Thanks to Debz for this SEO question:

I’ ve seen that you say paid backlinks are not a good idea, and I’ve read that on other places too - but then I’ve seen other people saying that it’s a good idea to buy links on Yahoo directory? I’m confused?

Yes Debz, you’re right it is a bit confusing.

[By the way - check out Brad Callen's FREE Directory Submitter - I've not used it personally, but I've used most of Brad's products in the past, and they're usually worth checking out, he knows his stuff so I wouldn't expect him to create something which isn't worth using]

You’ll have seen my paid backlinks are a waste of money post, where I discuss the fact that as far as I am concerned paid baclinking is dead money.

If you see this post - paid backlinks vs. backlinking services you’ll see I go into a bit more detail & explain what I mean by paid backlinking.

OK, when I’m talking about “Paid backlinking” really what I am referring to is the majority (but not all) of the pay for inclusion directories  & other sites which charge a fee in return for a backlink.

Before October 2007,  paid backlinking was huge, it got out of controll - people would set up a directory, build it up one pagerank point at a time, by buying links in other directories, and the higher the PR, the more they could charge for a directory submission. Forums like digital point were used a heck of a lot for buying & selling links, in fact I remember a time when forums like that were pretty much all about buying & selling directory links.

Pagerank became a commodity - and directories were popping up left right & centre trading in this new sought after commodity.

These directories often had no policies for checking the quality of websites - they would just let anyone in, in any category, as long as they pay the inclusion fee - in most cases.

Google didn’t like this - because it undermined what pagerank was all about, now they didn’t have a system which was working to tell them which sites were better value based on the linking analysis that the pagerank algorithm provides, instead they simply had a system which told them which webmasters were prepared to spend the most money.

So Google developed a way to deal with this, to weed out paid backlinking - by finding patterns, ways to tell if directories are selling backlinks and allowing the flow of linkjuice   - and if they are, they stem the flow of link juice. That means - a directory may be a PR5, but if Google have picked up a paid backlink trail, having a backlink on the directory may be good for direct traffic purposes - i.e. if a client finds you there - but it will be no good for SEO purposes. (By the way, it’s not selling a backlink which Google mind - it’s selling a backlink which passes link juice which they’re bothered about - so the directories which follow the guidelines & use the nofollow tag on paid links, that’s fine. But of course, if the Nofollow tag is used, the link is no good for SEO).

But - Google do trust some directories to have a paid backlink trail but still take some care to ensure that only high value sites are included - and in the relevant category.

If they can see that spammy sites are being rejected, and that there is some real editorial process going on to ensure only decent sites get in - and it’s not just a case of letting anyone in who pays the fee - then Google should allow the directory to pass pagerank. I say “should” based on Google’s own statements, but this isn’t to say for sure that it’s quite that simple. It’s likely that Google being Google, have a very complex algorithm to tell them whether or not to trust directories. Google like to be clever, they probably have an algorithm to work out who does & doesn’t take sugar in their coffee in the Google offices!!

Anyway - this is why the Yahoo Directory for example, is often recommended as a place to pay for a submission, as it’s known to be a paid directory which Google do trust. They trust them because they believe that Yahoo do a good job of ensuring that only good sites get in - and only in the relevant categories. Personally I believe there’s quite a bit more too it than this though as I alluded to above. Google like to ask the question “What’s the value add?” and they don’t like anything which is just another copy of another site / resource, so I think it’s likely that Google also like the Yahoo directory because of the overall value it adds to the web, the fact that they do a good job of the editorial process making sure the spammy sites get rejected, and probably other factors too including Yahoo’s enormous link popularity, and the fact that Yahoo Directory publishes quite a bit of original content as well as just directory listings.

There are others which are believed to be “Google approved directories” such as BOTW, business.com &  JoeAnt  - which Google are thought to trust. There have been quite a lot of passionate arguments about this, people claiming that Google handled this unfairly by allowing just a few directories to have a monopoly on selling this amazing commodity which is pagerank - and I can see their point as there were very few directories initially that Google were known to trust - but I can also see the reason Google had to do this.

Personally I usually avoid all paid backlinks, even the likes of Yahoo & BOTW for the simple reason that they’re so expensive - and I’m not sure they’re worth the money. It costs $300 to submit to Yahoo directory, for this amount of money I can write & submit a number of articles, free directories, social bookmarking, create link bait (highly linkable content or features which will cause people to want to link to your site) and so on, and I would be very surprised if just one inclusion in Yahoo is worth that amount of money when compared to the alternative.

But if you do want to buy a directory submission - it’s certainly not a bad idea to help get things going. Don’t expect it to have any direct return on investment, but as a new website for example, being included in the Yahoo directory can only be a good thing for your website.

Don’t feel that you need to go & submit to every single directory that you suspect Google approve though, personally I’d recommend just one or two - it’s doubtful that if you go & spend a grand or two submitting to all of the directories you can find which appear to adhere to the Google guidelines, that this will bring any return on investment in the near future.

But anyway hopefully this answers the question - Google don’t allow most of the paid directory inclusions to count, i.e. to pass on link Juice, but there are some which they do trust, including Yahoo.

The video below is Matt Cutts from Google, giving an explanation on paid backlinks.

Thanks to Brian G for this question.

Good question, do all websites struggle for traffic initially.

My answer to this - is that in terms of organic search engine traffic  - YES - all websites do struggle to begin with for search engine traffic, at least to some degree.

The reason for this is that :

1) The website needs to get indexed on Google, and the other search engines.

2)Even once they’re indexed, brand new website don’t have site age in their favour (this is often known as domain age, but I refer to it as site age, because I don’t believe that it matters how long the domain has been registered, but what I believe matters is how long there has been a website on the domain). So websites will struggle initially, particularly for competitive search terms, until it’s been around for a bit longer.

3)As the site is brand new - there will be little word of mouth / viral traffic at this stage - unless you’ve worked on a pre-launch of course.

First of all - it’s important to understand that all websites are new at some point, even the biggest most successful sites were just idea’s only a few years ago, so don’t let it put you off if you’ve just created a new website & you’re not getting much traffic yet.

Ways to shorten the initial lack of search engine traffic:

1) Make sure your website includes an important search term, or terms. This will usually bring traffic to your site quicker than if the site were on a domain which wasn’t keyword rich.

2)Get your website indexed on Google ASAP (don’t pay for expensive “premium google submission services” and so on - just drop me an email, I’ll do this for you for a few quid!

3)If you’ve not got your new website yet - consider looking for an existing website to buy, one which has been established for a while & is indexed on Google but which hasn’t been marketed properly, can often be a good investment - as long as it’s on a good domain, and as long as you’re not completely changing the theme of the website (if you are, you may lose the site age Google are attributing to the site).

4)Consider investing some money into Pay Per Click, Google Adwords. Be careful, be wary of broad & phrase match terms, I’d initially recommend going for exact match only, and use this to test how well your website is converting traffic into sales. At least this way you’ll find out if your website isn’t doing a good job of converting traffic - it’s very frustrating to spend a lot of time, effort & cash to get lots of organic search engine traffic, to then find out that your site doesn’t work well to convert traffic into enquiries / sales.

I hope this helps.