Submitting my URL on web/business/service directories

[TheSquareFoot]

Does it make sense to submit a business URL in as many relevant web/business directories as possible when kicking off a link building campaign?  Submitting a free listing is obviously better than nothing, but when does it make sense to pay extra for a premium listing profile on some of these directories?  There are just so many and a lot of them appear spammy, even though some of my competitors are getting traffic from them.  Any advice on this would be great!

[TheSquareFoot]

Thanks.  I'm certainly familiar with DMOZ and Yahoo, as they have the highest DA.  Haven't seen BOTW, so I'll check that out.

[RyanKent]

In general there are three major directories which can offer value to most any site:

DMOZ (free)

Yahoo (around $300)

BOTW (around $150)

In my experience the rest of the general directories are a poor use of your time. A few months later you will find you submitted your site to hundreds of directories and you would be lucky to have 5 visible followed links to show for your efforts. Even then the value of those links is quite low.

I agree with James. The list he shared offers some solid directories which you should review to see if your site is in alignment with the topics they cover. If you find a directory related to your site then that can be of value.

[JamesNorquay]

Hi,

My advice is to submit them if they seem highly relevant to your industry, they can provide some small amount of weight for your link building yet it is not going to be hugely beneficial.

Some great analysis was done by Rand on directories in the past here:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/what-makes-a-good-web-directory-and-why-google-penalized-dozens-of-bad-ones

If the directory seems spamy then it is probably not advisable to use imo.

Also for further directories they can be viewed here:

http://www.seomoz.org/directories

Regards.