Directories? Relevant or dead?

[DirectoriesToday]

Are large business directories on the net still relevant and helpful for SEO?

Sites like BOTW and Yahoo Directory?

 

[zigojacko]

Forget directories.

No-one uses them (apart from spammers/scrapers).
No-one maintains them any more.

And Google will only pay attention to DMOZ and the two you mentioned (none of which you'll get listed in without 301 emails/submissions or by paying). It really isn't worth your time and effort.

Business directories, citations sources (for local businesses) and niche directories are all that are worth bothering with (and I'm about to post a new thread up in a moment about this).

 

[seomasters1]

I agree zigojacko. Directories should now be citations, meaning you need to add your name, address, contact details etc. You can use free citation on the sun directory and sites like that. As long as you ignore the sales call that you will eventually get.

 

[thesafetyorganisation]

Sometimes you need to think more about the potential traffic rather than the SEO benefit. Submitting a free listing on the likes of FreeIndex and Yell (Hubu) can still be beneficial from a traffic perspective.

 

[seoswat]

In terms of SEO, pretty pointless really. That said, there tends to be niche specific, industry specific directories in most fields these days where people actually visit and look for companies relevant to their needs.

From a whole marketing approach in my view it is naive to just ignore directories altogether.

Just dont go spamming them all.

Make sure its relevant to your industry and its a site that does get foot traffic.

 

[thomascole]

Good directory's work for Citations and can help you rank for local searches.

 

[WebMeUp]

Yes, directories are now believed to be almost useless from an SEO perspective.

Back in 2005 and before, sure they were fine, but Google doesn't take most of them seriously anymore. Perhaps, the exception is a couple major directories like DMOZ and Yahoo! Directory.

But frankly speaking, getting listed in DMOZ is quite a challenge and is not worth your time and efforts. As our practice shows, now a link from this directory has vary little influence on website rankings.

So focus on authoritative niche business directories and citations sources.

 

[seowise]

Oh, linky linky http://jamesnorquay.com/an-interview-ex-member-matt-cuttss-search-quality-team/
Here is what he said:

Second, don’t dismiss directories completely. I have heard people talking about directories being altogether bad and advise people to avoid them. This is not the case, good quality, moderated directories, or niche directories are still worth looking in to.

 

[greyheart]

Don't forget things like yell and yelp, they're worth listing yourself in. (Depending on your business)

But that's pretty much it. I'd also shy away from Dmoz now if by some miracle someone's there to mod it. To many spam directories scrape it, and yes these do get flagged as spam by Google. Seen it when doing penalty removal :/