Cheap Paid directory vs. Free directory

The video actually by-and-large refutes your point, so your comment "wrong with a smiley" is kinda lame.

Whilst you may have considered "directories" link farms since 1999 (as I've been stating for 10 years most SEOs/webmasters treat directories like link farms because they have no idea how to submit correctly), those of us actually in the know, treat them as anything but that.

Matt's video makes very good points in distinguishing fly-by-night directories from real directories.

The charactertistics of Fly-by-night directories are:
- built on dropped domains (not always but it's an easy to spot FBN when they are)
- advertise their PR as their main feature (e.g. "I'm a PR5 directory")
- guarantee inclusion (or fast approvals etc)
- let the submitter pick all the features (anchor text etc)
- have no editorial discretion (they don't edit submitted information or reject sites)
- no value-add (their primary function is a collection of badly categorised links)

There are more characteristics than that, those are just the ones Matt identified in his video.

Where he makes a huge mistake is in suggesting that Google takes action against fly-by-nighters by dropping their toolbar PR. That is the biggest load of horse dung I've ever heard. I could point him to more than 100 PR6+ directories that are the exact definition of fly-by-night JUNK. Their toolbar PR hasn't been actioned at all. It's still there and they trade on it.

Where people need to be careful is in what the directory is offering them. If all the directory offers is PR, and links. Avoid it.

The best directories offer true editorial discretion. You cannot just say you do it. You cannot just say you are human edited and quality. You have to demonstrate it, and those of us with a keen eye will let the community know if we believe you. If we don't, then you need to try harder.

It all comes back to that same old thing. Content. You can easily tell a good directory by looking at its content. Takes me less than a minute to work out whether a directory is abysmal, bad, mediocre, good, great or awesome.

Paid vs Free shouldn't even come into it. Paid directories are generally far cleaner in content because paying stops a lot of spammers from utilising the free submission. Free directory owners also aren't paid so spending time editing review queues for no reward makes it a lot of work.

However, that doesn't mean that paid directories are automatically better. You still need to be very discerning when reviewing paid directories. Actually you need to be more discerning because of the notion of "paid links".

If you submit to a free directory (with no editorial standard) and gain a listing, who cares. You didn't pay for it.

If you submit to a paid directory (with no editorial standard) and gain a listing, you clearly paid for it, and it constitutes a paid link. Which, if found, will count against your site at some point in time. You need to be exceptionally careful when submitting to paid directories and review their content prior to submitting.

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