by Julia Ramyalg, 11/10/2006
2. What listing to select?
Usually web directory listing consists of linked title, URL, and description, and also can display web site home page thumbnail, Page Rank, detailed description, reviews by visitors, and other. Listings can be free, free with reciprocal, regular paid, and paid premium.
Free listing is a regular listing, its plus that you pay nothing for inclusion, but this type of listings doesn't guarantee permanent place for your link because newly submitted links will move it to the further pages with lower PR.
Option of free with reciprocal link listing you can select in a paid directory if you don't want to pay but want to add your web site. Some web directories consider this type of listings as a kind of premium, and give benefits of placement to your link until you keep their reciprocal link alive.
Regular paid listing you may pay for inclusion to a really good web directory, which is SEO friendly and will really give positive results to your web site promotion.
Premium paid listing is always placed above regular listings and can be added to top categories pages with good PR. Such type of listing guarantees permanent top place until payment expiration, which can be monthly, quarterly, or yearly. Often premium listing allows deep links submission, i.e. link to internal pages or sub-directories of your web site, that is good for your web site promotion.
3. How to find good web directories?
Of course you can use search engines but better is to use categorized list of reviewed and rated web directories at special web sites like http://www.directorycritic.com, http://www.addurl.nu/, http://info.vilesilencer.com/ where the directories are reviewed by hundreds of webmasters so you don't waste your time on submission to useless directories. As you will see from the lists, there are general and niche web directories. Always start submission from niche web directories related to your web site theme, because links from relevant resources will be more useful for your web site, and then go to general web directories.