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August 3rd, 2010 
In modern times finding a useful premium directory is not as simple as it once was. While SEO pros have their own in house list of primary directories, the normal website owner promoting one website may find it hard to determine which paid directory is worth the review fee. In this article are some helpful tips to help website owners decide where to spend their money.
Most people tend to think that Pagerank is a great measurement of a premium directory. This can be a completely wrong assumption. With the explosion of premium web directories have come a new kind of entrepreneur looking to cash in on the link building craze. There are literally thousands of paid web directories running under a dropped domain or domain name with Pagerank that has been picked up in auction. In addition to this, there are paid directory operators that are spoofing Pagerank using a flaw that Google has yet to secure. While Pagerank can be a good indicator of the health of a directory, once must look beyond this basic metric and do some research.
The absolute most important factor in determining whether submitting to a premium directory is worth it is the page cache your listing will be on. If the category page you are submitting to has not been cached, then the immediate benefit of your listing may not be noticed. How can you research whether or not a page is cached? Using the site operator at Google, you simply type in “site:” without the quotes and input the full URL to the page where your listing would appear. Make sure you remove the http:// part in the URL otherwise your results will not be accurate.
Now that you can find out that your listing will be on a page that is cached and crawled by Google, you can also do some more research. Copy a sentence from a listing on the same page that your listing will appear on and return to Google and place it within quotes and do a search. Does Google return listings that match this result other then the webpage you are likely to be listed on? If so, the editors at this directory are probably approving everything that is submitted. This is not useful for the health of the web directory or for the search engine optimization weight it will provide for your listing.
The age of a directory is important as well. As an example, Discovered Web Directory is well over two years old. This paid directory will produce more search engine optimization weight then a web directory launched a year ago. Directories that were launched under one year ago usually have not developed any reputation with the major search engines at all, unless they are very unique and produce very useful content. In nearly all cases, new premium directories just don’t have much to offer. However, young directories that are destined to succeed and age may permit submitters the opportunity to receive a solid listing for life at a greatly discounted price. With that in mind, don’t discount new premium web directories simply because of their age. As these paid directories grow, your lifetime listing will gain trust with the leading search engines.
When it comes to directory submissions, we all have a budget. If we all had an open ended budget, we could list in every single paid directory that is around. Since this is not possible, it is very important to do some research beforehand to be sure that your marketing budget is spent properly.
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