Directories are still useful for SEO and they are not going to go away anytime soon.
It’s not “misinforming” if you cannot provide solid evidence to suggest that submitting to directories is what made your site popular. So far this thread is full of fluff posts stating that directories will make your site popular, but no one has posted a shred of proof. If you want to attack the “snobs” then provide proof to back your claim up.
That’s an impressive figure, but it depends on the type of site and the current traffic. In my view, these values are the only ones worth concern when it comes to SEO.
That’s quite a broad claim you make, and one I feel is grossly ill-informed.
This thread is a key example of the type of users that visit the SEO forum. The vast majority of people have been here for less than a year, with less than fifty posts, and these people tend to work in SEO and talk about what I would call outdated SEO advice without a single bit of evidence to suggest that their claims are true. On the other side of the spectrum there are a few years who have been here for a large number of years and I will suggest have a lot of experience with SEO and these claims due to their high post count over years of posting.
The simple fact is that if someone has been around for a long time and they can state a claim about SEO in a clear and concise manner, as well as being able to provide evidence or at least a counter-claim to suggest their claim is true then they’re worth listening to.
One other subject I’d like to address is your use of the word long-tail. As someone who has read Chris Anderson’s book and Wired article more than a few times I would be interested in hearing from someone who advocates it as strongly as you do how you feel that it works for SEO when it is both.
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A theory based on economical observations regarding online purchases and music
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Disputed in a number of industries where it has been proven by economists to be an invalid business tactic.
This sentence doesn’t make any sense. Yes, no one knows the Google algorithm bar two or three select Mathematicians at Google, but in slating the “snobs” you tout yourself to the members here as someone who “knows something”.
As far as I’m concerned SEO is nothing more than domain knowledge, built through experience.
You could be correct in that directories will boost your website, but let’s think about this logically for a second.
Why would submitting to a directory make your site “better” than the others? In other words, why would Google possibly decide that your site is better than all of your competitors because you took five minutes to submit to a bunch of directories full of other sites?
Secondly, you may have submitted your website to a directory and the page on which your link resides may have a high PR. Two facts remain in this scenario:
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Your link is not the only external link on the page. Far from it. You’re competing on a high PR page with as many as 25 different links.
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It is very likely that the directory home page has a high PR, but the category page that your link resides on has little to no PR.
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PR is only a measure of link popularity. It is widely known that there were at one time over 200 other metrics that were more important to the Google algorithm than PR.
As you can see, after the scenario has been logically broken down it doesn’t make sense for Google to assume your site is more popular because you’ve taken five minutes to submit to directories. Why should you rank higher than someone who may simply have a better website? If someone has spent years on a site and has tons of content, should you rank above him for spending a few hours submitting to hundreds of directories?
As you’re against SEO snobbery it will be interesting to see if you can refute any of this and provide a levelled opinion on why directories do matter.
I guess directory submission is one of the part of SEO whether it is PR1 directory or PR10, we never neglect importance of directories and submissions.
Regards,
David
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I don’t think that directory submissions really help a lot but listing yourself in the atleast to 5 directories certainly won’t have any bad affect on you.
Then how do you explain the crap in this page:
Free Link Directory - Health > Conditions and Diseases None of the sites listed there would be considered “authoritative on the topic”. How is that page anywhere being close to being a useful page for websearchers? Its exactly this sort of crap that has lead Google to devalue web directories.
I have checked all the links on the page and non of them are crap, and i think all the sites are useful . The accepted sites not required to be authoritative on the topic otherwise we can not build or develop a web site to be authoritative in future.
The sites you’ve linked to are made-for-AdSense spam sites. Their content is copied and pasted from other sites and surrounded by ads. You’re building a directory of spam.
You can’t be serious!!! The sites are the sorts of sites I would want in my search results; that makes your directory useless to the web by linking to sites that are no use to the web searcher!
Have a serious look at the page of yours I linked to on “Conditions and Disease”. As a searcher, if I was looking for this sort of info, how does your directory come remotely close to helping me?
All the web is made for adsense or made for adds it is not means all the web are useless .
I checked some of their content and its not copy paste whatis your proof?
I do not know you but it seems you are do not know what is spam and what is not. You are speaking with the memorized ideas on the forums (mfa, medical sites are spam )
Here’s the first link on your directory page:
Halitosis Cure - 10 Home Remedies That Help Cure Bad Breath
Here is a search for the first paragraph of text from that page:
As you can see, that text appears, exactly as written, on 518 other webpages.
You’re right that you do not know me, but you’re wrong about everything else you’ve said.
So, you are admitting that directories are useless for searchers!!! and only exist for SEO purposes!!! If they only exist for SEO purposes, then by definition they are spam!
Your directory is certainly not one of the quality ones.
The content I checked was.
I do not know you but it seems you are do not know what is spam and what is not. )
I thing we know what spam is and your directory is spam. Its the exact sort of directory that Google does not want around.
I did want to choose another category to illustrate my point, so I randomly picked another category, its was empty! so I randomly picked another category, its was empty! randomly picked another category, its was empty!randomly picked another category, its was empty! … how is the directory useful to anyone?
You stay in the past directories are not full reference for users there are many empty categories in the directories. No any directory on the net which is full reference all the directories are for seo and the quality ones doing their jobs good at least currently, it may change in future .
I have not said the opposite any time they can be visited but not full reference there are more useful tools
and you approve again that you are did not know which is quality which is not or spam
I think Dan pointed out the spam site you have listed, and that was just a start
If your site is of no use to the web searcher, it must be spam. <— how about argue the point rather than take pot shots at me not knowing what spam is.
I know what spam is. Spam is the sorts of sites that searchers do not want in their search results. As your directory is of no use to the searcher, then its spam. Its that simple.
who says it is not usefull for web searcher (from google or somewhere else) I think they are not full referance for direct visit and search for what you are looking for; but it is usefull for searcher from google or search engines these are different things. If you require directories to be full reference there no such directories or websites.
Your spam vision is superficial
You have totally failed to provide us with anything to convince us anything other than your site is useless to the web searcher. If I wanted to find anything on the topic of any category on your directory, your directory just provides crap sites … its NOT useful to the web searcher!
-> It’s spam!
-> It’s not spam!
-> It’s spam!
-> It’s not spam!
You debate with facts, argue with opinions, and I don’t see any facts in the recent posts. You’re just going in circles.
what did you provide for your ideas except saying “crap, spam”
the thread here is: Is it true directory submissions are no longer a good SEO strategy?
my answer is: submission to directories is still good for seo (and it is real life experience not learned on forums) someone accept or not .
one of the member here said : directory4u.org is spam and gives an example from it
I checked all the sites on that category all the sites were there are not spam ( mfa sites are not spam if they are useful; google also is a mfa site )
If directory links are going to be considered as one stream or channel of links, it would seem logical but it can be a mistake to assume by submitting websites URLs to a few directories, especially the ones which sound like link farms, filled with tons of links, and then assuming that some top ranks would be achieved very quickly. A lot of directories have lost PR, web traffic shares and organic Google ranks recently.
It seems that simply throwing a portal over the net and adding some links to that does not sound to be a good way of launching directories these days and the web addresses listed on such portals might enjoy the minimum effects from their stats. Of course since the links are considered to be one way votes, so your website as recipient will more than probably experience no harms, if you stay away from reciprocal types of directory links.