• majorAlexa

        See all notifications

        Skip to content
        Moz logo Menu open Menu close
        • Products
          • Moz Pro
          • Moz Pro Home
          • Moz Local
          • Moz Local Home
          • STAT
          • Moz API
          • Moz API Home
          • Compare SEO Products
          • Moz Data
        • Free SEO Tools
          • Domain Analysis
          • Keyword Explorer
          • Link Explorer
          • Competitive Research
          • MozBar
          • More Free SEO Tools
        • Learn SEO
          • Beginner's Guide to SEO
          • SEO Learning Center
          • Moz Academy
          • MozCon
          • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
        • Blog
        • Why Moz
          • Digital Marketers
          • Agency Solutions
          • Enterprise Solutions
          • Small Business Solutions
          • The Moz Story
          • New Releases
        • Log in
        • Log out
        • Products
          • Moz Pro

            Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

          • Moz Local

            Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

          • STAT

            SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

          • Moz API

            Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

          • Compare SEO Products

            See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

          • Moz Data

            Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

          Let your business shine with Listings AI
          Moz Local

          Let your business shine with Listings AI

          Learn more
        • Free SEO Tools
          • Domain Analysis

            Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

          • Keyword Explorer

            Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

          • Link Explorer

            Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

          • Competitive Research

            Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

          • MozBar

            See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

          • More Free SEO Tools

            Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

          NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
          Moz Pro

          NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

          Learn more
        • Learn SEO
          • Beginner's Guide to SEO

            The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

          • SEO Learning Center

            Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

          • On-Demand Webinars

            Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

          • How-To Guides

            Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

          • Moz Academy

            Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

          • MozCon

            Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

          Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
          Moz API

          Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

          Find your plan
        • Blog
        • Why Moz
          • Digital Marketers

            Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

          • Small Business Solutions

            Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

          • Agency Solutions

            Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

          • Enterprise Solutions

            Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

          • The Moz Story

            Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

          • New Releases

            Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

          Surface actionable competitive intel
          New Feature

          Surface actionable competitive intel

          Learn More
        • Log in
          • Moz Pro
          • Moz Local
          • Moz Local Dashboard
          • Moz API
          • Moz API Dashboard
          • Moz Academy
        • Avatar
          • Moz Home
          • Notifications
          • Account & Billing
          • Manage Users
          • Community Profile
          • My Q&A
          • My Videos
          • Log Out

        The Moz Q&A Forum

        • Forum
        • Questions
        • My Q&A
        • Users
        • Ask the Community

        Welcome to the Q&A Forum

        Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

        1. Home
        2. SEO Tactics
        3. Technical SEO
        4. Is it good practice to still pay for Best of the Web Directory (BOTW) and other similar one's you have to pay for?

        Moz Q&A is closed.

        After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

        Is it good practice to still pay for Best of the Web Directory (BOTW) and other similar one's you have to pay for?

        Technical SEO
        5
        5
        3647
        Loading More Posts
        • Watching

          Notify me of new replies.
          Show question in unread.

        • Not Watching

          Do not notify me of new replies.
          Show question in unread if category is not ignored.

        • Ignoring

          Do not notify me of new replies.
          Do not show question in unread.

        • Oldest to Newest
        • Newest to Oldest
        • Most Votes
        Reply
        • Reply as question
        Locked
        This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
        • RoxBrock
          RoxBrock last edited by

          I know that paid for links are hit by Google, but in the past these directories were okay. What about now?

          Thank you.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • DustChasersToronto
            DustChasersToronto Subscriber @arjen.koedam last edited by

            "If you pay for a directory link only to gain position in the SERPs you will most probably not get any ROI"

            Meaning if you are on the first page there won`t be ROI? I dont think so!

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • EvadoMedia
              EvadoMedia @arjen.koedam last edited by

              There are exceptions to the "paid for" link rule and I believe this site is one of them as they qualify there links! However whether you'll get ROI from it is another question!

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • danatanseo
                danatanseo last edited by

                Hi,

                Well in general I agree with Arjan, I am strongly of the opinion that some directories are still VERY worthwhile, and BOTW is one of them. When you are launching a brand new site, you just aren't going to have a lot of attention and inbound lin opportunities at first. Submitting your site to DMOZ (which is free), Yahoo.dir (Paid), Business.com (Paid), JoeAnt.com (Paid) and yes, BOTW (Paid) are all most definitely worthwhile. IMHO they send a signal to the search engines that you are a legitimate business. That's a very important message to send when you are a startup.

                In addition to those I think there are some others that are worth it as well, depending on your particular business, particularly localized directories and directories targeting certain niche markets.

                Hope that's helpful!

                Dana

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                • arjen.koedam
                  arjen.koedam last edited by

                  My advice will be to only pay for directory links that drive enough traffic to your website directly to get a proper ROI.
                  If you pay for a directory link only to gain position in the SERPs you will most probably not get any ROI.
                  If you get the link from a directory Google does not like because it is known to be selling links it could even hurt your rankings.

                  In short: Paid directory links are not good for SEO.

                  EvadoMedia DustChasersToronto 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 2
                  • 1 / 1
                  • First post
                    Last post

                  Browse Questions

                  Explore more categories

                  • Moz Tools

                    Chat with the community about the Moz tools.

                  • SEO Tactics

                    Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers

                  • Community

                    Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!

                  • Digital Marketing

                    Chat about tactics outside of SEO

                  • Research & Trends

                    Dive into research and trends in the search industry.

                  • Support

                    Connect on product support and feature requests.

                  • See all categories

                  Related Questions

                  • Digital-Murph

                    Spam URL'S in search results

                    We built a new website for a client. When I do 'site:clientswebsite.com' in Google it shows some of the real, recently submitted pages. But it also shows many pages of spam url results, like this 'clientswebsite.com/gockumamaso/22753.htm' - all of which then go to the sites 404 page. They have page titles and meta descriptions in Chinese or Japanese too. Some of the urls are of real pages, and link to the correct page, despite having the same Chinese page titles and descriptions in the SERPS. When I went to remove all the spammy urls in Search Console (it only allowed me to temporarily hide them), a whole load of new ones popped up in the SERPS after a day or two. The site files itself are all fine, with no errors in the server logs. All the usual stuff...robots.txt, sitemap etc seems ok and the proper pages have all been requested for indexing and are slowly appearing.  The spammy ones continue though. What is going on and how can I fix it?

                    Technical SEO | | Digital-Murph
                    0
                  • DML-Tampa

                    New theme adds ?v=1d20b5ff1ee9 to all URL's as part of cache. How does this affect SEO

                    New theme I am working in ads ?v=1d20b5ff1ee9 to every URL. Theme developer says its a server setting issue. GoDaddy support says its part of cache an becoming prevalent in new themes. How does this impact SEO?

                    Technical SEO | | DML-Tampa
                    0
                  • Rignite

                    Should I noindex my blog's tag, category, and author pages

                    Hi there, Is it a good idea to no index tag, category, and author pages on blogs? The tag pages sometimes have duplicate content.  And the category and author pages aren't really optimized for any search term. Just curious what others think. Thanks!

                    Technical SEO | | Rignite
                    0
                  • fslocal

                    Why is Google's cache preview showing different version of webpage (i.e. not displaying content)

                    My URL is: http://www.fslocal.comRecently, we discovered Google's cached snapshots of our business listings look different from what's displayed to users. The main issue? Our content isn't displayed in cached results (although while the content isn't visible on the front-end of cached pages, the text can be found when you view the page source of that cached result).These listings are structured so everything is coded and contained within 1 page (e.g. http://www.fslocal.com/toronto/auto-vault-canada/). But even though the URL stays the same, we've created separate "pages" of content (e.g. "About," "Additional Info," "Contact," etc.) for each listing, and only 1 "page" of content will ever be displayed to the user at a time. This is controlled by JavaScript and using display:none in CSS. Why do our cached results look different? Why would our content not show up in Google's cache preview, even though the text can be found in the page source? Does it have to do with the way we're using display:none? Are there negative SEO effects with regards to how we're using it (i.e. we're employing it strictly for aesthetics, but is it possible Google thinks we're trying to hide text)? Google's Technical Guidelines recommends against using "fancy features such as JavaScript, cookies, session IDs, frames, DHTML, or Flash." If we were to separate those business listing "pages" into actual separate URLs (e.g. http://www.fslocal.com/toronto/auto-vault-canada/contact/ would be the "Contact" page), and employ static HTML code instead of complicated JavaScript, would that solve the problem? Any insight would be greatly appreciated.Thanks!

                    Technical SEO | | fslocal
                    0
                  • BestRide

                    How to create site map for large site (ecommerce type) that has 1000's if not 100,000 of pages.

                    I know this is kind of a newbie question but I am having an amazing amount of trouble creating a sitemap for our site Bestride.com.  We just did a complete redesign (look and feel, functionality, the works) and now I am trying to create a site map.  Most of the generators I have used "break" after reaching some number of pages.  I am at a loss as to how to create the sitemap.  Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks

                    Technical SEO | | BestRide
                    0
                  • jim_shook

                    Best way to handle pages with iframes that I don't want indexed? Noindex in the header?

                    I am doing a bit of SEO work for a friend, and the situation is the following: The site is a place to discuss articles on the web. When clicking on a link that has been posted, it sends the user to a URL on the main site that is URL.com/article/view. This page has a large iframe that contains the article itself, and a small bar at the top containing the article with various links to get back to the original site. I'd like to make sure that the comment pages (URL.com/article) are indexed instead of all of the URL.com/article/view pages, which won't really do much for SEO. However, all of these pages are indexed. What would be the best approach to make sure the iframe pages aren't indexed? My intuition is to just have a "noindex" in the header of those pages, and just make sure that the conversation pages themselves are properly linked throughout the site, so that they get indexed properly. Does this seem right? Thanks for the help...

                    Technical SEO | | jim_shook
                    0
                  • Santaur

                    Best practices for controlling link juice with site structure

                    I'm trying to do my best to control the link juice from my home page to the most important category landing pages on my client's e-commerce site. I have a couple questions regarding how to NOT pass link juice to insignificant pages and how best to pass juice to my most important pages. INSIGNIFICANT PAGES: How do you tag links to not pass juice to unimportant pages. For example, my client has a "Contact" page off of there home page. Now we aren't trying to drive traffic to the contact page, so I'm worried about the link juice from the home page being passed to it. Would you tag the Contact link with a "no follow" tag, so it doesn't pass the juice, but then include it in a sitemap so it gets indexed? Are there best practices for this sort of stuff?

                    Technical SEO | | Santaur
                    0
                  • A_Q

                    Blank pages in Google's webcache

                    Hello all, Is anybody experiencing blanck page's in Google's 'Cached' view? I'm seeing just the page background and none of the content for a couple of my pages but when I click 'View Text Only' all of teh content is there. Strange! I'd love to hear if anyone else is experiencing the same. Perhaps this is something to do with the roll out of Google's updates last week?! Thanks,
                    Elias

                    Technical SEO | | A_Q
                    0

                  Get started with Moz Pro!

                  Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                  Start my free trial
                  Products
                  • Moz Pro
                  • Moz Local
                  • Moz API
                  • Moz Data
                  • STAT
                  • Product Updates
                  Moz Solutions
                  • SMB Solutions
                  • Agency Solutions
                  • Enterprise Solutions
                  • Digital Marketers
                  Free SEO Tools
                  • Domain Authority Checker
                  • Link Explorer
                  • Keyword Explorer
                  • Competitive Research
                  • Brand Authority Checker
                  • Local Citation Checker
                  • MozBar Extension
                  • MozCast
                  Resources
                  • Blog
                  • SEO Learning Center
                  • Help Hub
                  • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                  • How-to Guides
                  • Moz Academy
                  • API Docs
                  About Moz
                  • About
                  • Team
                  • Careers
                  • Contact
                  Why Moz
                  • Case Studies
                  • Testimonials
                  Get Involved
                  • Become an Affiliate
                  • MozCon
                  • Webinars
                  • Practical Marketer Series
                  • MozPod
                  Connect with us

                  Contact the Help team

                  Join our newsletter
                  Moz logo
                  © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                  • Accessibility
                  • Terms of Use
                  • Privacy

                  Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.