PR Web is the most expensive and seems to be the most used by the media.

The free press releases did nothing noticeable for me when using them last year.

When using PR Web (when it was only $30)I got a bit of traffic, maybe 10 to 20 hits a day. That was not what was good about it.

I also picked up some .gov links, and several .com links. I did not know PR then so did not look for that. But this too is not what is interesting.

What really helped was the phone call from NewsWeek wanting to do a story on me. And an Atlanta News Paper who wanted to quote me, and another paper who wanted to include some of my material in their paper, all with a link to my site.

Of course, those were short lived but my site bumped up to a PR4 overnight. The only way I knew this is because a friend called me to congratulate me.

I am managing a Product Launch and I will steer my client into PR Web. So, if it is possible to repeat the same experience, I will let you know.

As far as the links go, many were sending traffic for at least 2 years.

As I said above – if your site will be placed on a high PR page, then yes, you will surely get much more traffic to your site, especially if it gets only 250 daily visitors.

My site only makes about $100 dollars per month. Would paying for a link from the Yahoo directory be worth my while?

The photography section in the Yahoo directory where my site would be is a pr5.

Do you think that I would get $300 worth of benefit back from Yahoo during the year?

Actually, when you submit to Yahoo directory, the Yahoo search engine will start taking you more seriously and it will send you more traffic. Also, the rankings in the directory change with time – depending on how much traffic you get.

If you want to rank high for a certain keyword, you need that keyword in the title and in the incoming links to that page. Those links can be external AND internal!

That’s all you need. It just takes time to build lots of pages and get lots of links but this is it. The whole secret of doing well online.

I started a new site a little more than 2 months ago.

The snowball has started rolling much faster with this site (averaging 70 uniques a day for the last week) and it has a PR of 3 already.

I’m not getting any traffic from Yahoo yet though.

Since you said pages are listed in Yahoo’s directory by popularity (traffic from Yahoo), should I wait to submit to Yahoo’s directory until I start getting traffic from them?

Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

Perry

After reading your advice about Yahoo Directory I finally made the big leap and submitted. I followed your advice and submitted to a category with a PR 5 i.e. travel>ecotourism. I’m hoping they recognize that Tasmania is one of Australia’s most popular ecotourism destinations and include me under this category.

I know you’ve already done quite a few articles on link-building but I would love to hear more from you about other link-building ideas as I am trying to rank as highly as possible for the competitive keyword “Tasmania”.

Your advice would be greatly appreciated as always.

Cheers

Conor

So I followed your advice and applied to the Yahoo directory. My site got accepted!

As they stated in their submission guidelines, new sites are featured at the top of the listings. And my site is the first link at the top of the PR3 page. I’m not sure where it will go once it’s no longer new but hopefully it will stay on the PR3 page.

Now I’ll observe the effect of traffic and see if there is a noticeable difference.

Thanks for your help!

Yes, I think that I would be very useful to get a link there – at least in the first year! You may need some link boost in the first year to get some pagerank and traffic and see later whether you still need it or not.

As for the first (PR3) and second page (PR0); the sites are ranked by popularity. Which basically means how much traffic the get from the Yahoo search engine.

If you create a large content site like SBI suggests, you’ll definitely receive more traffic from Yahoo than most other sites in that category and you’ll be therefore placed on the first – PR3 – page.

I looked into submitting my site to the Yahoo directory and wanted to get your opinion. My site is about the Zune digital media player and there is a specific category for this at http://dir.yahoo.com/Entertainment/Consumer_Electronics/Audio/MP3_Players/Product_Information_and_Reviews/Microsoft_Zune/.

This page is a PR3. Notice there is also a second page of links which is a PR0.

Would it be worth submitting my site? In the submission guidelines Yahoo states that if you’re a new site you get featured towards the top of the list which means my site would end up on the PR3 page. However, I’m not sure this is guaranteed and I could end up on the PR0 second page too.

And in either case none of the pages are PR5. Would it still make sense to submit my site or should I invest my money elsewhere?

I looked at other categories but couldn’t find one that was a good fit. I would imagine that the reviewer would move me to this category anyways since the rest of my competition is listed here too.

Your thoughts are appreciated. Thanks for providing such great info on your blog!