I'm looking for anyone's recent experience (last 3-6 months) of using the paid directory at MSN ($49?). I'm most interested in how it affected.... 1) MSN rank 2) google and other rankings/backlinks 3) any actual direct traffic? Would you recommend it or would you spend the money in a different directory? I read elsewhere in here that it was challenging to set up - still true? Any other helpful comments? Thanks for any feedback!
I highly recommend that you list your site with MSN directory. It is more than worth the $49 fee. I have two of my sites listed here. They have some great seo tools that you can use. For example once your site is listed you will have access to be able to submit your site a few directories and search engines for free, although I'll admit that these are not the best ones out there. But what I found to be cool was the fact that before you can submit your site to those search engines the page that you are trying to submit must pass first. In other words they will not let you submit your pages unless it is 100% search engine friendly, that means all your meta tags have to be correct, the description must be correct and so on so forth. Great directory with great tools to use. If you are kinda new to seo then the tools they have will surely help your site. And although I can not prove that getting listed in their directory help my site get to the top of their search engine, I can say that once I did I found my site ranking on the first page in just a few days and it has remained there to this day. As far as traffic goes can't say that I get alot from the directory, but that is not why I submited there. I submitted because of the over quality of backlinks that you get from them. All direct links to your site. You can set up a biz card with up to 10 keyword links to different page of your site. Highly recommended. Go ahead and pay the $49 you'll be glad you did.