Hard Core Link Building Using The Web’s Most Trusted Directories
This is going to cost money. But the ROI (return on investment) for your business will be incredible in terms of traffic and rankings.
If you hit the top 5-6 directories listed below, expect to spend a bit, but then watch your traffic and rankings rise disproportionately more than what you spend compared to other paid advertising.
Why Does Google Love Human Edited Paid Directories?
Because they are an easy place to pick up content that has passed through two powerful filters:
1. Human Editors: Human editors for directories that have good rules in place for only accepting sites with original content that are managed by real people and not bot-created and managed sites are highly prized by the directories and by Google. When Google finds sites in the directories below, they know they are quality sites. Google hits the big directories very often to sift for more sites and new content.
2. The Money Filter: Whatever costs money will be ignored by spammers. Spammers are thieves by nature and they certainly don’t want to lay down cash for any reason. Therefore directories that charge to be listed are spam free. Another reason Google and other engines use them to find “trusted” content.
The next benefit to us webmasters is these directories, like Business.com, get gargantuan amounts of traffic. You will get more traffic from the directories below once you are approved and listed.
What’s The Difference Between Trusted, Paid Directories And Submitting To 500,000 Link Directories?
The difference is night and day. If anyone can submit a link to a directory, Google and the rest of the world know it and don’t use it to find content like people do on the trusted directories. Don’t buy stupid submission programs that submit you to a bunch of link farms. It won’t do you a lick of good.
Here are a few very necessary places to be listed:
- Best of the Web: This is an old directory with a ton of monthly visitors, high pagerank, and high trust value. Listing Fee: $69.95 annually. Submit Your Site To BOTW Directory For 60 Days Free!
- Yahoo Directory: Trusted because it is human edited and it costs a pretty penny to be listed. Listing Fee: $299.00 per year. Well worth the price. Submit to Yahoo Directory
- Starting Point: Fast listings in a high traffic, trusted directory. Listing Fee: $99.00
Here are a whole mess of other high quality directories listed by traffic and pagerank:
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You have the prices wrong for Yahoo and BOTW – thought I would mention it seeing that Yahoo is $100.00 out.
Ray
Thank Ray. Got those fixed. I guess I need to stop blogging while driving and pay more attention!
I thought that yahoo inclusion was $299 per year or is this merely for an actual business listing on Yahoo directory. When was the last time you checked this out?
You are spot on from my perspective although one of my recent submissions to Best of the Web was disappointing recently when I paid for the yearly submission consideration and they used my domain name as the title. The real title was very apparent and so was the niche, H1 tags and description. They hadn’t done this to me before so I queried it and was told “The editor has the last say no matter what (not verbatim)”. They went on to say that if I wanted to use my REAL title I would have to pay extra to be a feature. I understand the benefit of being a feature site but my Heading and Title for the site were extremely apparent and much more relevant than the domain name. You’re right in saying they hold a good PR and attract lots of traffic but you shouldn’t have to go through this (what I think is a) questionable procedure after paying so much for your submission. The title of a site is the title to the site especially when the contents can be mistaken for nothing else. I don’t trust them like I used to. To add salt the wound, I queried it again and they have not replied. How do you resolve something if there’s no communication?
Jack:
I think that since many directories were targeted in the past, many have been reluctant to use them (which is good for those who still do and bad for those who are overreacting). Advertising is nothing new and no matter what constraints are created to funnel consumers to advertise one way and not another eventually will undermine itself. The focus for people interested in expanding readership directly as a result of high ranking directories is one thing, the real purpose they serve is to add authority to your site and allow you to naturally rank higher across the board for organic SEO. It’s just a shame that a witch hunt had to occur in the past.
Could someone please explain to me how paying a listing fee to a human edited directory is any different than buying a link from a human edited website? Doesn’t Google ban sites for doing that. Of course, I advise my clients to join Yahoo! and some other directories, but I am at a lost as to why I can’t buy a link from this site without violating TOS, but I can from Yahoo! This is madness I tell you, straight madness!
Jason’s last blog post..Finding Authoritative Links
I could explain but it will only make you more mad. There’s no sense or reason to it at all.
Hi Ray
I just came across your site, a quick question I use directories to help with link building and to get credibility for new sites, is using the paid ones better than listing for free?? I know that the free listings do take time to be approved, so I do have the patients to wait on them, but to hear your thoughts on this would be interesting.
If you are doing social networking, writing good content, and getting links to your site from other people, blogs, and sites, you don’t need to bother listing yourself in any kind of directory. In general, the paid ones are better because they have fewer listings of higher quality. But my feeling is that Google knows about all of them and may of may not give you any juice for being listed.
Therefore, the best directory to be listed in, free or paid, is the directory that gets used by real people. You’ve just eliminated 95% of the “directories” on the web. If your link has little to no chance in hell of ever being clicked on by a human being other than yourself, skip listing yourself there.
Hi Jack
Thank you for that answer and it does make a lot of sense and I will be applying that in the future.
Regards Kim
This post ranks high for “best authoritative directories” and I didn’t notice that it was 3 years old at first. One thing I wanted to point out is that Starting Point presently has a Page Rank of ZERO so it might not be the best bang for your buck. Not much has changed with the other big two on your list
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