does submitting and paying for links in the larger directory sites have positive results as far as traffic,serps,pr and the such?
I think yes. Many webmasters have sites that have PageRank and good serps and their only link building strategy is submitting to relevant paid directories. It depends on your niche really.
It definitely does help in terms of traffic, serps, pr and such. But you have to make a little search before you pay and submit your site there. You have to check, how many sites listed (best would be-listed 20 sites in a page), what sorts of sites they are listings in the category (avoid listed irrelevant sites in the category). Also paying mean occupying a space on top in the listings, which helps your site to get more exposure.
Traffic... thats a bit of a debatable one... very few directories (if listed in) will help your traffic, the days of searching the web via directories is really rather long gone (although some traffic from niche directories can be expected). In terms of SERPs and PR though... yes indeed it does
Definitely. My sites got a big boost in SERPs after I submitted them to some of the leading and established directories. PR also improved, but to a lesser extent. Directory traffic is next to none.
Sometimes yes, sometimes no. It depends from case to case. But usually, it works when about established websites.
I can also confirm that. After listing in few paid directories, in some cases only one, I got my serps up for few places in about two weeks. It is like manipulating tool for Google.
Well for example, one of my former site jumped from page 2 to page 1 on Google for very competitive keywords and I aslo started receiving traffic for other less targeted keywords. Traffic was double(from 50 uniqes per day to 100). For another, I jumped from place 2 to place 1 in results from single directory link. That wasn't so competitive search term as above, but I wanted no.1 and got it for something like 35$.
traffic> no, pr> yes, basically, no one uses directory to search already nowadays; it is a tool for purely for webmaster to get PR. People use google to search!
agree with traffic no and pr yes, i dont get much traffic from directories, but all of them help my page rank only submit to good pr directories
I don't know why everybody want pr more than good rankings in SE's. Pr is just side result of strong sites, not cause.
We have got clients on the first page of the SERPs for their keywords largely based on targeted directory submissions. So yes, they do work.
Went from 100+ to 12-15 in Google for terms searched 500+ times according to the Overture tool. Some less known directories have also been a great help. e.g. 50 pages website has very limited number of outgoing links and is great VFM.