Directories or Recipical

Hi, Guys

After working on most of my site I have no decided to start a linking battle as well as a blog now im just wondering what has more depth and value regards to seo?

Directories or recipical?

Directories of course link back to you as do sites but does it have any effect?

Hi Kevin,

You'll get mixed opinions on both.

Some say directories are a waste of time...
Some say reciprocals are a waste of time...

Clearly an ODP link is useful and - I suspect - a reciprocal link with a related .edu site would also be useful...

"Which is more valuable?" It depends there's no hard and fast rule, too many variables and an "uneven" comparison.

Directories or Recipical links? How about a very well written unique article that people may find interesting and link to anyway?

Thats what i would invest my time into

All of the above.

Writing a good article is great link bait, but still good to somehow get the word out that it's there.

Do the major directories and find some niche directories for similar topic/theme to submit to.

Do some Reciprocals too. Most niche directories require a link back these days. I found LinksManager a useful tool for managing reciprocals.

Link bait
Article Submission
Social Bookmarking
Period.

Directory submission is a good technique to get backlinks because its one way link building you don't need to give link back to linking site.

For me, directory is an effective way to get one way link. about reciprocal google will get a link juice from your site which I think degrade a part of value from you page. So if you get on way google will not get a link juice from you page but gain points through way one link.

Hi there, I'm new to this forum and this thread caught my eye, as I am also trying to carry out external link building..

I would say that directories which don't involve reciprocal linking is the best way to go. From all my research, I've concluded that Google penalises sites which embark on this kind of link building.
So I say stick to a few directories with a pagerank of 4 or more, and submit your site gradually, perhaps 5 directories a day. And of course, the more relevant, the better.

I kind of agree with seomonkey, that unique content is very powerful.
However, one of the sites I'm working on is a gift shop trying to sell notebooks. There's not a lot of "unique content" you can write about that, so sometimes directories are the only way to go to bring links in.

The answer would always depend on the quality of links that you will get from directories and reciprocal links. But one way link from different kind of link building are better.