretty much say the same.  I think the chance of it causing a negative effect are smaller, but any benefit a social bookmark has now is likely to be negligible. They're pretty much good for indexing and little else (and even then, sharing the link on facebook or Google+ is better for that).

Hope this helps - I think you're spot on and should whip those SEOs into shape!