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Submitting to directories worth it?

August 25, 2017

The web directory industry went crazy a few years ago. Web directories used to be one of the more popular and widely used places to get a backlink for your website from, but they are not close to being as effective compared to what they used to be.  They may even be ineffective. DMOZ, was the granddaddy of all web directories and it has recently been shut down by its owner, AOL. However, the editors are working hard trying to resurrect it and create their own version. Google and all the other search engines are either penalizing or just simply ignoring these types of unnatural links. The backlinks from directories tend to be very unnatural as they are usually created by the webmaster submitting to get links. It is no longer worth it, where you could submit to 100o’s of spam web directories and expect to see an improvement in your site. It was really getting out of hand a few years ago so many directories being created every day on strong, but expired domains to try and make a buck. They were really useless and provided no value to the web ecosystem. That is why Google and other search engines had to act to penalize or ignore these links as they were artificially inflating link popularity.

Having said that, there are some directories are probably worth submitting to, especially if you have a niche site and the directories are well run and well established. One is the most robust is  BOTW m but they do charge a lot, but they are very strict who gets in, which is probably why it is worth getting a listing from them. Some of the old well extablished directories like Skaffe, GoGuides and Web Experience are also possible worth it. They were around before the craze of a few years ago and are still around today and being managed well. If you have health or medical related site, there are the old familiar ones such as ABC.md.

A reasonably good guide is that if the directory has a lot of poor quality crap sites listed, then stay away from them. If it has a lot of carefully curated high value sites, then that is the sort of directory that you want to be in.