Search Engines, Forums and Placement?

[clarkhaddock]

I am trying to get my site out on the web and wanted to know if putting your website link in forums like this will help with your placement? If it does is there someway to get into a lot of forums instead of doing it one by one.

RC

[pixelcop]

Hi,

if the forum offers signature links, it will help you.

[dannysullivan]

There's quite a debate about this. I recommend seeing these recent threads:

What Links Does Google Count? (http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=2922)

Page not in Google for "Blue Tomatoes" (http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=3130)

I am trying to get my site out on the web and wanted to know if putting your website link in forums like this will help with your placement?
Even if putting a link to a site on a forum might help, putting a link to your site on this forum for only that reason would violate the forum's guidelines (http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/faq.php?faq=vb_read_and_post#faq_links) about appropriate linking. So you wouldn't want to do that :)

[seobook]

I am trying to get my site out on the web and wanted to know if putting your website link in forums like this will help with your placement? If it does is there someway to get into a lot of forums instead of doing it one by one.

RC
forum spamming can help, but would you want your brand to be associated with forum spamming?
http://www.cre8asiteforums.com/viewtopic.php?t=18468

[pixelcop]

forum spamming can help, but would you want your brand to be associated with forum spamming?
http://www.cre8asiteforums.com/viewtopic.php?t=18468

Yes, If you offer help in the forum and a useful website, other people are much more willing to link to you - besides the link in your signature ... Got this from the SEOBook I read last week :)

[sem4u]

They can help in getting sites crawled initailly.

[clarkhaddock]

I am trying to find all of the Hand entered Search engine directories like Yahoo and others that I need to go and enter my website directly into. Does anyone know what or where I can find a master list with all or al ot of them?

[Elisabeth]

Clarkhaddock,

this thread may help you out: 56 Directories to Submit To (http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=2769)

[pixelcop]

Here is another archive of directories (http://www.isedb.com/html/Web_Directories/).

[Marcia]

There are also categories for directories at ODP and Yahoo Directory. Plus you can search for add url + search term, directory + search term, + industry, etc. - like add site + , submit site + . They can be found at search engines often. It isn't easy, but it's a far more legitimate way than stepping on toes and in some cases getting banned.

[Hogbeast]

How much of a difference does it make to list in these directories? Is it worth paying the money to get listed or are the free ones enough? I know it probably has to do with your marketing budget, etc., but could someone give me a background on directory listings?

Thanks!
Erica

[greenleaves]

Directory listings count as links to your site.

I guess the value of it will depend on the PR of the page and the value of direct traffic you get from a dir listing. I have only seen a handfull of directories I would pay for if the marketing budget I handle was 10 fold. So far, in 2 years of online marketing experience, I have yet to come oppon anything exept Yahoo that I recommend paying for.

HTH

[Hogbeast]

Do you recommend paying for Yahoo?

[greenleaves]

As you pointed out yourself, that depends on your budget... $300 can get you up to 30,000 clicks on some PPCs like goClick or searchfeed... or 6,000 clicks on adwords/overture. Do you think that the Yahoo directory will give you that many clicks per year? It could but that would depend on your industry and plasement and your site. You choose where you spend your money.

I don't know your site, but unless you are working with a fairly large budget, I would stay away from paid directories, and focus on optimizing your site the cheap way, and putting your extra chash into PPC. What I just said is easily arguable, it is just what I think I would do, with the information (close to none) I have about your site.

[Mel]

Directory listings are far from uniform in the way that they pass PR and in the way that they link to you.

Most directories will only use your URL in the link to your site, so you are not going to get much anchor text ranking from that, many smaller directories do not use direct links when listing your sites and thus the link is not recognizedas such by search engines, and the PR passed is normally miniscule, perhaps on the order of 1/100 of a PR 3.

I believe that the value of directory listings is often overstated, except for popular directories which generate traffic to your site.