Some paid directories are well worth submitting to if you need quality backlinks or want fast inclusion of your travel site into the major search engines like google, yahoo or MSN.

For me as a webmaster of several travel sites, the actual page rank in the travel category, not of the home page, matters. What good would a home page rank of 7 and a travel category page rank of 0 do my link building efforts. Especially if I look for fast inclusion into the search engines for a new site, it is important, that the page my link is on gets spidered by them often. And a page with page rank 0 might not even be included in the search results.

This list is ordered by page rank of the travel category. The homepage of these directories usually have even higher page rank. I will add new finding from time to time. So please check back from time to time or subscribe to our newsletter with all current information.

http://www.linkcabin.com/
Page Rank of Travel Category: 3
Featured links (5 additional links): $29.99 / One-time fee
Regular links (3 additional links): $4.99 / One-time fee

http://www.allthewebmasters.com
Page Rank of Travel Category: 4
Annual listing: $9.99
Litetime listing $19.95
They are part of a 15 Directories network. Listing for all 15 directories: $49.95
Discount for bulk submission available.

http://directory.v7n.com/
Page Rank of Travel Category: 4
One-time fee of $49.95

http://www.avivadirectory.com/
Page Rank of Travel Category: 5
Featured links: $74.95/year
Regular links: $49.95/year

http://botw.org/
Page Rank of Travel Category: 6
$69.95 / year
$199.95 one-time review fee

Traffic exchange networks promise you targeted visitors for your website in exchange for either surfing their members sites or for money. Traffic Syndicate 25 is another of these traffic exchange networks and I just signed up to see what kind of websites they have in their network. More on Traffic Syndicate 25: Another traffic exchange network

Trafficswarm is a free traffic exchange network. They promise targeted and cheat proof traffic to your website, without costs. Today I applied for free membership. We will see. I will use this to promote my new Thailand website at http://www.thai-experience.com. It's a Thailand travel guide and directory with listing for tourists and expats alike. More on Will TrafficSwarm really bring traffic?

Once you have a new website online you would want to get incomming links and visitors. An easy but time consuming way is by submitting your website to directories. There are so many out there, most of them general and some niche directories like guiding-stars.com a specialty travel directory.

Not all directories notify you once they listed your site. And it would be extremely time consuming to visit all directories to check it out. This is where Directory Tracker can help. You sign up for a free account, enter your website address and let the tool work. It will show you which directories include your website.

It is also handy to find new directories to submit to as it displays additional information like page rank, category, price and which script the directory is using.

Only downside of this tool is the limited amount of directories supported in certain categories. There are currently just 281 directories listed with only 3 of them travel directories. Directory owners can easily add their directory to the list and hopefully it will grow fast and become an even more value tool.

Guiding-stars is a Specialty Travel Directory with submission guidelines clearly stating, at least I think it's clear, that only travel related websites have a chance to get a listing. A lot of people seem not to read or understand submission guidelines and submit all sorts of sites. That creates a lot of work on our side and leads to a refusal of the site submitted.

1. Tip: Read the guidelines when you submit to a directory and see if your site would fit. More on Directory submission from a directory owners point of view