would you say that a single-way inbound link from a directory is as good as a single-way inbound link from a normal site - both (the directory and the normal site) of with have the same pr?
if a directory has a lot of outbounds, and u r one of 20 links but all those links are of the same category widgets and that normal website is also about widgets but has 20 links as well, but has more widgets related content around it, this normal page is better. Think is this way, a directory has 1000 categories and each category has a page and each of those page has 20 links, so in al 20k oubounds....wwow..!! Now that normal website is just a widget website maybe, has 1000 products, therefore 1000 pages, and each of those page links to 20 run of site links. If I had a coice and price was OK, I would do the link from the normal website. The difference is, usually a link from that normal website is $x a month, and a link from that directory is less then $x an year or less then $x one time. In that case, I would do the directory link.
thanks for your comments as you have pointed out it's cheaper and easier to get links from directories...
Looking at how all the major directories (the paid ones) are getting screwed lately, I'd rather have one-way links from normal sites.. even though they may not be as themed as a directory link. You take whatever you can get, but this should be considered also I guess (the fact that directories can drop from the index at any time), if you have to watch your budget.
That's a good response. But, I don't really agree with the whole "getting links from related sites" theory. Because, if you have a high enough PR, you can pretty much make it to the top 10 for any keyword. Ex: What is the "theme" of DMOZ? Or Google? Or Yahoo?? Yahoo's pretty much got information about everything. Ex: if you were to do a Google search for "foot cream" (say) you will see that shopping.msn.com is at the top. Now, how many people do you think "link" to msn's site from "foot cream" related sites?? And, how many links linking to msn's site do you think contain the anchor text "foot cream"?? I would say None or hardly any. But, the only reason it's way up there in the SERPs is due to it's extremely high PR. They could essentially publish a page about "anything" and get into the top 10, simply by mentioning the keyword in the title and perhaps a couple of times on the page. Anyway, as far as the original question was concerned, you can't really generalise and say that directories are better than other sites or vice versa. Just try and get IBLs from sites with as high a PR as possible from pages with as high a PR as possible and with minimum number of outgoing links (on that page).