Q and A: Will submitting my site to directories improve my PageRank?

QuestionHi Kalena…

I’ve a question: There are thousands of Internet Directories on the web, is still a good idea submit a link to my page in those directories to improve my Page Rank?

Thanks
Roberto

Dear Roberto

The whole idea behind Google PageRank is to rank sites based on a kind of voting system, with each link pointing to your site acting like a vote. However, some links pointing to your site can have a negative effect, particularly links from sites that are considered low quality, contain mainly duplicate content or don’t have a very high PageRank themselves.

So by all means, submit your site to directories and search engines, but just be picky about the sites you choose to link to you. Don’t try and obtain links from dodgy looking sites or from directories that list dodgy looking sites. Quality is more important to Google over quantity so if you’ve got 10 links from trusted sites they are more likely to help your site’s PageRank score than 100 links from lower quality sites. See my past post about linking to bad neighbourhoods for further clarification.

Spread the joy!