After Penguin
If you were to do a historical search of the internet prior to 2012, you would quickly realize that there were a tremendous amount of directories all over the internet. These are usually global directories.
In other words, they are not tied to any kind of geographic location. They are not focused on a particular region, country, city, town, you name it.
Most of these are global. Anybody from Buenos Aires, for example, can get a listing just as quickly and effectively as somebody from Los Angeles, Tokyo, Manila, the Ukraine, and all points in between.
The reason of course, for this proliferation was the fact that when people fill out these link directories to advertise their website, they get a backlink. Prior to 2012, Google only penalized websites for linking two bad websites.
If bad websites linked to you, then it’s okay. It’s not going to be counted against you. Not surprisingly, a lot of people who are into search engine optimization realized that this is a chink in Google’s armor.
You have to understand that Google figures out what websites are about. It knows how to rank websites primarily through the use of links. Google looks at links as a sort of vote.
Google as Search Engine
That’s how Google works. It seems pretty simple and basic, but that has always been Google’s vulnerability. This is why a lot of people put up all sorts of worthless and junky link directory sites to take advantage of this weakness.
After 2012 and Google Penguin rolled out, Google now started penalizing websites not only for linking to bad websites, but also for receiving links from suspicious, suspect, or downright bad websites. As you can well imagine, the vast majority of these mass-produced link sites disappeared overnight.
If enough links point to your website using a certain word, then each link counts as a vote regarding the content of your website. For example, if your website gets a vast majority of links for “coffee shop”, the chances of your website being all about coffee is actually quite high.
The Impact
It’s as if an asteroid hit the Earth and all the dinosaurs died out. That’s how devastating and catastrophic Google Penguin was. Now, let me ask you. Are link directories still relevant after Google Penguin?
There’s much less link directories out there. A lot of people would be tempted to think that link directories are basically as dead as the dinosaurs.
Well, think again. This website is living proof that link directories are not dead. They’re still relevant and they’re still going strong.
Localization is Key
The big difference is localization and editorial control. Please understand that if you submit a link here, you don’t instantly get a link.
We review your link. We make sure that you are running a truly local business. We make sure that the content as well as the descriptions that you post on this website are consistent with our editorial quality standards.
To make Google even happier, all the links that are outbound from this website coming from business listings are not followed by Google. By using these best practices, localized link directories such as ausdirectory.org are not only back, but are generating amazing results for both free and paid customers.
So, yes. Link directories are still relevant after Google Penguin, but only if they use very user-specific linking instructions and have a tight quality-based editorial and content policy.
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