I have a fair amount of money that I need to spend on my website, and I believe buying links from paid directories is the best use of my money. Is there a better way to build links, with money (I already know of a variety of free ways), besides paid directories?
Paid Directories only offers a fast approval of your site...try to use that money in other ways to improve your site..
I haven't tried using paid directories because I much prefer using free directory submissions. It's worth the effort although it takes time for the approval of your site.
I have found paid directories to be a bit too expensive. Unless its a really good directory (like yahoo) I don' think its worthwhile, just my opinion though. You might want to try free directory submissions (you can get like 1000 on here for around $10). If you're looking to buy links you're better off getting them on the homepage of relevant websites
Google will not consider the links, come under the "sponsored links" heading. And even the sponsored links in the Google Products.
I have found paid directories a bit hit and miss. The best advice i can give is dont just post willy nilly on every paid directory you find. Take some time and actually research, find something that is good value for money. And always remember you dont want your submission to be instantly approved by every directory you submit to. This looks suspicious and can land you in the sandbox. Instead stagger your listings.
In my experience there are maybe 5 - 10 paid directories worth submitting to. They tend to be the more expensive ones though. You might get more value for your money by hiring a cheap freelance employee to get some links for you either through articles, blog commenting, forum signatures or free directories.
Basically I wouldn’t even consider paying to get listed in directories. Unless it’s a business site selling products with high returns, I would think the money is better well spent on something else like adwords promotion or buying quality contents.
One Word - Useless but think about it, if you are running an offline business making 6 figures per month than I think you should go for some good paid directories as it helps with branding.
So paid directories aren't good for search engine optimization at all? I find that hard to believe. If they were so worthless, why do so many people use them?
Because they are not experienced yet. Everyone want the "shortcut" because they don't want to do the work. As for paying for directory links (submission). The page you will be placed on will have 50+ other sites all sharing the PR1 (if lucky). Therefore, very expensive. Buy links directly or pay someone who know how to do it. But remember, if the link is not permenant, it is not worth doing. And is it to gain Page Rank or quality link branding (i.e. anchor text)?
i've never ventured into Paid Directories because there are soooo many free ones out that that offer pretty much the same thing... "Page Rank Linking" because apparently with Google and its algorithm there has something to do with link backs to your site and the more quality links going into your site the better your page rank will become and the better you show up in search engines...
Links from paid directories often have a higher PR and lower submissions per page than free directories. Also, free directories are closing down and popping up all the time. I won't put all my money in to paid directories, but I know that they do have some value, and I'm still going to use them.
What paid directories were you thinking of submitting to? There aren't many that are worthwhile for the price it will cost you, do your research first; before submitting browse through the category you are submitting to and check the internal pagerank of this page. I for example just submitted to 2 paid directories: Octopedia.com and Incrawler.com for a total of $45 and I got 3x PR4 links (PR of the page itself), and that's pretty cheap for what I got. If the page you are featured on has no pagerank its barely worthwhile. If you are using firefox there is a helpful tool to check this: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/321 Cheers
IMO it depends on the PR of directory (and the PR of the page your link is on) and how much the submission costs.
Thank you, TopSurveySites, I just submitted to both directories as well. Spent $50 before 7:00AM, ha ha. I love having this freedom. I have to spend at least $350, so it's fun finding good directories. Believe me, there are directories that I have personally rejected. Even though I can do whatever I want, I still want this money to go as far as possible. Note: I have now spent $100 of my allocated $350. We'll see how far this goes.
No way. I personally found paid directories to be pretty useless... rather spend it on PPC or some form of advertising (banner, email list, blogs etc)