Directories that bring traffic

I am looking for the top directories that bring you not only PR, but traffic. I know Yahoo can be good, DMOZas well. What other directories send you *actual visitors*?

 

That's a tough question as their are many variables at work — depending on the categogry, niche or genre of your target site. You should narrow down your question a little, ie which directory will bring me visitors looking for real estate in the northwest US? Then it becomes a little easier to answer.

For the general directories, I guess it would be best to examine who has the largest and most extensive userbase and then evaluate it for your purpose.

Regardless, tough question!

 

This is difficult i have submitted to thousands of directories and you may get the odd click but not much more the only thing that has worked for me is site wide text links on industry specific niche directories but even these generate little traffic.

 

Free or Paid ? most peole want free everything and more of it.

As an experiment last night i ran a test and sent 100 unique targeted visitors to a directory submission within 24 hours for about $1

(There was no lovin but it also taught me how tough the game is)

so for a listing costing say $20 you could send 2,000 targeted visitors so look at all options, listing are good but not everything keep things balanced.

 

One of the best ways I have found to determine the traffic generating effectiveness of a directory is to visit their "top sites" or "popular sites" pages. Most of the scripts used to run directories, by default, display the number of visitors or clicks for a listing. (You might have to visit the details page of the listings to find the information.)

If I see the #1 most popular site on their directory having only 1 or 2 clicks, I know the directory is for SEO only. If, on the other hand, I see numbers in the hundreds or thousands then the chances are much higher that you will actually see some traffic.

I also look at the listings in the top 5. If they look like something that people might actually visit, I assume that clicks are probably legitimate. If the top 5 are spam-filled and something that's obviously garbage, I also assume that the traffic is not organic but from the site owners trying to push their listings onto the popular page.

 

I'm finding that I get less and less traffic from directories. Last month the most traffic I had from any single directory was 16 unique visitors, from 2yi.net.

By contrast, I get much more traffic from the better-known social sites (Squidoo, Stumbleupon, Hubpages, etc.).

 

What I do is start with a list of high traffic directories then try to determine where their traffic comes from (webmasters submitting their sites or search engines and users). I do a Google search for some of the long tail terms on the page where I'll be listed and if that page shows up then there is a good chance I'll get some traffic. I've found that the niche directories or the very highly respected general directories are your best bet for traffic. The list above is cut off at a traffic rank of 4, but I've found some with a TR of 3 that get a lot of Google hits so you might want to dig deeper.

 

As far as I know, Yahoo and DMOZ are the best. The other directory seem useful to only give you backlinks.