Do Web Directories Carry Value anymore?
I’ve been seeing a lot of discussion about web direcotories through social networks, and have heard a lot of people say they don’t submit to directories any more since all the penalizations. Well the thing is there is still many quality directories out there that Google did not penalize and I don’t think they plan on penalizing, so yes there is tons of directories out there that still carry some pretty good value. Just becuase a bunch of directories got penalized or hit don’t get all caught up on other ones.
Sometimes I ask my self if there was more behind it about all these directories getting penalized because even Google there self recommends submitting to directories for search engines optimization purposes in there guide lines. It says precisely to submit your site to relevant directories such as the Open Directory Project and Yahoo!, as well as to other industry-specific expert sites, now that was copied right out of Google Guide Lines and it also states to get other sites linking to yours.
Sometimes I wonder maybe these directories are getting out of control with link buying or advertising, and should be focused more on a natural approach or not get so carried away with just link buying offer something for users to, but then again I see several other directories that did not get hit which I’m not going to bring up who, but there is some very well known directories that I know for a fact buys links or does advertising on websites that does not use NoFollow, but who knows maybe there was more to it then what every one knows.
I think directories are a great thing to submit to I’ll still recommended our clients to get into directories as long as they exist specially dmoz, yahoo, and botw some of the best directories out there due to there age and trust with search engines, which of course any link from an old site is great. We even own a directory our self that has several high inner pr pages and never have bought a link for the directory once. Which we do have a lot of people that advertise the directory for us through affiliates and etc, but never have went to the stages of buying links or anything the directory has been naturally linked to.
Just be careful where you submit your site, or where you buy links at thats all I could say (so don’t go buying links from yadi, yadi, yadi if you get my drift), and yes directories still carry value I think a lot of these directories PR will come back up during page rank update because I know of a few directories that got penalized awhile back or I should say smacked, but they started regaining there page rank after time. I’m thinking Google just filters out certain links or might smack people when they think there getting carried away.
So should you still submit to directories? Yes most certainly 
there is still a lot of high quality directories out there which not every one likes directories, or believes in them, but then again there is a ton of people that do like them and if you do still submit to them.