[Dale King]

The Open Directory Project (AKA DMOZ) is the most popular free directory on the worldwide web. However, if I were building a new website today, considering the myriad of problems that DMOZ is having, I would bite the bullet and pay Yahoo $299 annually for a listing in its paid directory. In fact, that's exactly what I plan on doing with my next website. Here are 6 reasons why:

1. The Yahoo Directory is the most powerful paid directory on the Internet.

2. Yahoo guarantees to review your site within 7 days of submission.

3. While there's no guarantee of approval, if you follow Yahoo's guidelines carefully, your site will more than likely be approved and listed...providing of course, your site is a legitimate business website. By the way, whether your website is approved or not, the $299 fee is non-refundable.

4. If your site is brand new, you have the advantage of obtaining significant web exposure much faster, as opposed to just waiting for your organic rankings to kick in.

5. Google places a great deal of weight on having a backlink from an industry-specific listing in Yahoo's directory, which has an "off-the-charts" page rank of 8.

6. Once your site is approved, it will be featured in the "What's New" category of the directory which can send a good amount of traffic to your site, as well as give your site a nice little boost in the search engines.

Although Google is still the world's most popular search engine, Yahoo is still widely used worldwide. Why? Several reasons: Its webmail progam, its popular IM program, RSS feed reader, and many other bells and whistles it offers keep people coming back to search Yahoo for their personal and business needs again and again.

Dale King