I just read the article about “factors determining a quality web directory” from Alive Web directory, and I have to rush here to write something about factors determining how much should you pay for a featured listing? In general, the higher quality of the web directory, the more you need to pay for a featured listing. Well, apparently a lot of directories owners can not fairly determine how much they should charge for a featured listing. So if you have enough time, search for directories that are undervalued and avoid directories that are over valued. There is no single factor determine how much a featured listing worth, but certainly the following list should give you an idea of how much roughly you should pay:

  • The age of the directory - You probably all familiar with the term “Sandbox”. That’s right, if your site is new, who knows if you are serious about your site or you are just playing around? Thus, the newer the site, the less authority the site has. Take a look at how long has the directory been online. I would say when you pay over $10, make sure the site is at least 1 year old.
  • Indexed pages with aging factors - Look at how many pages are indexed by Google and consider the age of the site at the same time. But don’t just look at the indexed page blindly. For example, if a site has been online for 1 year and have 1000 pages indexed and another site has only been around for 4 months and have 800 pages indexed already. I would say there is a good chance that latter is “cooler” than the first one.
  • The number and quality of backlinks: Look a both the number of backlinks and quality of the backlink at the same time and remember, quality is more important than quantity. This is also a good chance for evaluating the potential of the directory. If the site has yet had a decent page rank but somehow has a lot of quality backlinks, then go ahead and pay for featured listing. Webmasters tend to set the price based on the pagerank, so the price is likely to be undervalued when the PR is low.
  • How unique is each page: When I say how unique the page is. I mean look at the title of each page, the url of the page. Does the directory has some sort of paragraphs explaining the topics?
  • What extras does the site provide for featured listing: 1. The featured listing should be placed above all the free ones 2. It is better if featured listing has special formating such as borders and different background colors. 3. It is better if featured listing gives you the chance to list your inner pages. This is very important for your inner page optimization. 4. Features such as reviews, comments and social bookmarking options provided on your featured details page.
  • The function of the directory itself: If a web directory is soly a “directory” with only listings, then it won’t adds that much value to your site. It will be a bonus if the site has other features such as blog and forum so that there are always good content being added to the site which keeps the site itself fresh and it is likely that these types of directories will receive much more traffic than a normal directory without any additional features.