Link DIrectories - Is it a Good Idea with recent Panda Updates

[techbattery]

Yo!

I have been doing a tonn of research on a few of my top competitors and have noticed that a decent percentage of their links are from link directories. Most of these directories seem organized and the links on the pages are relevant to the selected category. These pages offer both free link submission and a paid feature link submission.

My question is that is it a good idea to submit my site to these directories with the recent Panda update(s). I have read a bit about it, but still do not fully grasp the overall picture of it.

Any thoughts or suggestions?

[RyanKent]

Link directories are a poor method of link building. Ask yourself, as a user, do you like link directories? Do you use any of the ones on the list? Do you know anyone who does? If the answer to all these questions is "no", then why would you want to spend time and money to be added to one of these directories?

Take all the time and effort and write the best article ever on a single topic. I notice your user name is techbattery so I will use a battery example. Write an article on cell phone or ipad batteries. Make the article relevant to anyone who owns one of those devices. "Best Ipad Battery for you" could be the title. Talk about different battery types, charge life, shelf life, can you overcharge them, why do they get so warm/hot, etc. Make it an article that everyone who owns an iPad will want to read. Let the world know about the article.

Ideally everyone who sells or owns an iPad will WANT to link to your article. The value you will get from that article will exceed anything you get from your link directory efforts.

[DROIDSTERS]

Hi Ryan

I agree with you 100%, but that is a bit easier said than done, even once you have written this great article to find people to link to it is the next challenge (A big one). And what happens if after your article what got a couple of links, you still dont rank...what then? I agree with your perception of directories 100%, but if google still values them (which in many cases it looks like it might), should we just neglect them all in all? We obviously do not want to prioritize directories over quality content, but the questions is does google still value those links? I would love to know this from someone who has run an experiment, as I do believe directories can sometimes be helpful to increase number of links and get good anchor texts. If someone could give me proof (besides the user argument) that directories don't help at all, I would appreciate it.

[DROIDSTERS]

Also @Ryan and techbattery. Techbatteries question regarding panda has also not been answered clearly. Could submitting a site to these directories have a detrimental effect due to the panda update from Google?

[RyanKent]

what happens if after your article what got a couple of links, you still dont rank...what then?

Then the article is probably not as good as it needed to be. It's then time to figure out where you missed.

• Ask those who did link to the article what made it stand out to them.

• Ask other experts on the same topic what information they would find helpful enough to cause them to want to link to an article.

• Ask yourself "how can I improve?". Could you add images or videos or graphics? If you already have those items, can they be improved?

• Can you add more details? Or perhaps summarize points better? Can you tie in to current events which would make the article more relevant to what's happening in the world today?

• Is the article supported by experts? What evidence do you offer to support the article?

Look at a great SEOmoz article you may have linked to and measure the differences in quality and presentation.

Millions of articles are read every day. If you wrote a quality article, and I mean a truly great article, and others are not linking to it then either you need to publicize it more (tweets, etc.) or you picked a topic with such a narrow focus that it will take a lot of time to build links for it.

@Grotbos, there is no harm to submitting your site to FREE directories outside of the loss of time.

You are right that we have all seen sites boosted by these directories in the past. We have also seen many of those site owners in this Q&A site with the standard "Help! My site rankings dropped and I don't understand why" questions after their links have been devalued. Most directory links do not offer any value to users. SEs knows this and are adjusting accordingly.

[MarcLevy]

Hi guys, some good answers above, however in regards to Panda I do not believe link building is directly connected. Are links from Panda hit sites as valuable as they used to be? That is still being debated and I am yet to see any clear tests on it. Although commons sense tells me links from pages Google deems poor should have less value!

However you can read a little about it on question 3 here: http://www.sugarrae.com/link-development/link-building-with-the-experts-2011-edition/ (although it is worth reading the whole article!)