paid directories

[neroma]

Okay,

I need to clear one more thing up, before I feel I have reached a little further in my understand of seo.

In directory submisson are links in directories that you have to pay for penalised by google. Or is it that these paid directories have better quality link juice that its worth paying out for.

kind regards
neil

[Chris Boggs]

hi Neil,

the quality of second and third-tier directories is always in flux as various ones seem to get targeted and then "readmitted." The way you can evaluate them typically range from looking at their flow of PageRank between directory levels, to numbers of pages (and depth) indexed, to using testing specific phrases in titles before "buying in."

I like the list found here: seocompany.ca/directory/top-web-directories.html (disclaimer I have no financial tie to this company nor endorse their work but like this method of ranking the directories)

there are some other good directory ranking lists out there including at SEOmoz I think. I have always found the work and commentary/tracking here to be very helpful when deciding on directory submissions: http://info.vilesilencer.com/ Read the update and click through to some of the links and you will find lots of information.

[TryUsOut]

Google only frowns at paid links that manipulate PR and SERP. A paid directory doesn't always indicate that you get more SEO benefits. What you typically pay for is the position in that directory or a review fee.

My advice is to check on the directories PR - if it has been penalized, you would know.

[mooreseo]

Another thing you can look for is whether or not it is human-edited. That is a key differentiator. A couple months back, several directories were penalized in the PageRank and most of their pages were stripped from Google's index. From what I saw, the majority of these were automated directories with no human editors. Be sure to check and see if they promote themselves as such. Shoot them an email; if you don't get a response from a person (as opposed to an automatically generated message) I would skip it. It's wasted effort as it's not going to help you in your SEO efforts.