Is a directory like this white hat? Useful?

[MarieHaynes]

This is one of my competitor's backlinks:

http://bit.ly/mMPhmn

Prices for inclusion on this page go from $50 for 6 months to $300 for a permanent listing.

Do most of you guys do paid directories like this for your SEO Clients?  My gut is telling me to run away...but I don't want to miss a good opportunity if I should be taking it.

[ninjamarketer]

Paid directories are not beneficial the way it used to be long time ago. Any paid links is a serious no no even though the case that directory services provides is that they don't charge for links but for resource required for manual inclusion.

There are some exceptions to high quality directory such as Yahoo. One should always ask the question if this directory provides a benefit to the user and if the answer is no then a backlink from this site is worthless for both traffic and seo.

[MarieHaynes]

That's what I thought.  Every now and then I start to slip down that road of..."maybe I'll give this a whirl"...and then I have to kick myself and come back to earth and work on good content that will attract links naturally.

[AdoptionHelp]

I use a very simple litmus test: Would I personally find this directory useful?

My answer for this site is no. I can't think of a point at which I'd want to browse sites from around the world loosely based on an industry. Frankly I'm surprised this directory has so much domain authority. My guess is their value in the SE's eyes will continually drop.

[AlanMosley]

at that price i would not bother.

But paid and free directories are fine, it depends on their quality on how much good rthey do, but I can not see then doing harm.

As matt cuts said, if they are charging money to be reviewed then that is fine, in fact that is good, his advice was look for diirectories that are reviewed and those that do not link to anyone or accept everyone.

But unless you are part of some automated linking scheam youy will be fine

[j0a0vargas]

The directories with clear prices on the home site are not as good, because even if does not result in penalties, much of the SE can identify, and take the relevance of external links.

Furthermore, this is a directory PR 3, not so high to run any risk, if greater than or equal to 5, you could think about it.

Another aspect is it has many links, which divides the relevance of external links, one less reason to pay for it.

Hope this has helped.