Web Directories and Sponsorships in 2014?
-
Yes I know many of you will say that link building using web directories is old school and does not work. But after studying a website created last year, it ranks in the top 10 "how make a website" run by Peter Zaborszky.
I noticed that he has links from web directories. Not many but he used web directories..My question is: What you sort a list of web directories and only use ones with high PR and DA . Is this safe?
Another remark, what is the difference between web directories and page where donors/sponsors are mentioned with anchor text and dofollow link?. Those pages like web directories contain quite a lot of links from same page. I'm curious how Google sees these pages.
-
What you sort a list of web directories and only use ones with high PR and DA?
Well, if I were going the directory route I'd first look at the relevancy of each directory to what I'm selling, meaning that I'd look specifically for sites in my niche. From those, I'd use PR and DA to determine strength and possible penalties (i.e. if the DA is insanely high and the PR is non-existent, perhaps steer clear). PR isn't a great metric, as it's updated infrequently and may well be sometimes obfuscated to avoid it being used as a link-selling metric but comparing it to other things like number of links and Moz figures can be useful still.
I'd then progress to more generic directories that had categories relevant to me and do the same thing - order them in terms of perceived strength and likelihood that their intended user-base was interested in what I sold.
From the directories I chose, I'd look very carefully through their links - you're judged on who you're linked to alongside, so get rid of any that link to what you'd call low-quality sites, parked domains, etc.
I would be willing to bet that sites with good rankings who have gone in for directory SEO are ranking largely because of other factors, as directories are not something Google likes to put a lot of weight into anymore, and has become better at picking out. And as "holistic" as it sounds, I'd choose directories based off of whether I'd want to be listed there if SEO didn't exist. It's just a case of this tactic having been used so many times for spammy purposes that search engines end up devaluing it or being quite suspicious of it.
What is the difference between web directories and page where donors/sponsors are mentioned with anchor text and dofollow link?
Not very much in that a Google rep would likely tell you that sponsors / donors' links should be nofollowed because money changed hands in establishing the relationship. But this will likely be just one page on a website, and for many businesses the number of links won't be astronomically high. If the outbound link numbers are very high, they might attract webspam team attention. As an SEO, I've done FAR more to encourage sponsor linking than go around trying to nofollow these links, however, as have most people. We haven't got to the stage yet where Google has put out memos about this being not-white-hat, but that's what a webspam team member would likely say. I'd still not link out from a site to my sponsors using their commercial anchor text ("car insurance", "mobile phones") - I'd link with their names.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Web 2.0 Sites | Guinea Pig?
What do you guys think about creating quality pages on sites like Squidoo, with backlinks from that page leading to your website... and then ordering backlink building packages from SEO companies to build up those web 2.0 sites? My thoughts are that you would be able to get an idea on how good that SEO company is, while minimizing your risk (since their backlinks are going to a Squidoo page), and also increasing your site's authority at the same time (since those Squidoo links are going to your website). I'm sure this has been discussed before. But what is the general consensus on this strategy?
Link Building | | JABacchetta0 -
High PR Web 2.0 sites
Hello, I was wondering if you could provide some advice on which are the best Top 20 high pr web 2.0 properties for content besides wordpress? Whilst i do intend to use them to further improve my SEO campaign I also intend to use readable content, that is to say, content that i have written and i feel is worthy of being read by interested parties. What are the top 20 to look at that would benefit an SEO campaign if used correctly (without abusing or being spammy). I can see lots of crappy ones out there but they all look spammy to me and im not really liking that.
Link Building | | irdeto0 -
Web Designers and SEOs using backlinks from client sites
What are your thoughts on SEOs and web designers putting their own links in the footers of client sites. For the sake of argument, lets assume that the client is happy for the link to be there. I'm referring to the SEO merits of the link being there from an 'irrelevant' website. My belief is that this goes against what Google is looking for and that these are irrelevant links and likely to be picked up and penalised. That's what I believe! However, I see lots of sites offering SEO services that have dofollow links from their client sites, using exact match anchor text and they are all ranking highly. Is it just a matter of time before Google sniffs them out and penalises them for it? Or should I be going through my client sites and adding myself a dofollow link in the footer? (with their permission of course). The highest ranking sites in any UK city do this. If you search SEO Manchester, SEO Leeds etc and find the top ranking sites and check them out on opensite explorer, they are all using a disproportionate amount of dofollow backlinks form client sites.
Link Building | | littlesthobo0 -
Where can I find a list of the top DA websites on the web?
I'd like to find a ranking of the top DA websites on the web. I'm mostly interested in US websites. I'd like at least the top 10,000 or so but the more the better. Is there a way to get this data from OpenSiteExplorer or another source? The closest I've found is Double Click's listing of the top 1000 most_visited_ (not DA) websites: http://www.google.com/adplanner/static/top1000/ Thanks!
Link Building | | Thumbtack0 -
How do I remove bad web directory listings?
I am starting SEO for an E commerce website. I guess like 1 year or two ago they had another SEO company working for them. After looking in Site explorer I realized that they have like 2000 links (almost all from website directories) that have the correct anchor text but are all in the wrong categories, and most from countries like china and india. Many of the Titles are even in Chinese. This company sells packaging supplies and they are in categories like real estate, animals, and so on. I am changing the domain name, so I guess any links to internal pages will be lost, however I have to forward the main domain to my new domain, so any links to the home page will still be there. Does anyone know how I can remove these links??
Link Building | | DTOSI0 -
Where I need to jump? Web OR Social OR Local Directories
I am working on patio umbrellas keyword to achieve top 3 ranking in Google. I have achieved top 30 ranking with help of on page optimization and want to achieve top 3 ranking with help of link building. Today, I was checking SEO web directories on SEOmoz. Now, I can't make any changes on live website exclude content. So, I have only one option to deal with link building. There are 3 sections over there including Web Directories, Social Directories & Local Directories. So, which is best one to improve my ranking on Google? If anyone have additional inputs for link building so eager to know that. I want to achieve top 3 ranking with my keyword by next 2 months.
Link Building | | CommercePundit0 -
Submitting my URL on web/business/service directories
Does it make sense to submit a business URL in as many relevant web/business directories as possible when kicking off a link building campaign? Submitting a free listing is obviously better than nothing, but when does it make sense to pay extra for a premium listing profile on some of these directories? There are just so many and a lot of them appear spammy, even though some of my competitors are getting traffic from them. Any advice on this would be great!
Link Building | | TheSquareFoot1 -
PR Web or Marketwire which is better
Hi I am currently considering two online PR services, Marketwire and PR web. Just wondering if anyone has a opinion on which one is better in terms of SEO value? Or if anyone has done any experiments on either? Thanks for your help. Cheers Mik
Link Building | | increation1