Norman Kelly.Com

Although link directories don’t seem as wild as Tom Cruise’s play in Risky Business, they can be similarly risky for your online presence. As a proactive marketer, you want to both get many inbound links and keep your reputation intact. Can you accomplish this with link directories?

Risky Business That is what Sean McVey wondered recently in a discussion forum on InboundMarketing.com. “I have seen many sites that promote software that distributes your links to directories,” he wrote. “Are these types of programs useful or considered spam?”

Here are our top five marketing tips emerging from the forum:

Deceptive Linkbaiting Doesn’t Pay

Don’t bother with sneaky efforts to get unrelated links to your site. Users will feel deceived when they arrive on your site in search of something else. Furthermore, these visitors are unlikely to make qualified leads or retainable customers.

Secondly, Google’s webmaster guidelines specifically advise against deceptive linkbaiting: “Don’t deceive your users or present different content to search engines than you display to users, which is commonly referred to as ‘cloaking.’” Google detects such linking schemes and penalizes the wrongdoers.

Niche Directories Can Be Useful — But Also a Waste of Time

Internet marketing professional Toni Ani?i? suggested that submitting your site to niche directories might help increase your link popularity. Niche directories feature different categories that can suit your business. Such listings will help you find relevant content and get connected to your target audience.

Yet, Toni noted, this practice can be very time-consuming. “Generally speaking, adding links to every small directory out there will be a waste of time,” he wrote.

What’s Good About Human Reviewed Directories

Human reviewed directories are trustworthy and do a good job of showing websites with valuable content. As Mike Volpe wrote, “Getting your company listed in a human reviewed directory is sort of like getting into a good college. It doesn’t mean you are smart, but it means a human looked at your application and thought you are smart.”

That is why, under off-page SEO on your Website Grader report, you will see fields for DMOZ Directory, Yahoo! Directory and ZoomInfo. By submitting your site to these human reviewed directories you are optimizing your chances to get found on search engines.

What’s Bad About Human Reviewed Directories

The main disadvantage of human reviewed directories is that they can be somewhat expensive and time-consuming. On Yahoo! Directory, for instance, you need to pay a 9.00 non-refundable fee in order to guarantee consideration of your site for inclusion within seven business days.

The free directories out there, unfortunately, can take too long to process your request. On DMOZ Directory, for instance, it can take volunteers months to respond to your request to get listed.

Make the Long-Term Investment: Great Content

The most effective way to earn inbound links and keep your site’s reputation intact is by creating remarkable content and promoting it to target audiences. Similar to Pay-Per-Click, paid links can work well in the short term but do not represent a long-term marketing solution. It takes producing original content with “pages for users, not for search engines” to be on top of search queries.

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