Can web directories improve my SEO positioning?

If you want to fully exploit your positioning strategy, web directories can still help you.
This question continues to generate controversy since, if I tell you that the web directories will improve your web positioning, I would be fooling you. Why? Well, because Google began its personal crusade against low-quality pages, because these only served to generate a multitude of links, but this deception, would it be a half-deception?

I think the best thing is to start by explaining that it is a web directory so that there will be no doubts.

Imagine a phone book of these that were styled before, where they appeared written in pencil, endless telephone customers, family and friends organized in alphabetical order. And now, change the paper and the pen on the computer screen and the names of the agenda by links to websites, that’s a web directory.

In addition, so that you can find in a simpler way the information that interests you, web directories are structured by categories and subcategories. In each one of them, information about the link that interests you is offered, such as, for example, what the company is doing or its main activity. Likewise, anyone who has a website can also include their own in the web directory in which they are interested to appear.

There are several types of web directories that could be perfectly useful for your web business, for example, those that offer information about local services or in a certain region, that is, for those companies that only work in a certain area. These web directories, such as yellow pages or 11870 , are free and very helpful for users, so they also work for positioning strategies based on local SEO , a topic that I mentioned in previous posts.

Returning to the subject, the web directories were a useful system to be able to locate different groups of companies or websites and, thus, to solve communication needs between them, but what happened so that these “modern telephone directories” were avoided by the professionals of web positioning?

Well, very easy, we tried to find the easy and fast way, which Google does not like very much, since the search engine likes to work your strategies to the fullest. Over time, the web directories became link creation machines. So companies that wanted to appear quickly in the first results used this technique, in addition to others, to generate many links quickly, and although some links had nothing to do with the business in question, it was possible to improve positions in the search engine .

This system worked for a while and many internet companies started buying and selling their links, because they were considered quality URLs. Over time the web directories were a flow of links that caused the improvement of the ranking in Google ranking and everyone was a little happier. But, if it was so easy, what happened so that now they do not work?

Well, as I mentioned before, Google started one of its usual practices, trying to improve the user experience and this time included the web directories within their Penguin algorithm update. In this improvement, Google indicated that with this system of links, caused by careless web directories, the pages that appeared in first positions did not always have to do with what the user was looking for. So he decided to penalize those websites that had incoming links, free or paid, that only served to make bulk.

Many of these companies lowered their positions in the ranking immediately without knowing the reason, so the panic spread. The time they had invested in this technique had not served much and some professionals were with the following message from Google.

“We have observed that in some pages of your site you could be using techniques contrary to the Google Webmaster Guidelines.”

The solution to this message was simple, get natural links on your website that did not pretend to manipulate the position in the search engine, that is, quality was more important than quantity. And now is when I turn the nut and say, the web directories are not as bad as it seems.

With this I do not mean that the massified directories are perfect for you, far from it! And I highlight what is “massified”. I from you, I would not go near one of them. But there are some well-known web directories that can help you improve your PageRank or position in the Google ranking. And do not worry! These web directories will not harm your positioning in the future since they will be quality links.

Among the most popular web directories you can find Yahoo! which is paid and DMOZ which has been the most famous internationally. Right now the directory has ceased to exist (March 17 closed its doors), although we can find your resources in this link .

The fact is that there are specialized web directories that are quite segmented based on the subject they are dealing with or that have a very similar theme and are well valued by Google. These will be the web directories that you should look for to appear in them, since they will help you to improve your positioning in the search ranking, increasing visits to your website.