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1. Yahoo.com (PR 8): Yahoo should be on the top of your priority for when it comes to getting paid link. For most of the internal pages, especially for the ones that you submit to, there won’t be any PR at all but there is nothing to worry. You are not getting listed on yahoo for PR but for the rank stability which it will give you both in Google and Yahoo organic search. Don’t expect hits coming directly from the directory.
Price: $299 / year (fee is non-refundable)

2. Business.com (PR 7): I have listed a few of my websites with business.com, the submission process is pretty straight forward and it takes them 3-4 days to approve a link. Make sure you email them with your site name and description before hand to know exactly in what category will your website be listed. This will give you an idea of what the PR is on their page. Do not submit blogs as they would reject it. They only accept websites which have a business theme. Submitting your personal blog would be a waste of both time and money. Don’t expect traffic directly form business.com.
Price: $299 / year (fee is non-refundable)

3. Botw.org (PR 6): Best of the Web directory. This directory has been there 15 years now and has stood the test of time. If you do plan to submit to this directory, Google or “botw coupons” and you may just find a 25% discount on the listing.
Price: $99.95 / year or $249.95 Permanent Listing (fee is non-refundable)

4. STPT.com (PR 5): This is another directory which has been there for a long time. It’s home page now looks more like a search engine than a directory, which is good as Google frowns upon directory looking websites.
Price: $99 / year (fee is non-refundable)

Personally I would not go beyond submitting to the above 4 directories. Google keeps changing its algorithms and constantly keeps discounting links coming from directories so its not worth paying to 50 directories only to be dropped the very next month.

I have started quite a few website in the past and I will admit that one of the first things I would do after its launch was to go and submit it to a lot of free directories. If i did not have the time to do it myself then i would use professional directory submission services. Usually submission packages start at $40 for about 250 directories which is good enough to get your website going, however if you are serious about your website / online business, I would recommend submitting to at least 1000 directories.

Though it may take about to a month to see the results but they could be remarkable if the submissions are done in a proper way. The most important thing to keep in mind while going in for free directory submission is to have at least 2-3 different titles (relevant and not stuffed with keywords) made out for your blog. Title comprises of 4-5 keywords which describe your website and which would be used to link back to your blog. If you are going for a 1000 submissions, make sure you split the submission as per the number of titles (e.g. submit 500 directories each if you have 2 titles). The more the better… but do not make it less and 200 submissions per title. There are a few reasons for the above.

1. If you submit to 200 free directories, chances are your blog will be only listed in 100-150 and for anchor text in the title to work effectively; you would need at least a 100 links on a title.

2. By submitting different titles, it makes search engines believe that it is an organic link as opposed to a paid one. Think about it, if 1000 people link to your blog, would they use the same words to make the link? No! Some would link to your blogs name; some would use some keywords which your blog is about etc. Using different titles makes the link look genuine to search engines.

3. Having different titles increases the chances of your blog being found on the search engine as every title will have 4-5 different set of keywords, this will in turn increase the traffic to your blog.

Lastly, keep the title, the description and the keywords relevant to your website while submitting. Do not try to stuff in keywords unnecessarily or the directory will reject your listing. Link building is a continuous process and you should not stop it anytime… links have a direct correlation with traffic, the more you have them the more popular your blog will be. Do not submit it to just any directory; make sure you don’t drop a link in a bad neighborhood. This is why you should not go in for cheap directory submission service, search for a review on them first and then decide. I recommend iNetZeal.com as it is a directorycritic.com company.