How good and useful are directories for marketing your site, getting traffic to it and in terms of seo (do they count as back links)
I have just submitted my site into several directories.

I am not selling anything so am just interested in getting eyeballs onto the site.

Is it worth paying for premium directory listings and if so which ones

It depends on how they link to you and how popular they are.

If you have the time submitting your sites to directories can help build traffic IMHO

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I'd recommend doing it as one strategy of your marketing campaign.
Depending on your budget, I'd recommend some of the big general directories such Yahoo, Business, BOTW.

I'd also recommend niche directories that can bring both visitors and higher rankings. ASPIN & Hotscripts brought one of my sites an awful lot of traffic over the years.

If you are not selling anything then you'll obviously have to think whether the cost is justified and what return you'll get.

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A rather silly little script I hacked a few years ago still gets loads of traffic from those directories

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Directories can be useful for creating backlinks, but don't expect too much traffic from them. If you don't have a list of directories you can find one quite easily through a google search, I use a list from onewaytextlink dot com. The first thing to check before submitting to free directories is that it has PR - Google culled a large number of free directories early this year, presumably because it considered them link farms, so if the home page of a directory has no PR ignore it.
I used to always recommend owners of new sites to pay Yahoo the money for inclusion as this would prompt a near immediate indexing by Google, but if I remember correctly Google has now said that it does not pay any particular attention to sites added to the Yahoo directory, so getting a quick indexing by the main search engines is probably just as easily achieved by getting a link from an established site and by creating an xml sitemap and submitting this to Google.

Submitting to free directories is time consuming, and you can wait a long time for some of them to include you. Before you begin, create a .doc containing your site title and descriptions (create them in different sizes i.e. 100, 200, 300 & 500 chars in length), plus a list of keywords for your site. This will allow you to copy and paste across to the submission pages. Keep your titles tight, use your company name plus one keyphrase, and possibly your location, and vary your title every ten or so submissions to ensure you have a selection of your most important keyphrases in the link text. Give yourself an hour or so every evening for this work, and by the end of the month you'll have applied to most of them.

Tip: Create a separate email address for these submissions. Many directories appear to be set up to gather addresses so the owners can market their products, so when you've submitted to them you'll find yourself receiving a lot of spam thereafter, this won't be a problem if you have a different email address eg subs@xxxx.com

Hi,

It depends on how they link to you and how popular they are.

Regards,
Warner

it will surely generate traffic and yes it is consider as backlink.

Hiya,
I use a service that does 500 (cost $33) and you get a report- I do it mainly for links. i do it once and move on. It can get very time consuming quickly.......

What's this CEO of which you speak?

Directories can help with anchor text and to rank certain key phrases and also provide backlinks. Directory submission is more beneficial for new sites that have no backlinks yet and pages that are trying to rank well for long tail keywords.

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