Starting a niche directory with Joomla, opinions please

Over the last year I have been developing simple websites with joomla, and would like to test making a directory using an extension that is available for free.

My niche would be promotional product suppliers and the site is here: www.promotionalindex.com

Since this is my first directory, I would like opinions concerning the use of joomla for directories and if anyone could give me opinions on the site in general that would be great!

I know the promotional market quite well and I plan to add some good content with time, hopefully making a practical directory for potential clients.

thanks

- should anyone like to add their page to the directory, I would gladly accept good sites related to the categories.

 

I don't recommend it. don't lose your time and start with one of the directory scripts either paid or free.

 

May i ask why you dont recommend using Joomla please?

 

I would say that your directory layout is not seo friendly.

An address like it is in your case:
domain.com/promotional-directory/15.html

is not descriptive. If it was my directory I would like to see something like this
domain.com/promotional-directory/pins-badges.html

Then there's another point. If you go to the Pins and Badges sections, you obviously have two links there. Now, for a hasty visitor like me, it is quite difficult to understand that these are directory entries and I should click on them. Don't ask me why but they just don't look clickable, I am not attracted to them. If you decide to stick with Joomla, remove those beige backgrounds and try to play with styles a bit.

Unfortunately I cannot suggest any other dir script as the one I use is made by me and cannot be used on multiple categories but I hope you got some idea of what to search for. Good luck!

 

Tankard, thanks for the advice. There is an extension for more friendly URLs, which I was planning on buying ($5) for this directory. First I wanted people's opinion on using Joomla though.

Thanks for the design tips, I just added a few sites to test, I'll work on improving that.

 

phpld offers free and paid options,
download and try free version first,
i might sure you will never use "Joomla" any more!

 

search engines will have hard time indexing and ranking joomla pages even with all those extensions. If a cms is a must then go with wordpress!

 

Welll i have'nt used Joomla yet and am yet to experience how the extensions work, but i read that the SEO problem is mostly a past problem due to what extras are available.

 

It has been a long time since I used it but from what I still see in live sites it still sucks.
even in the site mentioned in the OP, the links can not be picked up by search engines (javascript).
many other factors make joomla not good for seo.

 

Well your post definately matches what i have read in the past and sometimes still recently, so i can appreciate what your saying, in general im still going to check out Joomla, always good to try for myself.

 

Try to edit your footer. It's too long. You can remove the Joomla word actually but not to modify the source code.

 

Thanks all. So far I have been pleased with joomla for some of our other sites, and yes you can make the links SEF or search engine friendly, I just havent done it yet for the directory in this thread.
I understand Joomla version 1.5 solves allot of these issues too.

Not that I'm trying to promote joomla, but http://www.tnawrestling.com/ is a pretty big site built with joomla and gets about 1million visits a month.

 

+Make this page index http://promotionalindex.com/promotional-directory/index.php
+Setup Another Template

These are my proposition

 

Joomla is not inherently SEO friendly, that is tweaking of the URL's is a bit more difficult & also it consumes lot of server resources, Please correct me If I am wrong.

 

I am not sure it gets its traffic from google with only 300 pages indexed. If it was build with wordpress I am sure their traffic would at least double.

 

A few urban myths being posted here about Joomla. Here's 2 of the sites which are Joomla/Mambo based.

ShetlandPonyWeb - 800+ unique visitors per day. 4020 indexed pages. Runs mTree as the core directory and a bridged SMF forum.

Accommodation Directory - 150+ unique visitors per day. 1060 indexed pages. Run mTree as the core directory.

Neither site has SEF URLs but Google has never found that to be a problem.

My advice? Get a decent template; there are plenty of really cost-effective templates club turning out smart templates every month.

Use mTree. The latest version rocks and you can use SEF advance if you think it's necessary.

 

You know, if you are talking about SEO on every SE's, I guess then Joomla is not the best choice.

But SEO in general, we usually tend to focus on Google only, and G can crawl Joomla script very well.

I don't worry about what script you choose to use, even without SE friendly. Dynamic pages are as good as static html for some time, and there is no supplement pages exist any more in G either.

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/07/supplemental-goes-mainstream.html

 

I too am to be checking Joomla for its compatibility for my directory ideas, I will be being reporting back to here with my findings.

 

I am no coding expert- in fact have no idea. But I would always recommend trying out different coding platforms for directories as it is getting easier for Google to detect the URLs of a particular script if it is being used by thousands of directories.

Those who are able to must try to diversify in order to make the industry more wide on use of script.

 

This is most excellent advice I am thanking you for.