There are good and bad directories. When it comes to dishing out hard-earned money, you should ensure that you are getting a good return for your money.

1. Directory Age. Choose a well-established directory.
2. Search engine friendly URLs
3. Human edited
4. Well indexed.
5. Unique IP.
6. Good search rankings.
7. Original categories.
8. Good PageRank. Higher is not always better.
9. Original content.
10. Well designed categories.
11. Your listing page is accessible.
12. Reasonable traffic
13. Clean SEO techniques.
14. Contact information available.
15. Site maintained.

Please visit the complete article at our sister. It has a detailed explanation of the paid directory selection factors.

Your comments would be appreciated.

For 3 years I paid the $299 a year for a Yahoo directory listing for one of my sites. A year or two ago I cancelled the annual payment. When going through my Analytics logs I noticed that I had a bunch of referrals from dir.yahoo.com .

I checked and there is still a listing for my homepage. I have heard some rumbling from other people that had similar experiences. The site in question would be considered a good quality site for the category it is listed in. I don’t know if the quality has an effect.

I guess that may help you answer your question “Is it worth paying $299 a year for a listing”. I often see this type of question in the forums. If you are on the fence I think this experience might help you make up your mind.