Are Directories Still Worth The Link?

Writing by Nick Stamoulis Tweet

Back in the day, webmasters would scour the web looking for directories where they could submit their website and get a link back. It worked like a charm as many of the websites were able to rank highly for their key terms just by optimizing well on site and developing a good link building strategy that focused a great deal on directories. Many webmasters built links through hundreds of directories and did well. Does this strategy still work?

The short answer is, No. Directory links are still valuable as part of your off site search engine optimization and long term link building strategy, but not as valuable as they used to be. You’ll still get good credit for many directory (though not all), but if you are serious about your link building then you need to seek more diversity.

One example of a directory where links are not counted at all by Google is the article directory. Where article directories used to be a good source for links, these days you can’t expect to get any link credit from your articles in directories. But that’s not why you submit those articles, is it? So it’s no big loss really because if you get 100 back links from publishers picking up your article then losing that one link from the directory is a good pay off.

There are directories, however, that still provide good link juice. Most of those directories are paid directories. That is, you pay a fee and you get a listing. The free directories are so full of spam that the search engines have largely stopped counting the links from them. And some directories have just been outright banned from Google altogether.

Before you spend too much time building links from directories, do your due diligence and make sure the directory has a good reputation. If so then go ahead and add your listing. If not, pass it by.