How To Find Quality Directories Quickly

There are thousands of directories on the net, and everyday more and more directories are created. Unfortunately, while the number of directories increase, their quality and relevance dramatically decrease. Therefore it becomes harder and harder to discover new, unique and quality directories.

In this article, I will cover basic steps on how to find quality directories, and at the end of the article I will review the newest way to discover quality directories.

As some of you know, one of the most popular ways to discover new directories is to browse forums. Forums where directories are generally announced can be found here. But the problem with forums is that it’s not the most efficient way to find directories since you waste a tremendous amount of time hunting the good ones with no way to quickly tell what is or isn’t a quality directory to submit to.

Another popular way to find new directories is through Directory Critic. Most of you have heard about it and know how it ranks directories by user ratings, so further description of the service is unnecessary.

You can also use Directory Inbox, to discover new directories via your inbox. You can find more information about it here.

Finally, there is Directory Rate , it’s the newest, and I think one of the best ways to discover new directories, it hasn’t been talked about a lot as yet by the community so I think it’s worth giving a bit of information about it here.

So What is Directory Rate?

Directory Rate is a collection of directory lists, which are helpful for webmasters, SEOs and site promoters. Currently, it contains nearly 800 directories organized by comprehensive categorizes, including paid and niche categories, and ranked by DR (Directory Rate Strength), with the most popular category probably being the free directories category.

What Makes Directory Rate Unique?

Just like PR makes Google unique, DR makes Directory Rate unique, and all listed directories are sorted by DR. Moreover, DR helps you to save time by allowing you quickly spot only quality directories. Unlike a tool like Directory Critic that ranks directories by user ratings, and therefore the top directories listed are not necessarily the strongest, Directory Rate ranks its directories by their calculated DR and so gives you a much more accurate idea of what is likely to be a truly strong directory.

How Is DR Calculated?

According to the Directory Rate site, DR is calculated by many different metrics and factors but, probably with good reason, they don’t reveal much about the actual algorithm. However, from the information they do give along with my own thoughts, its probably a combination of a directory’s back links, PR, PS and SE friendly content that are used to calculate DR.

Conclusion

I like everything about Directory Rate except one thing, and that is that it’s currently impossible to find out a DR score without actually submitting your directory. I hope, sometime in the near future, that it will be possible to find out a DR score without submitting a directory as I feel many users, including myself, would find it very useful.

Overall, Directory Rate is a genuinely useful tool when it comes to helping you quickly find the right directories to submit your site to, and it’s certainly possible that their DR Strength score may become widely used by the industry in the future to determine a directory’s strength.