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.

Tags: google paid backlinks, matt cutts directories, matt cutts paid backlinks, paid backlink directories, paid backlinking, paid backlinks, paid backlinks pagerank flow

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 5th, 2010 at 1:27 am and is filed under SEO questions and answers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.