One of the problems with web directories can be the PageRank of internal pages - or rather the lack of it.

Directories are often advertised with reference to a high home PageRank but there is little point paying for a listing if the internal page it is on is not crawled or cached by the search engines.

Link Book Web Directory is an interesting example where the home page has a lower PageRank than the internal pages - it is PR4 and many of it’s categories are PR6. That makes it pretty good value at $34.99 for a featured listing, especially as it offers 10 extra deeplinks on the details page.

A quick way to check the PageRank of the internal pages of a directory is to use iWebtool.com visual pagerank checker. This will quickly display the PageRank of the destinations of all links on a page.

‘Bidding’ or ‘Bid for Position’ directories are the latest way to buy high PR links to your site. They usually have the normal directory category structure (though without subcategories) but they allow you to pay more so your listing appears above all the others in your category.

What has made these directories really popular (and profitable) is that the top ten bids are shown on the home page and some also have a ‘top bids’ page where the top twenty bidders are listed or have the top bidder listed on every page. So, by bidding more you can take advantage of the high PageRank of the home page. (Once a site is accepted, additional bids are accepted automatically).

One of the top bidding directories is Big Web Links Directory. It has a home PageRank of 7 and the top bid is $2000 (in total the home page is worth about $11000 at the time of writing). If this level of bidding is out of your range, the minimum bid is $49.90 which is pretty good value for a permanent PageRank 5 link. (Not all the directory categories have high PageRank, the Entertainment Category is one with PR 5).

I have a couple of misgivings about these types of sites. One is, as paid links go these are pretty easy for the search engines to detect, so will they be devalued? The second is, unscrupulous webmasters might artificially increase the bids. So, it is worth being a little cautious with the newer, less well-established bidding directories.

A selection of these sites can be found in the bidding directories page of the SEO Directory.

An important indicator of a good quality web directory is whether it sells site-wide links (links to external sites that are repeated on every page, usually in the footer or sidebar).

A powerful link to your site is one that is relevant - from a unique page covering the same theme as your site, with text including related keywords and linking to other similar sites. This is the type of link that is worth paying for in a directory.

However, the value of a directory listing is diluted if there are completely unrelated links on the same page as the link to your site. And, because they are repeated on every page, site-wide links make every page look similar, so they can end up in the supplemental index.

eWebPages.org is a quality paid web directory that has no site-wides, not even the extremely common ‘Template sponsored by…’ or ‘Powered by PHP Link Directory’ footer links. It also has high PR on all its internal pages (PR 6 home page), even down to the third level categories (e.g. the Web Directories > Niche Directories > Entertainment Directories category is PR 4).

They charge an annual review fee, which is quite expensive, but worth it for the quality of the link back.

Best of the Webs is another PHP Link Directory powered site with a vast array of categories for submitting sites.

There is no messing with this directory, no blog, no articles - it is a straight forward general web directory with two simple listing types, featured and regular. It is nicely laid out and designed with what appears to be a unique template (I don’t think I’ve seen it before anyway!)

A unique template is an important factor in determining if a directory will provide a quality link. Directories that use identical templates, and worse still identical category structures, look very similar to search engines (especially if they don’t have many listings in them), and may suffer from a duplicate content penalty. A link from a site like that is next to worthless.

One particularly good feature of Best of the Webs is that the latest listings (both featured and regular) are shown on the home page, which gives your site a bit of a boost when you first submit it.

Check out Best of the Webs Directory.

Alive Directory is one of the strongest paid directories on the internet at the moment. With a solid category structure, page strength of 5.5 7, PageRank of 6 on the home page and PageRank on most internal pages, it provides a strong back link. It is also one of relatively few authority directories. (How can you tell? The top result for a search for Alive Directory in Google is an extended listing.)

It has a variety of pricing plans, both yearly and permanent, which are quite expensive, but then it is one of the stronger directories. A new feature added recently is the ability to promote your site on the front page of the directory through ‘daily listings’.

The main reason for the high PageRank is the vast number of backlinks pointing at the site, over 900,000 which is more the dmoz.org! And the authority of the site is probably due in part from the 1300 links from .edu sites (although exactly how you achieve this special status in Google is a bit of a mystery).

Where do all these backlinks come from? Well, Alive Directory is one of the most obviously promoted web directories on the net. It sponsors loads of directory templates and is listed in most directories. A link from Alive is even more powerful if your site is a directory since it is obviously a ‘link hub’ (a central authoritative resource) for directories.