PLEASE… DO NOT CREATE SPACE JUNK

“What are you talking about?” is probably what you’re thinking right about now.

Let me explain.  Just recently I was doing some work for a client who wanted to promote his legal practice’s web site and while evaluating his competitor’s backlinks and anchor text it was discovered that there may be some directories he should try to be included in.

Well, not quite.

After reviewing one of these wonderful “SEO friendly” directories it was very evident that it was not so friendly and not such a good idea to get him listed there.  Why is that?  Let me back up a little here.

First off, building links for the sake of building links is frowned upon by Google for good reason.  They don’t want people gaming the system which makes total sense from both a user and marketing perspective.  If everyone could rank well quickly by littering the interwebs with space junk it’d not be fun or useful for anyone.  That being said if you have a quality site and want to get noticed, at least ‘some’ attention should be placed on getting the word out about your web site, which includes getting links to your site…right?  No plants grow without seeds and water.

OK, now back to the point of the story.  If you are publishing high quality content, links will be built naturally over time by people passing around your information, but to get this done you need to ‘seed and water’ the site a little bit.

So, when reviewing strategies to acquire those initial quality backlinks make sure you don’t accidentally list your site in a space-junk directory.

When I first viewed this one directory for my client, the top of the page was covered in pretty relevant material (other sites and good links)…  However after crawling deeper onto that page these were noticed:

The next thing noticed was that both the category listing and the main root of the site had this PageRank assigned to it:

So not only did this directory decide to litter it’s ‘legal company’ directory page with escort links and other nonsense, apparently Google noticed this and rewarded them accordingly with that lovely PageRank.

This made the decision to skip listing here very easy.

So, where are the quality directories to get listed on you ask?

Stick with the known good boys on the block:  dir.yahoo.com, dmoz.org, botw.org, business.com and maybe joeant.com

Why are these more important or considered trusted?  Simple.  Google has likely deemed these directories as trustworthy as not only is there a fee (except for dmoz) but also human review and editorial oversight as to who gets listed.  Just because you pay for a listing/review does not necessarily mean you’ll be accepted to the directory.  So then only quality sites ‘should’ be listed there.  Makes sense doesn’t it?

Ok, now you know what’s up with quality backlinks, bad neighborhoods and why it’s not a good idea to try and spread space junk around.

Go Fight Win…

…and be good.

- Sean

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