Free Directories - Any issues with Google?

[acegoet]

Hi,

I see a lot of folks who allow you to post to their free directory...just submit a link type sites.

My question: Does Google or any of the other search engines see these type of inbound links and penalize you for it? Or is it considered an inbound and a good thing?

I appreciate the information....

 

[JayB]

i have also been asking this for the last few days! but no luck so far.

 

[b.a]

maybe some SEO gurus here will answer it. Realy I also see alot of directories starting every day.

 

[acegoet]

Must be too new a newbie question even for this forum! ha-ha. Well, if either of you guys find out, please let me know.

 

[marslizard]

one thing i do know a little about is seo...

things i can convey to you....

#1 yes the se's do "see" these links.
#2 regardless of #1 these links are near worthless because when you have so many links at one url their value is diminished accordingly. for example, i always laugh when i see webmasters trying to trade links on condition that "only sites with a certain pr" need apply.

an extreme example:
the truth is it is way better to have an inbound link from a page with pr1 if it is the only link on that page than a link from a pr6 with a ton of other outbound links on it.

that all being said, (specifically) google is imho doing something very weird lately... ask me if you want more on that topic.

#3 relevance counts. inbound links from pages with similar content is worth more. spiders are getting smarter every day.
#4 se's do a whole lot less penalizing than many people think. think about this one... why would an se penalyze you just because it's spider found a link that anyone could have placed? don't worry about that.

 

[peterk]

You make very good points.

I would be curious to know if SE concider the domain name in their algorithm

EG compare these two domain names

w30z-42-zz.com compared to dnforum.com

now assume everything in dnforum.com was put into w30z-42-zz.com would it still rank as popular?

 

[marslizard]

You make very good points.

I would be curious to know if SE concider the domain name in their algorithm

EG compare these two domain names

w30z-42-zz.com compared to dnforum.com

now assume everything in dnforum.com was put into w30z-42-zz.com would it still rank as popular?

in my experience, to some extent the actual domain name has become a consideration in recent years; not as big a cosideration as some would lead you to believe though. it's not a dealbreaker with the robots at this time.


however, i would stress that keeping an eye to the future is imperative at this time.

i repeat... those damn spiders are getting smarter every day; the smarter they get, the more spider food they chew on... in other words, it is inevitable that as they "understand" more they will give more weight to word relevance issues such as the actual domain name.

 

[david4]

i ve learnt a lot , thankx~~

 

[acegoet]

Thank you 'marslizard'....if anyone else has additional info, I would appreciate it.

 

[whitebark]

You won't be penalized for it by the search engines and here is why - what would stop your competition from paying someone to submit your site to thousands of directories? If they penalized you for it, this would be happening every day.

If you put your link into popular directories you might not get much seo rank weight from it, but the inbound links - AKA - visitors, is what makes it worth it. Traffic is king, but don't fall into the trap of putting your site on link farms.