As you know, Google has really hammered on directories over the last year in terms how much their links are worth. In fact, about two years ago, there were well over 200 directories which made sense to list your site with. Today? The number is a single digit.

One of the main reasons for this is the sheer volume of directories which were sprouting up and most of them were scraping the listings from DMOZ and trying to pass them off as their own. A lot overseas “SEO Companies” will offer “one-way” link packages and all they do is submit to these garbage directories, which basically does nothing for you site – or if your link profile is poor, can Sandbox your site in just a few days, basically killing any Google traffic you were getting.

Here are the directories I am recommended based on my testing analysis:

Yahoo! – still the best directory out there, but the big negative is the cost and the referral traffic at $299.00 a year. Because Yahoo! does NOT use their directory listings in their SERPs results, visitors have to wade through the directory if you want any click-through traffic. The result is, your “cost per click” is often double digits.

DMOZ – While DMOZ is free, it is difficult to get into because they lack the number of volunteers it takes to go through all the submission requests. Best of the Web has been in discussions to purchase DMOZ, but I have not heard anything official. I still have the best success submitting to a local category.

Best of the Web (BOTW) – I highly recommend the $249.95 one-time charge over the $99.95 annual fee. They also have a Blog Directory as well. If your budget is tight and you can only submit to either Yahoo! or Best of the Web, I would choose Best of the Web, as for about the same money, you are getting a lifetime submission.

Starting Point – They lost a point of PageRank, but this is still a solid place to get your site listed. While it does cost $99.00 a year, it gives your site a solid boost.

Joe Ant – You an avoid their $39.95 submission fee and become an editor, but realize their senior editors can be difficult to work with. For some reason, they think their directory is more valuable than Yahoo!.

Gimpsy – The submission process is clunky, but it gives good PageRank juice for their $49.00 fee.

Search Sight – They used to run “nofollows” on all of their directory links, but they have been removed. The directory is still free which is positive.

Here are a some interesting changes:

Top Directory – looks like this directory is dead. It is going to a “PPC Page” and an ad that the site “may be for sale.” If an SEO company charges you for submission to this directory, or lists it as one they submit to, you might want to think twice.

And “AddYourSiteFreeSubmit.com” is NOT free, it runs $29.00. Oh, and you don’t know that until after you have put in all of your information.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 30th, 2009 at 2:02 pm and is filed under SEM/SEO, Uncategorized, Webmaster. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.