Sponsored Review: ExcellentGuide.com

Well ladies and gents, I had been avoiding updating the blog to allow maximum exposure to the Charity Link Meme but when deadlines come, you’ve got to hit them. Before I thought of the Charity Link Meme I accepted a SponsoredReview (or bid on one, I don’t remember which now) for the Excellent Guide Directory so here we go.

The site design is solid and straight forward. It’s simple and visitors will instinctively know what is available on the site. However, there is a broken image on the left side of the home page which I believe is pulling information from another site. It’s a bit ironic as usually these types of images are meant to convey trust etc. While this doesn’t reflect all that poorly on ExcellentGuide, the “trust” website certainly has some issues.

As with most directories, it offers you a chance to submit your website and also offers a couple of paid options. The first level is the professional level which will run you just under $50.00 a year. It gives you preferred listing on their list of top credible websites which currently doesn’t appear to hold a whole lot of SEO benefit, however, it also gives you listings in your given categories as well. For example, DebtHelp.com has apparently procured a listing and thus are featured on the front page of ExcellentGuide’s finance section which is currently has a Google PageRank of 6. If you’re looking for directory listings a featured spot on a PR6 page for  $49.99 a year is pretty much the best you can hope for.

In terms of SEO tips for ExcellentGuide.com, I don’t have many. Their on page optimization is solid, and I’m seeing over 32 thousand backlinks. However, the fact that their list of top credible websites has a grayed out PR bar concerns me a bit. I’m not sure if this is simply a new page and therefore hasn’t been passed the link juice yet but if this were my site, I’d ad a link to that page in my main navigation across the site. This is one of the top selling points for your $49.99 a year plan and I would imagine you’d want that to have as high PR as possible.

So, overall, I’d say ExcellentGuide.com is exactly that… excellent. They’ve procured enough links to have a high PR and their directory is well maintained and exclusive enough to maintain it’s value. Matt Cutt’s often mentions that the best types of directories are ones just like this and for $49.99 a year, if you buy links at all, you should at least consider it. I know I will. (I guess I could always use the money from this SponsoredReview to pay for it huh?)