Finding Quality Directories

There are a number of directories on the Internet. From the Yahoo Directory which started out as Jerry Yang's way of cataloguing interesting sites, to the Open Directory, Google's pet project, your entry in a directory can show your site's intentions as being serious. However, there are thousands of directories out there and, with last month's shake-up many have lost their value as they fail to provide useful or filtered information.

Paying for an entry in a directory may appeal as it is a guaranteed way to get your site listed and linked on the Internet for free. The problem is that this can be unending. It is hard to know if you should pay for a listing and where you should draw the line. Matt Cutts, Google's mainstay on optimization issues, gives the following guidelines on the usefulness of a directory:

I’ll try to give a few rules of thumb to think about when looking at a
directory. When considering submitting to a directory, I’d ask questions like:-
Does the directory reject urls? If every url passes a review, the directory gets
closer to just a list of links or a free-for-all link site.- What is the quality
of urls in the directory? Suppose a site rejects 25% of submissions, but the
urls that are accepted/listed are still quite low-quality or spammy. That
doesn’t speak well to the quality of the directory.- If there is a fee, what’s
the purpose of the fee? For a high-quality directory, the fee is primarily for
the time/effort for someone to do a genuine evaluation of a url or site.

If your fee is extortionate, if it guarantees you entry to a directory or if it enables you to get the anchor text you want on the link, you should not
entertain buying it.

Do not rule out directories altogether, though, as the good ones include an element of human interaction that search engines cannot provide. Search engines reward such resources as they inform searches and help to make them relevant.