Which directories actually bring you traffic?

Everybody knows that most SEOers submit their sites to directories to get links (=pagerank) to boost their sites' rankings. No biggie ;)

I just wonder though: do you people sometimes actually get TRAFFIC from those directories? Which ones??

Some of my sites are listed on pretty nice/big directories, but only a couple of those actually show up in my logs as a referrer. This means that:
EITHER those are the dirs people actually use, whereas the others are not
OR those are the dirs that use proper links to list your site.

Lemme start a little list. My main dir traffic comes from these:

• mavicanet
• dmoz
• google dir
• vxbox

...but please note that I haven't submitted to every dir about (and Y hasn't let me in for free - bummer). Still, I'd like to know if there's any more dirs out there that generate real traffic instead of just backlinks

niche directories bring traffic dependent on topic of your website. general directories don't work well. I get about 50 uniques everyday from a few nich directories they aren't SEO friendly at all.

Yeah. same thing here. I have one niche directory that is bringing me 15% of my traffic. I also get some hits from Yahoo, DMOZ and very rare from smaller directories.

A least 30% of my traffic is coming from topical directories... Most are Portal sites with a directory built in...

Wit:

So good to see you start a thread.

Niche directories have regularly driven traffic to my site. The others hardly add a visitor.

Dave

Yeah Wit, what is up with that? You posted 4,222 posts and started only 31 threads or a little bit more then 0.7%.

Wit's been busy working on "My 5,000 Posts" all time.

Most of the directories I submitted (free or paid) do not give me any traffic.
The direcories with traffic are:
Google dir
Yahoo Regional
Dmoz

Approximately once a week- every week Wit starts a thread. (maybe its posts like this that keep him from starting threads)

Dave

Most things have been covered about a thousand times here. This has not ;)

Has any of you guys ever had traffic from big ones like Wow directory, Bluefind, Exactseek, SiteSift etc. Maybe even Zeal? I get some traffic from Zeal, but that's just Zealots being nosey and checking my profile ;)

@gabs - yes, I get more traffic from closely related portals, but I'm really wondering about traffic from 'generic' directories. You know: are they big, popular and useful enough to actually be used?

Any more specific examples like pang posted?

I get essentially no traffic to any of my sites via directories. I have recently had some good luck with a button ad that I purchased on a related site. I pretty much never spend money, as it is more my nature to go the free route whenever possible. Once in a blue moon, I'll pony up some cash for a directory I think is worthwhile, but it's rare. And I never buy links. But I came across a site that was selling a handful of button ads at the top of the site for some ridiculously low fee - i think it was $5 for 4 months or something like that. The site got good traffic, and it was related to my topic. From the first day, I started receiving a decent amount of traffic from it. That buy was a steal.

Not much traffic from the directories, maybe a tiny bit from the topical ones. :-?

It all depends on the theme/keywords of your website. Our directory gets between 1400 - 2100 unques a day but most of those comes from keywords that are not heavily optimized.

By far the number one KW's that draws visitors are "SEX/PORN" related. Other than that we hold some decent SERPS for some two and three word search strings. For most KW's you will not get visitors from directories. It is hard for a general directory to optimize for 1500 categories. For the most part most directories have little content or categories with empty listings.

Now...... part of the problem is on the people submitting the sites to the directories. People for some reason, being a paid listing or a free directory tend to have very little to say about their website. We got numerous site descriptions with 4-5 words. :-? We took proactive measures a few months back and required a minimum description or the submission wouldn't go through.

If people want to increase their traffic from web directories they should submit to the most relevant category and provide a good description. This will not always work but will help.

I get a lot of traffic from the search engines direct to the topics primarily from keyword phrases containing locality + topic. Some say they get good traffic others say the do not. It’s something we are continually working on improving. Some topics are very competitive and difficult to get good search results in. We are working on it but it seems to be a never ending job. Using relevant anchor text in the titles with the correct and full business name has proven to make a very strong topic in search engine results. When you have a topic with 30 submissions all showing similar anchor text as well as the topic optimized for the same it can be quite impressive. A directory as with any other website is a lot of trial and error to get the right combination.

We are making dramatic changes in Skaffe this year with a portal style redesign soon to be implemented and WoW is going in a similar direction and should be up sometime next week. A lot of money is being spent on both directories to get away from the poor performing 90’s style.

Sounds good, stoner3221. Will be interesting to see the updated style. Am trying to picture a portal style directory in my head and can't, so I hope I remember to go check it out next week.