How to Gauge the Quality of Web Directories for Link Building Campaigns
For online entrepreneurs launching link building campaigns, being listed in high-quality web directories has significant benefits. They should know what exactly to look for in such directories to make sure that they don’t waste their time or become counterproductive by listing in those that provide no value at all.
Web Design & Structure
Online entrepreneurs should stay away from any web directory that makes pay-per-click advertisements more prominent than listings. They should also avoid paying for listings on sites that have tons of broken links.
Relevance
Online entrepreneurs should focus on submitting their sites to those that either focus on their niche or at least include their category. Submitting to directories where their sites are irrelevant will generate insignificant traffic and little value for SEO. Besides, those that allow paying customers to get listed in irrelevant categories are not likely to provide any value.
Content
Web directories provide huge value for link building campaigns when listings are unique and compiled manually. If it seems like a directory’s listings were simply copied from others, online entrepreneurs should avoid them. They should also avoid directories that seem to exist only to promote the owner’s affiliate activities.
Offerings
Online entrepreneurs should focus their link building efforts on web directories that offer direct, do-follow links. For each directory they are considering, they should check the source codes of the pages that contain listings and make sure that links do not have the rel=’nofollow’ tag as no-follow links hardly provide any SEO value. They should also avoid those that offer site-wide listings to anyone willing to pay as they are not likely to count for much.
SEO
High-quality web directories provide additional value to link building campaigns not only because their listings also rank in SERPs but also because they provide additional assets that increase a site’s pagerank. Online entrepreneurs should avoid any directory that has not been crawled in the last six months or so. On Google, they can easily tell when a site was last crawled by clicking the “Cached” link that appears below its listing.
Using web directories for link building campaigns provide tons of value in terms of targeted traffic generation and SEO. To minimize work and maximize results, online entrepreneurs should choose to be listed in directories that pass the criteria above.