Is the use of directories submissions useful or harmful?

Posted July 8th, 2009 by Seantmcvey

I have seen many sites that promote software that distributes your link to directories.  An example is http://www.fastdirectorysubmitter.com/Are these types of programs useful or considered spam?  In the Inbound University class about SEO, the speaker said that the best way to gain backlinks was by contacting webmasters who promote other companies like yours.  For instance, getting yourself on a list of links.  This seems like the best approach but also much slower than using software.  What is most effective?  Is directory software useful?

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Paid Links and SEO?

Magdalena Georgieva's picture

Magdalena Georgieva 1 year 5 weeks 6 days 2 hours ago

You can find more on this subject here: http://www.inboundmarketing.com/node/787

I agree with Tony

Adrian Chira's picture

Adrian Chira 1 year 6 weeks 6 days 19 hours ago

 I agree with Tony that the links cannot harm you. It may not help you but they cannot harm you. If you try on your website the website grader from Hubspot you will see that some of the points you get are for listing your site in different directories. One is DMOZ.org, the other is Yahoo.com and the last one is zoominfo. Also they look to Alexa for the traffic ranking and to Technorati for your blog ranking. This means that listing your site at least with these directories will help your site rank better in search.

 

Best,

Adrian

Thanks for the help

Seantmcvey's picture

Seantmcvey 1 year 6 weeks 6 days 3 hours ago

Ok I understand this a bit more now.  Thanks for your help you guys. 

Usefulness of directories

Toni Aničić's picture

Toni Aničić 1 year 7 weeks 6 days 9 hours ago

It really depends. Some really good directories like dmoz.org are good for your SEO.

Some other niche targeted directories might also help. Generally speaking, adding link to every small directory out there will be a waste of time. It can't hurt you.

Backlinks can never hurt you. No matter how spammy, or from how bad websites they come, they can't hurt your ranking. If they could, this would open space for bringing down your competitors by simply building bad links to their websites.

Google will sometimes devalue a link to the point where it gives you 0 PR value if it's algorithm thinks the link is spam, but the backlink will never hurt your ranking.

Really helpful

Sarah Gill's picture

Sarah Gill 1 year 6 weeks 5 days 4 hours ago

That's great thanks.

Sorry for the repetition - I can't get the search box to display. 

What browser are you using?

RickBurnes's picture

RickBurnes 1 year 5 weeks 6 days 2 hours ago

We're trying to track down the missing search box problem, and can't seem to reproduce it on our systems...

 

Rick

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