How to pick the right directory to submit to?

Some webmasters are really obsessed about getting their site listed in miscellaneous directories. Let’s face it, when YOU want to find something, do you turn to Google / Yahoo / MSN, or start searching directories for it? Well, not only you, but people hardly ever browse directories seeking for something so you could be pleasantly surprised getting a few hits from your submission, however, I’d not build on it. Normally, people submit to high PageRank and well indexed directories only because they want to improve their own ranking. From Google’s point of view, who now encourages webmasters to report paid links, it’s a nice n’ sneaky way to bypass the forbidden paid links campaign because officially you pay for  “listing in directory”, not for getting a PR6 back link.

So how can you know what directory is best for you? If you are looking to submit your site for free, I’d suggest to go to here and sort the directories by PR, then submit to all the PR3+ sites. Don’t bother submitting to the small players, it will take up many hours of your time and may not pay out. This is to get some link love, but how can you know what directory is ranked better for YOUR keyword? The simplest way to check is to search Google for your desired keywords, and see what directory comes up first. Whichever of them gives the first result, means it’s well indexed for the these particular word or phrases and is potentially worth submitting to.