Negative Impact of Web Directories

[Ilya]

A lot of people think that web directories actually do something for you, well they dont. I am going to prove to you.

The only directories you need to concentrate on is Yahoo Directory, and DMOZ.

All the rest are plain waste of time.

Reasons:

1. Even though home page of web directories are 3+ PageRank, essentially you should have your website link on that 3+ PageRank page, but you dont. You get listed under a page that has not even been indexed yet. For example: Home>Forums>Internet>Advertising>Promotions>Your Forum

2. In order for someone to find your site/forum in a web directory it is like finding a needle in a haystack. Again we use this module: Home>Forums>Internet>Advertising>Promotions>Your Forum
So no human at least will go on a web directory and search for websites out of fun or curiosity to find something they like.

3. The more 0PageRank backlinks you have, the more it hurts your website/forum's pagerank. The reason is that your pagerank is determined by the amount of backlinks of your website and their pagerank. So it averages in Pageranks of backlinks to give you your pagerank. The more 0PR backlinks you have the less your pagerank becomes.

Example: You have 10 backlinks. 7 are PR2 and 3 are PR0
14/10 = 1.4 <== thats your pagerank.
Lets say you have 20 backlinks 7 are PR2 and 13 are PR0:
14/20 = 0.7 <== thats your pagerank

Now you may doubt this method because you say who knows how PageRank works only google. Well there have been proven facts that the more PR0 backlinks you have the lower your PageRank be, consider it like your GPA an F always brings your GPA down.

Hope this guide helps you and saves you time 🙂

 

[Lee Lawson]

Thanks for the guide Ilya, definitely will know not to use directories unless major.

 

[Rich Edmonds]

Directories are not a waste of time. They are fantastic for creating noise and getting links. You mistake directories for mere websites, wrong. Google sheds weight on popular and respectable directories, not just DMOZ, Yahoo and whatnot. There are more than a handful of directories that are worth submitting to and submitting to a directory will not harm your website at all. What about BOTW? One of the oldest directories on the Internet? Aviva directory?

Strange with your algorithm, I am currently looking at a backlink report and this site has a few hundread PR 1 links, nearly a thousand PR 0 links and a few 2, 3 and 4 links. It's a PR 5.

 

[Ilya]

i never heard of those directories but what noise can ur site make on a directory that no one reads. If atleast 2 people view your site on a web directory then you are lucky that someone dug through all those sections of directories and got lucky to find your website.

Your pagerank doesnt depend 100% on backlinks, its also reflects visitors and popularity. Trust me you are not making any noise submitting your site to a directory. You get more hits to your website when you put ur site url on ur msn status title.

Besides no one visits a web directory to find sites they visit to add their own site making your submission useless.

Also the reason dmoz and yahoo are important is because google bases its ranking off dmoz and yahoo bases their search engine off yahoo directory.

 

[David]

Sorry, but tbh, that was not a good guide. Many incorrect comments.

3. The more 0PageRank backlinks you have, the more it hurts your website/forum's pagerank. The reason is that your pagerank is determined by the amount of backlinks of your website and their pagerank. So it averages in Pageranks of backlinks to give you your pagerank. The more 0PR backlinks you have the less your pagerank becomes.

Example: You have 10 backlinks. 7 are PR2 and 3 are PR0
14/10 = 1.4 <== thats your pagerank.
Lets say you have 20 backlinks 7 are PR2 and 13 are PR0:
14/20 = 0.7 <== thats your pagerank

Every inbound link is valuable regardless of PR (unless the site is banned from google). If the web directory has PR5 then you've got a share of the PR5 link. It won't be your PR but if you do that to 20 PR5 then Google will reward you with a PR4-5 assuming you don't have too many outbound links.

 

[Leo Ghost]

Every link weighs in, even nofollow links can sometimes. For example, I posted a comment on a nofollow blog yet it shows up in my webmaster tools as a backlink. It may not be sharing PageRank, but that doesn't bother me.

 

[Ilya]

Sorry, but tbh, that was not a good guide. Many incorrect comments.

Every inbound link is valuable regardless of PR (unless the site is banned from google). If the web directory has PR5 then you've got a share of the PR5 link. It won't be your PR but if you do that to 20 PR5 then Google will reward you with a PR4-5 assuming you don't have too many outbound links.

Alright, seems like you dont know much about pageranks.

Let me explain the basis to you..

If a web directory's [HOME PAGE] is PR5, and you submit your website to that web directory it doesnt always mean your [LINK] will be on a PR5 page. Unless your link to your website is on its home page then you get the PR5 as a backlink, [BUT] it is 99% never the case, your link is on a page which has 0 pagerank or sometimes not indexed at all.

Example: I will use Aviva web directory that Traygon has gave an example of.

Home Page: http://www.avivadirectory.com/
As we see it has a pagerank of 3.

Now lets try to submit our own site into this web directory: http://www.avivadirectory.com/Forums/Internet-Forums/
Alright so we go to Forums>Internet Forums and we see that here there are couple of forums related to internet forums here. Now if we submit our forum tot hat category in that PR3 directory, then we should have a PR3 backlink from it no? Well no, because in that category, where our forum link will display we see that the page rank is "No PageRank Information Is Available" meaning that page was not even indexed by google.

So the only way for us to get a PR3 backlink from that directory is only if we have link to our forum on that directories homepage, which you cant do.

Hope that changes your mind about web directories.

Ghost: Even if a PR0 link show in your backlink in google tools it doesnt mean it is counted towards your pagerank.

 

[David]

Yeah, just what I said. I don't need your rudeness in your assumption that I don't know what PR is. I clearly said links, not the homepage, so I don't where you're coming from. Many pages of web directories are in fact indexed and given a Page Rank. They won't necessarily be the same as the homepage but they still may register a PR.

 

[Ilya]

Yeah, just what I said. I don't need your rudeness in your assumption that I don't know what PR is. I clearly said links, not the homepage, so I don't where you're coming from. Many pages of web directories are in fact indexed and given a Page Rank. They won't necessarily be the same as the homepage but they still may register a PR.

Not a lot of directories do that and im just quoting what you said

If the web directory has PR5 then you've got a share of the PR5 link

and I was answering that the directory that has PR5 homepage wont give u a share of pr5 backlink because you wont be on the homepage of that directory.

 

[Leo Ghost]

Ghost: Even if a PR0 link show in your backlink in google tools it doesnt mean it is counted towards your pagerank.

Every link weighs in, even nofollow links can sometimes. For example, I posted a comment on a nofollow blog yet it shows up in my webmaster tools as a backlink. It may not be sharing PageRank, but that doesn't bother me.

I'm well aware mate, but it counts as a backlink nonetheless. It'll still help SERP, which is far more important in my view than PageRank anyway.

 

[Ilya]

Yea but in order to get into the top search engine results page, it doesnt count your backlinks it counts your content, description, traffic and pagerank.

It doesnt show the results by who has the most backlinks it shows results by most relative content to the users search.

 

[David]

Exactly Leo Ghost. SERP is way more important than PR nowadays. PR is good for marketing (eg. people buying backlinks), SERP is great for getting your site noticed for major keywords which in turn is much more important.

You can have PR8 and not even be on the first 5 pages so having PR isn't everything.

 

[Leo Ghost]

It doesnt show the results by who has the most backlinks it shows results by most relative content to the users search.

If it worked like that, black hat methods wouldn't be effective at all. No one can say for sure how Google ranks, but they have admitted that many factors, including quality backlinks all play a part in how they rank their sites.

That being said, if Google decides to go live as Bing claims to be, all this will change anyway (expect the first 3 results).

 

[Ilya]

If you type in watermelon it wont show a warez website in search results

Read my guide on SERPS: viewtopic.php?f=22&t=42396

 

[Rich Edmonds]

Who submits sites to a directory for traffic? The main reason they are there are for links, good solid links. Which is also noise, if you perform paid link development, you bloody well need brand link noise and other long tail terms. Hence submitting to directories, publishing articles, exploiting press release sites. Regardless of PR of the sites, it's all noise, it's all links.

By the way, you focus on keywords in your guide? Google barely uses them anymore (if it actually does). http://www.google.com/support/webmaster ... swer=79812

Who cares what PR you are? As long as you are converting with the visitors on your website and as long as your happy with what you are ranking for, then that's gravy.

So you go by the assumption that just because a Directories category page is a PR 0 it's not indexed nor gives any quality to listed sites? You really do need to do some more research my friend.

 

[Ilya]

you are aware that if the page has not been indexed you wont even see that link in your google backlinks?

P.S. Posted a link on the search engine rankings in other thread should clear things out for you.

 

[Rich Edmonds]

Of course I am aware of that, however directories gain reliability and trust from Google. It isn't just about PR, most good directories that have little spam and are trustworthy will get noticed and links will be seen. Regardless of what PR the category pages are, directories are not useless at all, one bit. There is even a huge list of directories to submit to on SEOmoz.

EDIT: Just thought I'd chuck in here that I do in fact work at an SEO agency.

 

[Ilya]

Of course I am aware of that, however directories gain reliability and trust from Google. It isn't just about PR, most good directories that have little spam and are trustworthy will get noticed and links will be seen. Regardless of what PR the category pages are, directories are not useless at all, one bit. There is even a huge list of directories to submit to on SEOmoz.

EDIT: Just thought I'd chuck in here that I do in fact work at an SEO agency.

Like I said maybe 1-3 directories do get trust from Google, but all the others are waste of time. This is a very controversial topic, so its up for you to believe what helps your website, if you believe web directories will get your site out there then do it, if not then you have to admit most of them are a waste of time.

I dont want to argue with anyone for decades about this, so its up to you to believe what makes your website successful.

P.S. Me too..

 

[Rich Edmonds]

No they aren't, good directories are not a waste of time. There must be around 50 good directories worth submitting to at least that I use personally and at work. It might be a controversial topic, but to go and bluntly say that directories are useless is just asking for arguments. If they were useless, most (if not all) SEO blogs, websites and companies would have some information, SEOmoz would have a list of recommended directories and consultants wouldn't use them.

I think we both know what makes a website successful and directories can be used to create a natural link acquisition mask on paid link building or for just link noise on good web directories.

 

[Ilya]

I know personally a marketing consultant, and he works for collegehumor.com as the top marketing person.

I asked him about web directories, he said that most of the web directories dont make any difference in your website stats or traffic, then I asked about his consultant services, he said that they offer to submit to web directories as a part of the service so they can charge higher.