Blog Directory Review, you think it can grow large?

I got a blog directory developed by Google Pages and now I got 500+ blogs included each of which is manually reviewed to ensure they are rich in content, not MFAs and would give the best user experience to visitors. Now that I am still not ranking high in most of the popular search engines for keywords such as "Blog Traffic" or "Blog Directory", I don't get much organic traffic and most of my traffic comes from referrals from forums (like DP). Can anyone tell me how I could improve and improve my site's ranking? Also, how do you think about the ad placements? Could you see a glamorous future with it? Any advice and suggestions are greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

http://blog.announce.googlepages.com

Keith

 

I see a good future for it. Have added it here. Feel free to add it here as well

 

Yeah, pretty cool. I like the categories. I'm a fan of enclosing the middle of the page with a background color outside of it, to help it stand out, but I'm not really the designer in our business. And I usually get over ruled