Over the weekend, Matt Cutts updated his recent blog post about how to report paid links. He added some questions and answers which gave the members of the Search Engine Watch Forums an idea of a quality directory.
Since Google does put weight on directories, Matt says that submitting to directories are okay, provided that the directory accepts quality sites and is not simply a free-for-all link site.
A: I’ll try to give a few rules of thumb to think about when looking at a directory. When considering submitting to a directory, I’d ask questions like:- Does the directory reject urls? If every url passes a review, the directory gets closer to just a list of links or a free-for-all link site.
- What is the quality of urls in the directory? Suppose a site rejects 25% of submissions, but the urls that are accepted/listed are still quite low-quality or spammy. That doesn’t speak well to the quality of the directory.
- If there is a fee, what’s the purpose of the fee? For a high-quality directory, the fee is primarily for the time/effort for someone to do a genuine evaluation of a url or site.
This makes sense. There appears to be nothing wrong with submitting to directories that highlight the sites that are distinguished, and paying for them justifies the manual review of the site.
Forum discussion continues at Search Engine Watch.
