I understand featured listing will show on top of other listing. However, many directory has little or no traffic at all. The link will carry same amount of link juice as the other link on page, so is there any point to get a featured link from directory with no traffic?
You know number of listings growes over time. Getting a featured listing will give you priority to get the most link juice out of them.
I agree with Romow on this, having a listing on page 3,4, or 5 of any directory is a waste of time if you are looking for PR juice. Seldom does PR go any deeper than page 2 or 3 at best. Just because a directory does not have a lot of listings to start with does not guarantee your spot later on. Featured listings will keep you in a better position for a much longer time.
We also agree with Romow and Rod_Purnell, Featured Listings give you far more short, medium and long term value added benefits
Well besides what britishguy and romow said. Search engines also see the link structure of a page. The tags, and the position of where the link appears in content. Also what links surround a link and all of that good stuff. So if featured links are placed before other links, then when u open the page, u spot them first. And when search engines crawl the pages, they find them first.
As said featured listings probably wont move to page 2 so your good, you can notice this the simplest if you try to submit to a category which already has abotu 50 links.. if you do a featured youll be on page 1 whereas else, youll be on page 6 or something.
It's more then just for traffic. Remaining at the top, you are getting a better link when the directory becomes more populated as your won't end up pages deep.