Directory sites in the top 20 results?

[tommyboy]

Hi everyone,

I hope someone could help me with a question. For a long time my site has held the #3 spot for a really popular search term. This was done through good seo, content, and years of link building. I never paid any listings. Three days ago yahoo suddenly changed the top 20 results to sites in their directory. My site was dropped to the third page with no traffic coming in.

Anyways, I was thinking of paying to be added to their directory but was wondering if it was worth it. Do you think with a paid directory listing combine with my sites good seo will get me back to #3? Has this happen to anyone else? I just don't want to waste $299 when I could use it to get other traffic.

Thanks in advance.

[seobook]

hi tommyboy
welcome to the forums :)

yahoo probably gives a good boost to most sites listed in their directory. when a site is reviewed by a human editor it gets some review mark so it would make sense that they could give it a slight boost since they know more about it. you may also want to try to build a bunch of keyword rich inbound links and get a bunch of links from other directories too.

you stated something about not spending any money. either you need to have a great site / idea or eventually you are going to need to spend money to promote it.

[tommyboy]

hello seobook,

Thanks for your reply. I've noticed that a lot of popular keywords shows directory listings first. I guess it is only understandable that paid submits get listed first. My only concern is if yahoo also looks at optimized sites in ranking the directory listings or is it some other criteria. My site has tons of keyword rich incoming links as well as relevent content. I am just wondering if I paid to be in their directory will my site be back in the top 10, since it was #3 before the switched to directory results as the first 20.

Well I guess I'm going to try and let you guys know how it turns out.

[seobook]

since the web is fluid / dynamic (ie: your competitors are changing and the search relevancy algorithms change) you can't really be certain exactly what effect most individual things will have on their own. what works is just to take what is effective and do it more than enough and hopefully the results show.