Yahoo Directory is considered the creme de la creme in the human edited directory and search field, and is one of the major authority listings I (and many other SEO’s) routinely tell clients and readers to join.
A link from the Yahoo Directory is usually of high value because it :
- May assist with Yahoo Search rankings themselves
- Yahoo driven co citation & linking helps engines classify the theme of your site and sites it should be lsited with
- And let’s face it, Yahoo Directory is one of the trusted building blocks of the web by Google and other search engines, so the authority is top notch.
Along with Best of the Web, Business.com and DMOZ, Yahoo has always been on the top of many directory submit lists because of its authority and power linking.
But if your site already has decent search rankings, is that $299 a year still worth it?
[This should be a no brainer for large businesses and mega publishers, but for smaller publishers, that fee can add up]
A forum member asks over on Digital Point :
I have a site which is 2 years old and indexed in Yahoo and take even some first position there. Should I submit my web to Yahoo directory or not?
Surprisingly, the results are mixed. Some saying to go ahead and bite the bullet, while others are telling them to save their $299 for other link building and marketing services.
What are your thoughts?
Is paying $299 a year to Yahoo to list your site in their directory still worth it or not? Or is this Dinosaur SEO?
I submitted last week. It’s cheap really.
It comes out to $25 per month, which isn’t bad as long as you’re accepted into a high visibility category.
It’s important to note that the fee is for a review only and doesn’t guarantee admission. You can’t just submit any old site.
As with any directory, one should ensure the category page they want to be listed on is actually indexed by Google and other engines and has some measure of PageRank (authority). If it is not indexed, it cannot be recognized as passing link juice. Even more important, does it have potential to send traffic?
You say “the results are mixed”, but having just visited the thread in question, I can’t see anyone saying it’s worthwhile. Am I missing something?
I’d actually be very interested to hear what people’s thoughts are on this one, so shall be keeping an eye on things!
Not too sure you actually get that much actual traffic from this, I’m sure if anyone goes over their stats they will find a preponderance of the traffic is coming from Google.
I tend to think that Yahoo and MSN return better results than Google, but that is neither here nor there since Google is king.
For less than $30 a month, I consider submission to the Yahoo directory to be de rigeur for launching a new site. It’s not as important once you’re established as a trusted site by the SE’s, but it’s definitely something I’ve done for every client I’ve taken on.
You definitely won’t get much traffic from a Yahoo Directory listing, but as long as it is considered to be THE primo trusted directory, that $299 per year is actually pretty cheap, especially if you are just getting started and need a jump start on authority links. And, if your major competition is listed in the directory, I feel it’s a no-brainer.
I wish yahoo would give you more reasons for people to pay that much money and its not for sure you will even get listed.
It’s a paid link that Goog could punish you for!
Has anyone done any split test:
A $300 on Yahoo
B $200 on directory submissions and $100 of text link ads?
Google’s not going to punish you for paying the Yahoo Directory Editorial fee.
I know… but it should… if it quacks like a duck…
I was privileged to observe an experiment of 120 mostly new and some old domains being built with fresh content, launched and monitored for ranking. There was a control group as well. There were no overly competitive niches in this test – being randomly chosen topics.
The linking strategy of the main group included backlinks from a small group of hand-crafted topical blogs that all relied on a Yahoo directory listing as their main trust supplier. Other backlinks were rather ordinary.
Within a month, all 120 sites began to show toolbar PR ranging between 0 and 2 and over 70% ranked in the top 20 G results — non-competitive terms, mind you, but my conclusion is that the secondhand Ydir backlink helped. The control group did not have this backlink and barely 3% ranked.
I’d recommend Ydir, BOTW, business.com and ODP for all sites that you need to succeed.
@Net Magellan: Thanks for the informative post! I’m looking into these now.
last comment was really encouraging… i will try yahoo directory
I have to say it’s convinced me as well.
I think $300 A YEAR is too much to ask for. If it was for a permanent listing then it may be worth it, but what is the justification for the reoccurring charges when the fee is supposed to be for the review and not the inclusion. Are we supposed to believe that Yahoo re-reviews every site in the directory on a yearly bases? I find it hard to believe. As for Dmoz, it is near impossible to be included, and I believe that the new parallel project at NoMoz.org may deserve a look as an alternative.
I’d like to hear more about why Google would not punish a site for paying for a link from Yahoo or BOTW. I never paid the $300 and was always reluctant because of the threat of paying big bucks for something that could hurt my rankinks (at least according to what I understood the Google rules to be). By the way, for all the professional SEO, $300 is big bucks for clients with a small business, especially when the return on investment is unclear. I focused all my efforts on Google and after 3 years, I am ranked #1 for “glass jewelry” and many other key words. I did nothing for Yahoo, and am ranked #8 and #9. If I thought $300 would get me to #1 in Yahoo and it would increase sales, I gladly consider the fee … as long as Google did not ding me for a paid link.
Hi Mendy – Google only penalizes directories with a loose editorial policy, that allows low quality sites into their index. Yahoo! is one of the most trusted directories in the eyes of Google, and the $300 you’re paying for is for an editorial review – not guaranteed inclusion into the directory. If it were a pay for entry system, then Google would certainly consider it to be a paid link, however Yahoo! has the full right to take your $300 and not approve your submission. If you read all their submission guidelines, and you have a quality site, you should have no problems being accepted ofcourse.
If 20 companies all pay for same category how are all going to appear at the top, seems like a pointless payment after a while.
Toronto SEO,
Thanks for the thoughtful reply – makes perfect sense.
M
Accepting that the first payment to Yahoo is for an editorial review; what are the other annual payments for?
If it’s for an annual review, the obvious question Google should ask to find out whether it’s a paid link or a review is how many companies have been delisted as a result of the annual review.
If Goog were found to apply different rules to smaller companies and their directories than a large one (even though they have similar quality controls) I think it could leave them exposed to legal action against them.
Worth it!
Links from Yahoo Dir and BOTW are great to have because:
1st) They come from old websites
2nd)Authoritative websites
3rd)Google likes them
4th)listing pages have PR
5th) again, Google likes them :)
More news on the perhaps not worth it side…
http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/017333.html
Gidseo,
Pretty scary. Main page of dir.yahoo.com has PR8, but all internal pages have PR zero.
I’m looking at the potential category for my website, and it looks like I would be buried 4 pages in with no page ranking (looks like page isn’t even listed in Google). I would get little to no traffic from this, and I’m wondering if it is even going to do much for my website authority.
Hi everyone, I have been considering the Yahoo directory for a while now for both my website and my new clients sites. I think im going to go for it. I would like to hear any comments on how its best to desribe the benefits to clients to show them its worth the fee? Especialy from people who do this.
We have spend $299 for yahoo directory submission but we haven’t seen any considerable improvement in traffic /ranking.
I plan on submitting to Yahoo, Business.com, and JoeAnt directories. Thanks for helping me decide.
I have a site that is 6 months old, I haven’t submitted to the Yahoo directory and I have several top rankings for my most important keywords. The website even has double listing for several keywords (often spots 3&4) What benefit would the Yahoo Directory have for me at this point?
How do I find out what is the page PR?
We have had a website for two years now with a constant page rank of 1. We are finally going to submit to the yahoo directory and see if it can have any bearing on our traffic and page rank.
I agree with NOMOZ, what’s their justification for the recurring annual fee?! They have a racket going on with this new fee. I will NOT be supporting it.
Camu,
If you’re satisfied with your SE rankings, I’d consider saving my $300.
Leo, Load the Google toolbar into your web browzer. It gives you the option to show teh page rank tool. The tool will show a gray bar, which is no rank. A white bar, which is PR <1. or a white/green where the green shows what your PR is. If you hover over the bar, it shows the PR number.
I wonder – I have a PR 4 website that’s been around awhile, but no SEO has really been applied to it. Would it be worth it to submit it to the Yahoo directory?
I have just released a brand new site and have been looking at submitting to Yahoo Directories. After reading this article and reviewing the comments I’m still confused about whether it’s worth forking out the money or not. It seems that this subject is still in contention.
I’m with pokies. I’m getting some high rankings without it, but I do see some of my competitors in it. Trying to justify the cost as a new site when sales are so low. Going to try to find some recent articles written on the topic.
So after an article and 3o-odd comments I’m still as unclear as ever about whether I should cough up the $300.00 or not.
I say No! I coughed up the $299 last month, based on this article, and Yahoo was a huge disappointment — they started my one year before my listing was in their directory, and when it did get in the directory, it did so without any description of the site, and doing a search of the directory did not bring up my listing.
The only thing I got out of it was unwanted solicitations from SEO experts, etc., who monitor the directory for new businesses to target.