In defense of the common Web Directory

by Darren McLaughlin

In the early days of the internet, people trade links with other websites because they thought their visitors would be interested in the content of the site. This is still true to an extent, but to a much smaller extent than before. The reason for this can be summed up in one word: Google. Google, with their incredibly successful PageRank method of estimating link popularity, have changed the way people now link on the internet. Webmasters, a very intelligent and talented group of people, don't take long to figure out how a trend can make them money, and link popularity was no exception. What has ensued in the last several years is that linking has increasingly become difficult for a number of reasons.Some of these reasons are:1) People know the value of links and now cheat increasingly. Finding an honest link partner is tough to do.2) Link brokers have infiltrated the webmaster community and have taught everyone the value of links. Links that once may have been obtained for free are no longer available, except at a premium.The cheating from many link partners is rampant. Most internet marketers these days have heard that the value of a one-way link greatly increases your ranking, whereas reciprocal links don't help you much. This has led them to covet one-way links above all else. One of the ways they get these links is by pretending to enter into a link-trading agreement with a website, just to renege on their end. They do this by means of manipulating the value of their outgoing links in one of a few ways:1) They cloak the links page so search engine crawlers cannot see them2) They use redirects scripts that are blocked by robots.txt from being crawled3) They use the nofollow tag which tells search engines to ignore the link for the purpose of link-popularityWith this many methods of "faking the funk" when it comes to linking back, you can see why acquiring links has become a full time job for so many people. Search engines have built a monster which now looms large in the minds of webmasters. The Democracy of the web has suffered a blow to Liberty. You now have to monitor your link partners for fear of the links disappearing into the cyber ether. What was once a "link trade" will quickly become a "one-way link" if you quit policing your link directory.All of these developments have caused the need for the commercial directory to be even greater now than ever before. Commercial directories have fallen somewhat into a state of disregard lately, because of a mis-information campaign by search engine insiders. Commercial directories have long been the backbone of the Internet, well before the current search engine's megalithic reigns. Commercial web directories have been demeaned because of the fact that they charge money for a review process. However, anyone who has ever run a website knows quite well that there are many expenses involved, and that there is no evil in producing revenue. Without money coming in, a web directory is not in a position to promote itself in the manner it will need to in order to ensure value for its' customers. It takes money, constant improvement, and promotions in order for web directories to provide website owners with the type of backlink that actually has value for both humans and search engines. Your best bet for finding a backlink that will stay pointed at your domain over the long haul is to patronize one of the many professional Web Directories that offer paid submission options.

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