It really depends on the paid directory, if its high PR, and it gets a lot of traffic, and it does not have more than 50 in each category
Because...the old saying. You get what you pay for. Take, for example, the best paid directories you have heard about. Let's assume they are (picking five examples): www.botw.org www.uncoverthenet.com www.joeant.com www.site-sift.com www.alivedirectory.com Now then. You pick me 5 FREE directories (DMOZ excluded for several reasons) that you think come close to the value of the five I listed. I rest my case.
To increase google pr. Note that most of the paid directories have high pr and there are a lot of benefit is you can submit your sites into the list.
Good PR in return for what you pay. Because these paid directories spend a lot of money and time to manage their directory and get quality back links.
Why not? 1. Most directories are junk free 2. Less links meaning more visibility 3. Paid directories are promoted well (mostly) 4. Good backlink 5. Possibility of high Page Rank Many more
We have some free directories and the one's that we don't check and monitor, always finish up with lots of traffic but will have lots of poor quality subject links, this does not reflect well for on the overall site and page rank A very good alternative option are paid sites that are well maintained, which are SEO friendly and have a good PR Page Rank
These are the big problems with free directories. 1. If not properly cared/maintained, any free directory has a danger of becoming link farm. 2. Any free directory would disappear if it receives no revenue. Please also note be it free directory or paid it is really very hard for the owner to take care of the directory against huge number of SPAM submissions. One has to spend hours daily in reviewing and approving good sites against spam. I believe that it is reasonable to pay anywhere between $10 to $30 for a good paid directory. Atleast these small payments would ensure the directories survival.
I would absolutely consider them "good." If I were making a top 10 paid directories list, all five of those would definitely make my list.
well the most important reason is that all free directories are so crowded so you rarley get any Pr from them. So many have thousands of links so your link ends up on page 674 with a Pr 0 .
Thats absolutely right !! Paid directories will pass on a better PR to your site which is listed and moreover a "PAID" status ensures longetivity and quality.
Yeah, it does provide a lot of direct traffic. How much it helps in the search engines, I'm not quite sure. I just get traffic feedback, I edit the whole computer section.
A litle question for the paid directories fans, though I'm also a fan of them.How about the pagerank with these dirs when they have subdirs and subsubdirs, will there be any pr left to transfer to the link listed? Since those sub and subsubcats are real deep in the site and receive almost no pr from the mainpage
I don't go by pagerank, I look for traffic (and if the sideeffect is an increase of rankings ... great!)
@maldives, you're right, but those are big big biiiiiig directories @blogmaster, I go with you, pr seemed quite important to me when starting a website, but since I've changed my opinion. PR isn't nearly as important as real, actual results. The same goes for alexa traffic rankings, once they were a hype, now almsot everyone knows they're not accurate and don't contribute to your site.