1 Introduction

Paid directories can be beneficial for clients from an SEO perspective by providing visibility to potential visitors. In some instances the major paid directories can rank higher than some websites for a particular term. It is imperative that all clients appear in these directories.
Links coming from authoritative paid directories are valuable since they are being accepted upon editorial check. Editorial part of the link guarantees that the best links are being accepted to a certain directory and listed alongside some other valued websites. Many paid directories do not accept spam sites therefore appearing on the best paid non local directories is still an important part of a legitimate link building. The goal of paid link is to build the number of valuable links pointing to the site.

2 Factors and Method Used when choosing paid directories

There are many factors that determine which directories are good for paid submissions:
- SERPs appearance – If the directories rank for their own name that usually means that they can be trusted
- Quality of their inbound links (especially backlinks coming from gov & edu domains, it’s also important to check if they have listings on most reputable directories such as: DMOZ & Yahoo)
- MozRank values (it helps to examine certain directory link popularity, page and domain strength and authority)
- Crawling frequency – checking how frequently category pages are cached allows you to assume that the links in that directory carry some weight
- Directory quality – quality of the content (e.g. DMOZ – listing in DMOZ including their titles and descriptions should be manually created and be unique) the category relevancy – if the directory has got a clear structure it is more likely that search engines will crawl them and include in its index
- Outbound side wide links – if a directory sells side wide outbound links on their site its more likely that these links are not going to count much, therefore it is advisable to refrain from submitting our websites to such types of directories
- Broken links check – it is pointless to submit any website to a directory with many broken links
- Age of the directory domain – age of a domain usually helps with its authority (the older the page the more authoritative it usually is)


Shown below list of 38 non local paid directories has been compiled using Inbound Link Quality rating system.

Inbound Link Quality (ILQ) rating system is being calculated on the basis of associating points for each links to the website coming from quality websites, as follows:
- Yahoo link gets 1 point
- DMOZ link gets 30 points
- EDU link gets 45 points
- GOV link get 67 points


Examining the amount and quality of directories inbound links seemed to be the most meaningful piece of information when examining the real value of each found directory.

However calculating Inbound Link Quality rating system is time consuming process*(it requires checking each single directory backlinks and evaluating the amount of .edu&.gov backlinks and the amount of entries in DMOZ and Yahoo and then calculating the Inbound Link Quality by adding up the points they get for each above mentioned entry type). Therefore it is advised to carry out much quicker and simpler check.

Once the below compiled list of directories has been exhausted follow these steps when looking for some more good quality directories:

1. Estimate the page and domain strength by reading the values from Mozbar.



MozBar
2.  Log in to SeoMoz and use Open Site Explorer to see the number and the quality of the directory
backlinks, download CSV file and filter .edu and .gov backlinks.


Open Site Explorer



3. Visit  Yahoo Directory and Dmoz and check manually if the directories are listed.


DMOZ Listing Check

 * As Link Quality (ILQ) Rating Tool is not available anymore we need to calculate the numbers manually.