So Is it beneficial to swap reciprocal links with a directory? Few Points to remember……

1. Depends on the quality of the directory. There are all types of directories. You will see directories that are low quality in appearance and content, and you will find directories that are high quality and offer useful related content.

2. Look for the editor controlled directories.

3. You should be able to find relevant content to what your website is about.

4. Focus on quality and relevancy than PR(page rank). PR does not matters in this case because there are many quality websites which start off new with low (or no) PR.

5. Getting your site reviewed manually and then listed in a directory determines the quality, relevancy of your website as well as the web directory you are submitting to.

6. You might try Googling your keyphrase + add link [or] suggest link [or] add url [or] submit a site which will show you websites that match your keywords and also actively solicit link exchange.

7. Link exchange with quality sites when it benefits your end users experience by helping them learn more about your own product/service/information.

8. Link exchange should always be conducted first and foremost as a branding and traffic building function.

9. Do not make linking decisions based on how you think it will affect your website rankings in search engines.

10. If you “require” reciprocation instead of politely requesting it when it benefits the end user, think of how that sends the wrong signal to the other webmaster.

11. Look around your keyword sector in Googles version of the ODP. (this is best done AFTER getting an odp listing – or two). Find sites that have links pages or freely exchange links. Simply request a link exchange. Put a page of on topic, in context links up your self as a collection spot.

12. Search Engines prefer that you as a webmaster avoid those services where you pay your money and then you get auto linked to hundreds or thousands of websites overnight without making any decisions as to who you will or will not be linked to.

13.

Who you link out says a lot to the search engines about your link development strategy.

14. You fail to update your content on a regular basis and/or publish fresh useful content on a regular basis and you are more likely to lose your search engine rankings.

15. Buying links from quality directories or blogs (and via blog comments) are also useful when it’s relevant for the end user.

16. Keep link development volume natural.

Obtain a new link today, none tomorrow, 3 links the next day, none for the next few days, 4 the next day, one the next day and so on.. If you find a cure for a horrible disease and you publish it on your website and you end up with a high volume of links overnight, do not worry about that. The search engines are smart enough to sort that out.

17. Topical directories have the strongest rankings

18. Browse through the 99% web directories to know which is the worthwhile directory and this should be a continuous process.

19. Support your local and topical directory.

20. Web directories help in finding authority websites

21. More doubts… Read this How to assess free and paid directories?

Remember there is no free lunch and links are cheap.

Well, the web directories are back, partly because the regular search engines value input from human edited sites. That is: sites included in trusted Web directories may get a boost in regular search engine rankings, as the search engines reckon that the human editors will not include spam and low quality sites.

Web directories may also function well as regular search tools, especially when you want to identify the best Web sites within a specific area.

1. If the directory is a clone of other directories, forget it.
2. Is the directory a niche authority? – answer can be found by checking the quality of backlinks from the same industry.
3. Traffic evidence of the directory – how robust is this evidence – maybe in the future this can help if the directories start using the yahoo site explorer badge or the google webmaster tools link analysis tool which can give good Input about the link growth and thus giving an indication in the growth of the traffic. Maybe a search on “web directory” or “submit url” give an indication of a directory traffic. Not sure about this/ as it depends on SERP placement.
4. Is the directory providing a good description of the existing sites or simply giving the links?
5. Does the directory give a good navigational path in reaching the right page for submission or
does the directory provide the good search option of finding the relevant websites of your industry.
6. Does the category of your directory submission indexed in the search engines? Is it supplemental result or in the main index?
7. Does the directory have quality sites or all the scraper sites?
8. Do the directory pages load fast?
9. How fat is the directory – depends on how frequently it is accepting the submissions.
10. Is the directory a “any site submission accepted” directory- rates the quality score from good sites and spam sites.
11. Pagerank – check this info about high pagerank
12. I do not recommend those promotional directories when you look into any website.- They are only present there for promotion- if they are really good directories then they should qualify to the above factors to my knowledge.
13. 302 redirects some non relevant page when you click on a link in the directory.
14. having nofollow or hiding the links with javascript.
15. Is the directory in a network of directories having the same display- can only be identified by experience.
16. No quality directory would ask for reciprocal links. If they do, means they are desperate in joining those directories which are already qualified as quality directories.
17. Many directories ask for email address. Do they use it for spam?– keep checking your email address to filter out the bad directories. No quality directory would require your email address for promoting themselves with email marketing or promotions. They dont ask your email address if you look into it in long-term basis.
18. Now do the paid directories follow the 17. point?
19. Followed the above points? now you did a link exchange with this.. so the question is how much impact that directory backlink has on your traffic?
20. Are the directory internal pages cluttered ONLY with adsense ads?
21. What happens when search engines die all of sudden.. Are you sure you will get the traffic?(–funny idea–)
22. Is the page where you are going to submit is recently cached? – still a good indication of search engine crawling that site.
23. Do the directories send you mail about why they have rejected your site?
24. Got a few quality directories, did a search in the search engines, check the related or similar pages in google, check the other directories listed- indication of quality directory from search engines- if you are doubtful- repeat the above listed step-by-step process.
List of many points above- Any other suggestions are welcome.