In case you call for a good list of link directories social bookmarking sites – regardless of whether you want certain general link directories or other sites specializing in a certain topic or language – not actually the simple number of the included internet sites counts but the proportion of the web directories which are yet alive and accepting link suggestions in a timely fashion.
Ageing of directory collections
If somebody once happened to get together a collection of directories or social bookmarking websites which were once providing SEO-friendly links without the need of nofollow attributes or redirections, it does not really mean that this link collection could also meet your needs. As time goes by a lot of sites will be suspended, given up, turn into a reciprocal directory, etc. — so the older a link directory list is, the more useless data it will contain. A few years old lists therefore may be totally useless usually.
Status of the lsted directories
Let alone when you consider finding the URLs of previously unknown web directories is generally only the initial step of building an usable list of web directories. You need to get going and see whether they really accept your entries at all, and if so the link they provide shall be valid and usable for search engine optimisation purposes. Eventhough discovering new directories could not be that time consuming, identifying if they are still functioning, is not simplest job.
No web directory database will work for you!
This is why — at least based on our experience — you’ll never find a truly usable, up to date directory database available publicly on the World Wide Web. As neither the majority of “directory of directories”-type websites nor link directory submission software is possessed by link marketing experts who work with the included directories on a daily basis, the accuracy of information concerning the featured web directories will be significantly far from optimal.
On the one hand, there would be a lot of listed web directories which have definitely not been used by the owner of that list. In case it is to be a foreign language or another niche web directory, this is even more common case. On the other hand, once a website is included, its current condition is seldom determined manually and updated consequently on a regular basis.
Solely your link directory list that you build up!
Bad news is that if you’ve got no resources to waste by submitting your web sites to a number of link directories which will never accept your suggestions or if you plan for doing regular link building, virtually the one and only way of creating a genuinely usable link directory list is to build your own personal DB.
Davide is a n European SEO consultant doing link building in many languages and niche topics. On his webblog he shares its knowledge and expertise with his visitors, regularly publishing interesting stuff about link directories, directory submission software and directory submission techniques.