As the title says, is paying Yahoo $299 for inclusion into their directory worth it? Well, that depends. https://ecom.yahoo.com/dir/submit/intro/
First, paying the $299 only gets you a “site review”. It does not guarantee you inclusion into the Yahoo Directory. So even if you fork over the $299 (I like how they say “only $299” in their landing page!), you still may be left out of the directory.
And just what do you get out of being in the directory anyway?
Well, I have a couple sites in there and traffic from the directory is next to nil. Not to say that there is none, but nothing of any consequence. So if you are hoping bump your traffic with a Yahoo Directory submit I’d save your money.
That said, you may get some extra link benefit, though, but it’s hard to say just how valuable their link juice is. Directories in general use to carry more weight in the search listings than they do today, Yahoo included.
So if you have a large budget for link building, I’d take a look at Yahoo and consider it. But for those sites with minimal funds, I’d look elsewhere. For $300 bucks you can certainly do better than getting just one link back from Yahoo.
If your aim is to get organic traffic from Yahoo! and Google, a good place to start is getting listed in the Yahoo! Directory. You may be confused. Didn’t I just say Yahoo! doesn’t use their directory listing in mcse their search results? That’s true. However, sites that get listed in the directory automatically get spidered by Inktomi (Yahoo!’s bot) and also by Google. Since Yahoo! has a quite a bit of stock in Google, there is a relationship there, despite the competition between the two companies. This is well worth the $299 submission fee! Google even suggests a listing in the Yahoo! Directory as a way to get into their index. Imagine that.