In the interest of full disclosure, I am building (90% complete) a website directory. I foolishly forgot something when building the site...to ask the people what it is they want/need. Now there are 1000 that pop up everyday, so my question is this: From an SEO perspective, what would you like to see with an online directory that you feel is missing or rarely seen with today's directories? Obviously the website directory needs traffic/ranking itself, but beyond that, what would make it the bee's knees? To assist with my questions, here are things that I'm looking to do: - manual review of all website submissions; so no promotion of "super-fast" approvals. On the flip side, there isn't going to be a one week to four month waitlist. - no paid listing or link exchange - it will be free. - ultimate dream is to have a directory of sites that are "hidden" gems of the net. I appreciate your time. Feel free to PM me with any questions, etc.
Honestly, a directory of links is practically worthless these days. Nobody uses directorys to find websites anymore, and the SEO benefit from having backlinks from directories is greatly diminished. If you are interested in providing the 'hidden gems' of the internet, then you need to come up with a new and different format --a directory just doesn't cut it anymore. When tying to think of new ideas along these lines, think of sites like 'stumbleupon' where the number of times a site is displayed is directly proportional to the popularity of it. Perhaps a 'hot or not' type site for websites. They fill in their interests, then they click a 'show a site' button, and it pops up with one of your 'gems'. They check it out, then vote whether they think the site is cool or not. Then they click on to the next site and see score of previous one. You should probably write this down. This is a million dollar idea. ;-0
Thanks for the feedback. I appreciate the advice...and I'll share the second million the idea generates p.s. the domain name I have probably fits perfectly with your idea.
I'm going to hold you to sharing of that second million. ;-) Let me know when you are ready to start marketing.