If you were writing a textbook on SEO linking circa 2001, you

almost certainly would have included a chapter on web

directories. They used to be the primary way of actively

acquiring one-way inbound links, before content syndication,

blogs, or the paid link market really took off.

Web Directories and SEO Links: What Went Wrong?

Fast forward a few years, and you'd have to rewrite the chapter

on directories and web links. In fact, you would probably

downgrade web directories from a chapter to a page or two. In

the SEO world, nothing good ever lasts long, and so it is with

web directories.

• Traffic. With Google more accurate than ever, there was no

more reason to turn to a human-edited list of websites. A

directory might get you one or two click-throughs a month--or

none at all.

• Redirects. Once directory owners realized their link

popularity was valuable, they started hording it. Overnight,

many, if not most, directories switched their HTML links to

search-engine-invisible redirects.

• Fees. Most directories started charging for inclusion, or at

least, for inclusion with a link rather than a redirect. If the

fees were reasonable, that would not be so bad. But why would

you pay $35 for a link on a PR 3 page with dozens of other

links and virtually no content, on a site with dwindling

traffic?

• Corruption. In the SEO world, low-hanging fruit quickly goes

rotten. Any volunteer-edited commercial category in a link

directory runs a very real risk of being taken over by a

corrupt SEO.

• Dubious link popularity. Given the notoriety of many

directories for selling or inappropriately bestowing links,

it's not hard to imagine a search engine quality control

engineer turning the link popularity juice off from these

sites.

• "Welcome to our list." If a directory doesn't charge a fee to

enter, it may ask for payment in the form of an email address.

You'd better use your special Hotmail account for that one.

• Anchor text. Many directories do not allow for anchor text to

be specified, delighting in providing as little SEO value as

possible for the effort involved in submitting to them.

• Time. When link directories really were vital efforts to

categorize the web, getting a link in them was as simple as

having a good website and letting them know about it. Now that

they've turned into tightly rationed supplies of link

popularity, that kind of responsiveness is out the window.

• Idiosyncratic applications without any promise of timely

follow-up.

• Application forms that often empty straight into a black

hole:

• No way of checking on the status of submissions.

• Threats of scuttling submissions that are re-submitted when

there is no response.

Web Directory Linking Alternatives for the 21st Century

• Reciprocal linking with a twist. If you network with other

site owners, you can triangulate link trades so that they are

not direct. Heck, if you really like each other, you may just

link to each others' sites for the sake of it! It's worked for

me with some high-PR links.

• Blogging. Blog early, blog often, and someone is bound to

link to you. It's the nature of blogging. The fastest way to

get inbound links from your blog? Write about other blogs. The

more controversial, the better. Post this article on a

webmaster blog, and in the same post, reference the blog of

someone who thinks link directories are still a good idea! In

the blogosphere, arguments mean lots of links.

• Article directories. These are the closest things to link

directories, from an SEO standpoint, to emerge in the 21st

century. You submit an article to one of these sites (of which

there are over 200). In your article you include a link to your

site. Article directories are everything link directories used

to be: responsive, fair, fast, no-fee, relevant, and quality

sources of not only links but information. OK, most of their

pages are PR0 and the rest tend to be PR 1-2. But with most

article directories, you can choose your exact anchor text for

the link--often more valuable than PageRank for non-competitive

search phrases. Besides, if most of your links are on PR 4+

pages, how natural will that look?

In short, even if web link directories do still have some SEO

value, they should no longer be your first stop for one-way

inbound links. There are much better, and much less

aggravating, linking methods.