Why would somebody buy featured links on a directory if they can get a regular one for free? There are a few important factors. Many tend to think that it is approval time. I think that the average approval time for a featured link is 1-2 days, however, it is not the main criteria.
As you may know, we run a few directories for several years already. We sold quite a few featured links for $5/year (I think that this is an average what they go for). Usually the bigger the PR the more links directory sells. If you take the average price of $5 that gets you a featured link for a year, it only costs you a little less than 0.42c a month.
Well, here is something interesting behind featured links. To illustrate the point, we will start explaining how regular links on most of the directories work. When you submit a regular link to the directory, it takes some time to get approved. Upon approval – it becomes the first link in the top of the category. As soon as another link gets added to the same category, yours becomes second and moves down the line from first to tenth, from page one to page two, three, and so on. So your link does not stay on the same page all the time. Therefore it may be indexed in one day and disappear from search engine’s list of incoming links the next day. Featured directories do not move from page to page – in the most directories they are on every single page of the category.
Where am I going with this? Lets look at a random category on a random directory – I chose “Business” on Onpaco Free Web Directory. At this point there are 154 pages in “Business” section. So, whenever you buy a link – you are buying a link on 154 relevant pages! Plus you get a chance to get a link to your site from the pr1 index page since they show random featured links on the index page as well. If you are familiar with SEO – you know that the top part of the content generally is more important then the bottom. That is where featured links usually go as well, which gives us another point that shows the value of 42 cents a month. We also noticed that featured links get more clicks as well.
Does it make sense now? Well, how do you find the right directories? You may think like the most of the crowd and go after the pagerank, but it may not be the best idea. A lot of times webmasters buy expired domain names with a pagerank and put a directory there. They run it for a few months, collect the money, pagerank drops with the next update and the directory goes down. Look at the age of the directory, amount of pages in your category and quality of approved links rather than the pagerank. Also, check if the directory is active and adds links on a constant basis. While administering Free Directory Submission Site – EasySubmits we noticed that about half of the new directories disappear within first 6 months or so. There are a ton of the ones that been out for over a year or two, target those instead.
Run an experiment, see what a featured link can do for you, but I just thought that I’d share our observation.
