Submitting to directories is not the surefire way to high PageRank and rankings that it used to be, but submitting your site to strong paid directories is still a great way to obtain one-way links, increase PageRank and can even generate traffic as well.

But how do you decide which ones to spend money on?

There are a number of factors to consider such as PageRank, Page Strength and number of back links. Several lists have been published that compare these factors, such as the strongest directories list at Aviva Directory and the web directory list at Linksjuice. The Vilesilencer directory list is another great resource for directories.

However, these lists tend to concentrate on the home page of the directory. It is important that you consider the quality of the specific page a site is to be listed on when spending your limited marketing budget.

1. What is the PageRank, Page Strength and number of backlinks for the specific page?
2. Are there many outgoing links on the page? Direct links out from the page will dilute the PageRank and lessen the strength of the link to your site, but this needs to be balanced with ….
3. How relevant are the other listings and links on the page? Relevant outgoing links make the page authoritative and increase the value of the link to your site. (Lots of irrelevant site-wide links are not good.)
4. Does it include relevant keywords in the URL, page meta-title and on page title (H1 tag)?

Finally, consider the additional links offered by some directories. The facility to add links to pages within your site is a valuable extra feature.

An important point to note is that by adding your site to a directory page where competitors are listed will help negate the effect of the link to their sites (although how long the link has been there is also a factor). Buying a featured listing that lists your site above your competitors could make your site look more important to the search engines.

Here are a few of the strongest, high PageRank directories:

• Best of the Web – Expensive, but one of the oldest and well-established directories after dmoz.org and Yahoo directory.
• Aviva Directory – A quality PageRank 6 directory offering yearly featured and regular listings.
• UncoverTheNet – A directory and web portal, which offers a lot more content than a standard directory.
• V7N Directory – The directory of the V7N web development community.