Originally Posted by maxseo

That 40$ was a good investment.

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Not sure I agree its a good investment, it was and investment all right but this should make you think when buying links that promises "life time link" , I think you should ask the question: Whose life time, and what is the life span of this person or think whose life time you are using to measure the transaction ?

i agree temi
i think with aviva and alive their success may be their downfall
i think it was about bluefind actually i read about before and they guy who owned it said you wouldnt believe who comes out of the woodwork when u hit pr8
you just attract so much more publicity and not all good
you set yourself up as a target to all the worst forms of people
those directories are heavy on marketing and pushing their way to the top but the content and structure of the dirs alter little
i would be quite scrared of spending so much money on one dir and to run the risk of it losing its pr like bluefind

i think the more these directories are seen to be achieving high prs the greater chance google will decide to do something
just in case there will be some kind of crackdown or devaluing of the out of the box directories i want to move away from that as much as possbile by introducing new areas and content to my site
in the end you cant lose because you are adding more unique content

Its okay to achieve PR8 (because you are creating something of value on the internet and people link to you naturally) its "buying" PR8 Google frown at, which is what most "top" web directories are doing.

Originally Posted by Discover

you wouldnt believe who comes out of the woodwork when u hit pr8
you just attract so much more publicity and not all good
you set yourself up as a target to all the worst forms of people

When you aproach it from this angle the slight drop for Aviva might be not so bad afterall

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Interesting points, I also heard the story when you reach PR8 you open Pandora Box.

I think Jeff is trying to do the best he can with Aviva and lately as changed more the focus to directory integrity and content.

But people starve for PR, normally they don’t care about nothing else.

Natural links are great, but who will link to a directory unless you are a mega established directory like Dmoz, BOTW or Yahoo.

I think the plan should be to build links and promote your site for 1 to 2 years and then when you are established you can live of natural links.

I don’t think paying for links is a bad thing, what I always try to do is buying permanent or at least 1 year.

I agree, Aviva, DMOZ, Alive, none of them really offer much different than any 2 bit directory other than PR. The thing is, those directories aren't searched, they aren't used by common internet users. The promotion that is pushed is targeting website owners, not the general public. So these sites won't drive much traffic to any site. Is a single PR link valuable enough for someone to pay $40.00 for it? Chances are that link will be lower PR than the front page is anyway, so the value is even less. Also, these sites are there for one reason and one reason only, and that's to sell links.

It doesn't surprise me that high PR directories (PR6 - PR7) lose their PR. When they have backlinks from other quality sites I am sure in three months other sites have taken their spot which pushes their site to a page with less PR. In effect it drops their PR so it is to be expected.

If you add more pages to a website the PR of the pages, all things being equal will fall, assuming fully meshed linking, however the total site pR will have increased. Aside from the pr drop. I think Aviva is great, I pay for listings there regularly, I like pr5 cat pages. I also really like the design and the lady with the hair . Alivedirectory has gone too expensive for me at 100 bucks a time for the best link option!