Recently myself and some guys I work with were discussing the importance of certain web directories that were being purchased for client campaigns. My friend and colleague Eric Bridges played a big part in bringing about this blog post - so thank you Eric.

My opinion has been that for some time now directories carry little, if any, value to linkbuilding efforts. Sure, there are some out there that have much editorial discretion and consequently I believe them to be scored high in authority in the eyes of Google, but the vast majority of the directories are completely useless for SEO efforts. Google has been flagging these sites for years and although your website won't be filtered/penalized for an association with them, the link will certainly be filtered out of their scoring metric.

Toolbar PR in this case means nothing. Do we really think that Google has a vested interest in letting a community of people trying to reverse engineer their algorithm know which sites they are flagging and filtering? Don't think so.

When I linkbuild I typically go the oft forgotten route of contacting webmasters through phone (smiling and dialing) and email. This is primarily a result of the vertical that I work in - little opportunity for article creation and viral link strategy. This is also due to the fact that many of the websites I work with offer a unique and tangible value for other websites to link to - they are a resource of information. Every time I see an SEO blogger post obout how "dead" the email/phone linkbuilding strategies are in 2009, I can't help but think how flawed this claim really is - because I've had nothing but success with it.

When looking for links I typically begin with competitive backlink analysis (again, many SEOs frown upon this but in my opinion this is the easiest and most low hanging fruit of linkbuilding), site queries and intitle queries to find links/resources, as well as keyword searches for the query spaces I'd like to rank for. The last one is particularly important in my opinion and here's why:

We all know that Google cache's a large portion of the query space and sub-collections of documents can sit in a particularly query space for a very long period of time - especially if the space is of a more static and unchanging topical space such as education or historical reference. The collections of documents are deemed to be an editorial authority and scored highly within the given query space - ie they come up in results 1-10 within the given SERPs. If you can obtain linkbacks from these documents to yours, I believe this is the strongest off-site signal of trust you can send to an engine about your webpage being relevant to a given query space. Although many of the first page SERPs are commercial in nature and usually SEO driven, I usually find a lot of good link opportunities once I begin making it to the 3rd of 4th pages of a query space.

I also look for highly significant and highly authoritative websites in relation to my own. I don't pay so much attention to PageRank and outlink numbers (I'd love to avoid these altogether, but usually I can't stop myself from looking) as I do the editorial significance of the document. The location of the link and context surrounding it are equally important. When I say significant and authoritative, an example would be the Texas Department of Public Education linking back (from the state.tx.us subdomain) to my college directory (ideally, a Texas internal page). When I say location and context I'm referring to what type of page the link appears on and how it appears. If this is a typical /links.* page then I don't believe an SE would emphasize the importance of my document (especially so if the page contained 300+ other outlinks) as it would, say - a /job-resources.* page that is constructed as an article rather than just another place to stick all your outbound resources.

Of course, SEO people love anchor text and I usually try and avoid manipulating my way into targeted anchor (I often find that the 'chaos factor' of webmasters doing it themselves gives me the best mix of both variation and targeting that I can get). I also like to get "in between" other authoritative outlinks. If I'm appearing in a links page, then if NASA sits above me and UPENN sits below me, I think I'm in a decently good spot. Getting my link within the context of a keyword-rich setence or description is by far the most ideal placement, rather than just sitting in between two page breaks.

I also try and look for non-profit, and yes - government or institutional link opportunities when attempting to build for a client. Again, many SEOs will tell you that this is an outdated practice, but Google Patent 20070094254 has explicitly said that:

[0074] Links may be weighted in other ways. For example, links may be weighted based on how much the documents containing the links are trusted (e.g., government documents can be given high trust). Links may also, or alternatively, be weighted based on how authoritative the documents containing the links are (e.g., authoritative documents may be determined in a manner similar to that described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,285,999). Links may also, or alternatively, be weighted based on the freshness of the documents containing the links using some other features to establish freshness (e.g., a document that is updated frequently (e.g., the Yahoo home page) suddenly drops a link to a document).

Other things that I try to keep in mind when linkbuilding are the link profiles and diversity of the backlinks I'm attempting to get. Their website structure and flow of authority, as well as their age and other historical information are also something I note. I typically don't overcomplicate this process too much - and I certainly don't obsess (that often) about toolbar PageRank during backlink campaigns. I often just try and fit sites naturally into my link profile (WWGT - What Would Google Think?) and ask myself if it "makes sense." I believe the measure of a link lies primarily in the editorial value of the pointing website and the nature and placement location of the outlink.