I’m going to test them and see

I’ve always used link directories. They’re quick and cheap ways to get links. But that’s the problem - if they’re cheap, easy and quick that means the links they deliver are usually of really low quality. Unless you’ve got a reasonably old website with a bit of good history, some decent back links and a reasonable chunk of PageRank they do very little. All they do is add to the keywords that are pointing to the domain - which helps with search engine positions but not a great deal unless you already have some PageRank etc.

You can use a company like Directory Maximizer to do the submissions for you - but you’ll limit the number of keyword rich anchor texts to about 5. Which runs the risk of overloading your website with keywords which could trip a filter over @ Google. Also your links are only going to go to your homepage - which is a bit useless as your homepage can only do so much to help.

To test out how many people are actually using link directories as a core link development tactic and how they operate, from a management perspective, I’ve stuck one up @ http://www.solis3.com. Andy’s stuck one up at Our Cool Stuff too so we can have a comparator. Neither have PageRank yet, They have very few links in them and they’ve not been spidered yet. Solis 3 was spidered in a previous incarnation but I got bored of it when the server crashed and couldn’t find enough time until recently to get it up and running. If you fancy some free links get submitting (there’ll be more categories added in coming weeks so if you want a category that’s not listed just let me know).

I’ve also just stuck a brand new website with 6 pages into Directory Maximizer and going to do nothing else with it for 6 months to see if it brings any benefit what so ever to the domain.