How much will a decent site cost? Sites are quite cheap as you can take advantage of professional scripts. You can install it yourself. If you are serious then you can get a custom design made for your site. How much did you charge your listing companies in the beginning. Your brand new directory would not be worth much to your customers when it is brand new. You should consider offering free listings until the site is established.
XMAX555 - If charging companies to list brings your google PR down, then I wonder how the 2 sites that might be considered any kind of competition are charging. To be a bit more clear the directory that Im thinking of putting together serves a sector of Caribbean Americans in the states, specifically in wedding planning. There isn't any other site out there that serves this particular group of individuals and I think there is a great deal of potential. The 2 sites that I have found that serve as a niche directory in the wedding industry they do charge, there websites are gorgeous and under any google search they are the first ones to come up. Is it possible because there aren't any other directories in competition that no matter what the PR rating they are still showing up as the #1 or 2 in a google search? Or am I getting the purpose of a page rank entirely wrong? Sorry I am definitely a newbie at this. CanadianEH- absolutely, I definitely understand and agree with that, and if I do this, it's more so to help a certain market of consumers. I'm not in this for a quick buck so for sure free listings will be offered in the beginning.
Hi Nshaktir, I've read coubple of stories of webmasters who's sites were penalized by google for no obvious reason. Eventually it turned out that according to google they were selling backlinks (which they didn't). I think google suspects that webmasters selling backlinks will often link to sites of low quality to maximize income. This ruins the whole idea of using web directories for SEO. On the other hand, there are sites like Business.com, charging fortune for inclusion in their directory and getting away with it... So suppose what I wrote in previous post isn't applicable to everyone.
I have foun that directories work well for websites about industrial products, but not in the same way for more common products or other kinds of blog and websites.
Directory Submissions do work but again they are time consuming and also the results are not guaranteed because each directory has different policies. But they have stood the test of time and are really considered a good method of building links. Also Niche Submissions are a very good tactic for building niche links for your niche website/business.. Links from relevant sources are held in high esteem by google and other search engines. Niche links to your website/blog definitely improves your SERPs and also your targeted traffic.