This is a very, very subjective list i.e. limited on my personal experience. After the list is Matt Cutts’ opinions on selecting directories. The Blog Directories would be more accurately classified as places to add your blog. The list contains my thoughts on all these directories and here are a few terms that I use -
- ILQ - Incoming Link Quality. a measure of how good the links to a directory are.
- Page Strength - This is a measure developed by seomoz.org and measures the strength of a page based on a lot of factors like popularity in bookmarking networks, link popularity, age, presence in the search engines etc.
- Free/Paid/Paid Yearly - Whether the directory is Free or Paid.
- DeepLinks - Whether the directory accepts deeplinks i.e. whether you can submit a page of your site instead of the site itself.
List of Top Directories to submit your site to
- Open Directory - http://www.dmoz.org/ (Free). ILQ Rank:1. Unfortunately, this directory takes forever to review and (occasionally) accept submissions so I would recommend submitting to it and then not resubmitting for at least 4-5 months. If you resubmit there is speculation that you lose your place in the submission queue. Also, they don’t tell you if you entry is rejected so you have to just take a guess and resubmit after 5-6 months. Do your own due diligence.
- Yahoo - http://dir.yahoo.com ($299 per year; no refunds) ILQ Rank:2. Yahoo Directory does a good job of reviewing your application and approving (or not) within a week or so. They also have free reviews for non commercial sections (with the accompnaying 3-6 month delays that free usually entails). There has recently been speculation that some of Yahoo Directory’s sub pages don’t have PageRank - however, Google has come out and said that they do.
- Page Strength 9.5 http://www.business.com/ ($199 per year) ILQ Rank:5. Don’t know much about this directory.
- Page Strength 8.5 http://bubl.ac.uk/ (free). This is a mostly academic directory.
- Page Strength 8 - http://botw.org/ ($79.95 per year or $239.95 lifetime) - ILQ Rank: 14. An old trusted directory. This directory does not refund your money in case you don’t make the cut. A separate directory for blogs. Do not submit your blog to the normal directory as it will get rejected.
- http://directory.v7n.com ($49.95) (Directory subdomain has page strength of 6.0) - ILQ Rank: 17. Do a little research here in terms of what the page rank and strength is of the page your entry will be on.
- Page Strength 9 Blog Directory - BlogLines. I haven’t been able to figure out how a submission here works.
- Technorati - This is a blog search engine and blog directory rolled into one. This is really important if you have a blog and i’d recommend signing up and taking ownership of your blog and pinging Technorati when you update your blog.
- BoingBoing - Don’t know much about this.
- Page Strength 8 Blog Directories - BlogStreet
- Blogcritics.org
- BlogDigger
- ILQ Rank: 3- www.lii.org/. this is a directory by librarians and somewhat slanted towards reference material type websites.
- ILQ Rank: 4 - www.stpt.com/directory/ Page strength 6. A good old directory. A good submission and review process.
- ILQ 6 - www.cannylink.com. An old directory that lost all its page rank in a recent google PR update. No idea of how valuable it is now. 20$ for submissions.
- Page Strength 7.5 - http://www.ezilon.com/ (free / $69) - ILQ Rank: 13. This is a very good europe oriented directory.
- http://www.iwebtool.com/directory/ ($9.95 per year) (Directory subdomain has page strength of 4.5). Another old directory. They do have a good submission process.
- Page Strength 7 - http://www.avivadirectory.com/ ($49.95 per year / $74.95 per year) - ILQ 15
- http://www.familyfriendlysites.com/ ($9.95 / $49.95 per year). Good directory. Cheap to get in.
- http://www.gimpsy.com/ ($40) - ILQ 19
- http://www.goguides.org/ ($69.95) - ILQ 20
- http://www.webworldindex.com/ ($25) - //
- Page Strength 7 Blog Directories - My.MSN
- Spurl
- 2RSS
- Guardian
- News is Free
- Globe of Blogs
- Eatonweb
- blog universe
- libdex
- Page Strength 6.5 - http://www.2yi.net/ ($15.95 / $64.95)
- http://www.bloggeries.com/ (unknown)
- http://www.dirjournal.com/ ($59.95 / $99.95)
- http://www.elib.org/ (60 Euro / 150 Euro) - ILQ 16
- http://www.gii.in/ (unknown)
- http://www.index-it.net/ ($25)
- http://www.joeant.com/ ($39.99) ILQ-8
- http://www.maxlinks.org/ ($12.50 / $49.50)
- http://www.mozdex.com/directory/ (unknown) (directory folder has page strength 5)
- http://www.mygreencorner.com/ (free / $25 per year)
- http://www.relmaxtop.com/ (unknown)
- http://www.romow.com/ ($45 / $90)
- http://www.skaffe.com/ ($49.99) ILQ - 11
- http://www.tygo.com/dir ($39.99) (directory folder has page strength 5)
- ILQ-7 www.americasbest.com/
- www.chiff.com ILQ 9
- www.jayde.com ILQ 10
- www.mavicanet.com ILQ 12
- www.rlrouse.com/ ILQ 18
- www.uncoverthenet.com ILQ 21
Directories after the Top50 - www.quango.com ILQ 22
- www.bigall.com ILQ 23
- www.azoos.com ILQ 24
- www.clush.com/Dir/ ILQ 25
- Page Strength 6.5 - Pingomatic
- BlogFlux
- IsBlogs
- Bloggernity
- getblogs
- blogmatrix
- feedster
- syndic8
- blogpulse
Matt Cutts on Directories -
I’ll try to give a few rules of thumb to think about when looking at a directory. When considering submitting to a directory, I’d ask questions like:
- Does the directory reject urls? If every url passes a review, the directory gets closer to just a list of links or a free-for-all link site.
- What is the quality of urls in the directory? Suppose a site rejects 25% of submissions, but the urls that are accepted/listed are still quite low-quality or spammy. That doesn’t speak well to the quality of the directory.
- If there is a fee, what’s the purpose of the fee?