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Are Link Directories Still Relevant, Or a Total Waste of Time & Resources?

Posted on Apr 29, 2011 in SEO | 3 comments

Due to the many changes in the search environment, some things that worked yesterday are no longer working when it comes to SEO.

Directories are old school when it comes to the Internet, and there’s been some questions about them. Are they still valid? Should you bother? What directories are good/bad or don’t matter?

If you’ve been wondering… We’ve got some thoughts…

Lee Collins
Managing Director
StomperNet, LLC

“The five essential entrepreneurial skills for success are concentration, discrimination, organization, innovation and communication.” ~ Michael Faraday

Are Link Directories Still Relevant?

When the Internet was still fairly new, the best known site for typing keywords that applied to what you were looking for was Yahoo.com. It was organized into different categories, and you could either pick a category that you were interested in learning more about or type a search term in to find different category listings.

Though it had a search element, Yahoo didn’t move to crawler-based results until around 2002. Before that, it was most definitely more directory than search engine.

That was in the mid-90s and since the inception of Yahoo, many other directories have popped up on the Web, both good and bad.

Five years ago, it was cool to add your link to any directory that existed. All backlinks — free or paid — were good links, and no matter where they came from, they boosted your place in the SERPs.

Fast forward to 2011, and things have changed. Though Yahoo is still a well-respected force online, and Google isn’t the ONE big dog that it used to be, it’s still making heavy ripples throughout the Web — when something happens there, everyone still pays attention.

With recent changes, we have reason to wonder — are link directories so yesterday, or do they even matter?

Google did one thing with the recent Panda update, and that was to make low-quality, poor content sites targets for devaluation. But even some of the big dogs were howling. We saw respected sites like Ezine Articles, Mahalo, and HubPages suffering severe ranking and traffic damage. And we know that the issues that these sites faced was the duplicate content issue.

But other sites, which Google considers to be “low-quality,” suffered from lack of content of any kind — the scrapers, the squeeze pages (which never really ranked anyway), and maybe… online link directories?

How are they stacking up? You’d think that since they have little content, aside from site descriptions, that they might have been impacted negatively. For some of them, that’s true, but for others, their traffic actually increased dramatically. Panda loved them! Check out these stats, recently gathered from SEMRush.com:

Apparently, Google found value in some directories and not in others. The traffic differences before and after were astounding!

Notice that its own DMOZ.org dropped almost 300,000 visitors after Panda, whereas Yahoo improved by more than 45.5 million! Other directories fared in differing amounts of traffic, up and down, across the board.

But the shakeout is not over. In April, Business.com dropped like a stone to around 99K visitors, a mere 1/10 of the traffic the site was getting.

So, what happened?

We can only guess. However, directories returning lots of 404 links would definitely not be viewed favorably. Sites offering sitewide linking was another consideration, which has always been something Google frowned upon, even when buying links hadn’t been demonized by the search giant a few years ago..

It’s easy to sit back and make assumptions, but the fact is that directories that improved in traffic are the type you’ll want to target if part of your SEO strategy is to include them in your backlinking process. But if you’re just going for potential traffic, remember that things have changed. Entering your site could be a total waste of time these days.

So, how do you decide whether to bother at all, and if you do want to add your site to any of the online directories, what criteria should you follow before shelling out any amount of cash?

Here are three tips for making sure your one-way backlink is valuable:

1. Find only human-edited directories. If the directory is a paid option and says that sites are reviewed, be sure that the sites it has registered are quality sites and that they really are looking for sites with great content to improve the Web. Also check their refund policy if your site is rejected. Some of them do refund partial or entire fees paid.
2. Make sure that there aren’t too many ads running on the site. If there are, it’s a sure bet that if it hasn’t happened already, the site will lose impact over time.
3. Can you find a category that is 100% relevant to your site? Make sure that a local directory listing category is in line your niche, too. Don’t just submit to be included without evaluating the value of doing so first.

Gaining one-way links from quality directories is still a great start-up strategy for getting a new site going. Solid directory backlinks are still valued by all of the search engines and are a good basis to build upon. However, if you don’t continue to gather backlinks for a page, the effect will decrease over time, so if you’re in it for the long haul, create a system to keep the backlinks flowing.

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SEO SECRET SAUCE

Now that you know how directories can still be beneficial, here are some tips about what NOT to do when considering your options:

1. Do not use the same anchor text in every directory link. Make things look more natural, as if other people are recommending or “voting” for your site.
2. Remember that Yahoo or DMOZ can be worth 20 of the lower echelon links combined.
3. This backlinking strategy tends to work best with Yahoo and Bing in terms of it having a SERPs impact, but you can still get directory traffic from Google if your site is listed in a highly visible directory.
4. Regularly updated and respected blogs in your niche will tend to drive more traffic, if that’s what you’re looking for, so guest posting would be a better way to go than paying for a $300 listing that has minimal traffic itself. Check Alexa rankings and other indicators of overall site traffic to find out.
5. Most directories online are nothing more than link spam. Be very careful about the directories you choose. Just because a site is free and seems like a good deal doesn’t mean that it won’t hurt your SEO more than help.

THE STOMPER BUZZ

“We have web pages and web sites on the first page of Google for nearly every keyword that we are interested in having that for, and that’s because of StomperNet.”

Otto Collins

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Five Ways to Tackle a Panda and Get Back into Google’s Good Graces

Posted on Apr 22, 2011 in SEO | 5 comments

Our story starts in February, when Danny Sullivan saw that something had changed at Google. I mean, we heard something was in the wind when Matt Cutts mentioned that Google planned to take action against “content farms” shortly before, so it wasn’t like what happened was any big surprise.

And it wasn’t just Danny noticing. SEOs from all over the Web had seen significant changes to their organic traffic, but this important algorithm shift had no label until Danny called it the “Farmer” update in his SearchEngineLand.com blog.

Yet, when Google admitted to the update (which affected nearly 12% of all pages in the U. S.), they decided that they’d rather call it “Panda,” because it was more “friendly” and because they didn’t want people to think that they were specifically targeting content farms.

But they were targeting content farms and more. And thousands of websites immediately lost their traffic and were scrambling to figure things out.

Some major sites were affected by Panda, too. Suite101.com, for example, lost 94% and EzineArticles.com lost 90% of their organic traffic. There was no doubt that the devastation was a crushing blow to sites using only “duplicate” rather than the original content that Google wants to see.

That’s not to say that your site will be penalized if it holds some duplicate content. But if it’s ALL duplicate content or content “scraped” from other sites, you’ll want to pay close attention…

If your site was affected, you may have noticed a significant drop in organic traffic since the end of February. You can also check your positions in Google Webmaster Tools, and see if keyword positions have radically changed over the past 30 days.

But if your investigation proves that the Panda has bitten you, don’t worry. You can get your rankings back. Here are five things you can do to improve your image with Google:

1. Remove any pages with “scraped” content.

Content that you didn’t create yourself, such as article reprints or blog “excerpt” posts with no original content added to back those up. Even very large sites with just a few such pages are feeling the bite, so if you think your site is too big to be bothered, you may want to think again.

2. Keep outside advertising to a minimum.

It’s OK to have one or two ads on a page with a significant amount of content, but if you have a site where the ads outweigh the content or your site looks like a used car lot with streamers, banners, and blinking ads everywhere, get rid of that stuff! It’s going to hurt you.

3. Be sure that your customers have a way to contact a human being.

If you’re writing a blog, be sure to respond to your comments. If your site is an e-commerce site, a membership site, or a stand-alone website, be sure that people have a way to contact you or at least your support department by mail, email, and telephone. Live chat isn’t a bad idea, either. Google wants to see human interaction or at least the potential for it.

4. Do everything you can to get traffic.

Send social media outlets to your blog or web page, use paid media buys, do whatever it takes to get people interested in your site because Google wants to see some traffic coming in and they are counting your “authority” in social arenas, too.

5. Get quality backlinks. Don’t buy them — ever.

Google hates that. But you can guest post on other blogs in your niche, or submit to quality directories like DMOZ, Yahoo, or JoeAnt.com, for example. (Just be sure that the directory is human edited or it won’t count.)

Though Google ins’t the only search engine on the block, it still gets the most traffic and will give you the best results if you optimize for it. Take some time now to figure out whether the Panda has bitten you, and then follow the steps above.

The bottom line is… Give Google the quality, unique content that it wants because there’s nothing more valuable than the bucket loads of targeted, free, converting traffic that Google supplies.

Take care of Google and it will most definitely take care of you.

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SEO SECRET SAUCE

Still worried about Panda?

Here are more steps you can take to can improve your rankings, whether or not your site was bitten by the bear:

1) Care about your visitors –

The overall user experience is important, not just to Google but to your customers. Be sure that your site design and usability are set to “easy,” keep ad-to-content ratio low, and work on brand perception. Keep your brand in their minds and on your pages. If you’re already there… Great! You’re doing the right things.

2) Are you concentrating on awareness?

After ensuring all content on your site is high quality, be sure to consider your engagement with customers through social media channels. Promote your brand awareness with Facebook pages and Twitter. Work toward achieving “authority” in social media sites by getting as many Retweets and Likes as possible. Focus on your customers’ experience interacting with your company. Let them know that there are real people behind it.

3) Have one kind of advertising, not several…

If you have a site or blog running AdSense, Kontera (or other link advertising), and banners, choose one form of advertising and stick to that. Too many forms just ring Google’s bell and could hurt your chances for higher rankings.

And if you’re already doing these things? Celebrate! You have appeased the ghods of Google.

Is your site up to snuff or what can you do to improve it?

Let us know with your comments below!

Should Google "Caffeine" be Giving You Jitters?

Posted on Aug 16, 2009 in Featured, SEO | 6 comments

Should Google's new "Caffeine" technology be keeping YOU up at night?

Hey Stompers,

As you may have heard, Google recently announced testing of a new, more powerful version of their search engine technology.

It’s code-named “Caffeine” and you can read about from Google’s own Dev Blog here.

Now, as business people who rely on SEO, any time Google gives us some insights into what they have planned for the future, we need to pay attention.

So what can we learn from what Google is telling us about the future of search?  Here’s a quote I think is particularly telling:

“It’s the first step in a process that will let us push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions.”

I think that one sentence tells us all we need to know about where we need to be moving, and here’s how:

1. Size and Indexing Speed: This tells us that Google is going to be crawling more pages and indexing them FASTER.  This continues Google’s focus on fresh content – so many new pages are created every day, they can’t keep up.

2. Accuracy: This indicates that the sites that will continue to “win” the search game are going to be the ones that can correctly match up the searcher’s keywords with the content they were actually looking for.  Google indicates that they’re interested not only in what sites people click on, but what the searcher’s behavior is once they arrive.

With that in mind, success will come from testing and adjusting your pages to better serve your visitors.  It will no longer be enough to focus on the keywords alone, but on actually making your content relevant to what those searchers want.

One way to do this is through careful organization of your site structure, organizing information in ways that people will find useful, not just search spiders.

3. Comprehensiveness: To me, this indicates that Google will continue to heap love upon “authority” sites – ones that do a really good job of completely covering their selected niche.

In Google’s never-ending quest for relevance, Google wants to see sites that can indicate a thorough and comprehensive resource for what people are searching for.  This is why it’s important to continue to build pages that rank for ALL your relevant keywords.

It’s not just about the individual SERPS, but the “profile” that a comprehensive site creates.  I can imagine that this focus could be partly to combat “SERP Spamming” tactics where results are flooded with multiple, largely identical copies of the same information spread across multiple Web 2.0 sites.

More and more, it’s going to be important to create sites with larger and larger collections of content in order to really dominate the listings.

Once again, Google shows that they prefer larger, older sites that are packed with useful information.

So even though there’s been a lot of buzz around this announcement and lots of speculation, I don’t think you need to change too much if you’re already doing your SEO the StomperNet way.  What’s working in Google now for us appears to be exactly what they want to encourage.  In fact, they want MORE of it, FASTER.

So get started today, so by the time Caffeine comes out of BETA, you’ll be so far ahead of your competition they may never be able to catch up.

Here’s Hoping, and Keep Stomping!

Brad Fallon
CEO
StomperNet.com

Google's "Insider" Mailing List

Posted on Apr 20, 2009 in Featured, SEO | Comments Off

Today, I have something else for you instead: another free SEO video – this time from Dan “Keyword Master” Thies.

Don’t those SEO “wizards” seem to have a crystal ball peering into Google’s inner workings?  How do they know when Google starts dancing before anyone else can even hear the music yet?

Well Dan’s going to tell you how you can get on Google’s not-so-secret “Insider’s List” so you get an email whenever they change the algorithm.  It’s really that simple.  (Yes, really.)