Hello - I'm thinking about starting a new directory for the business I'm in. I searched and there's no such thing yet and I have few questions if you guys can help me better understand the overall concept before I proceed. The first natural question is: is it worth the effort launching a directory? and how easy to get traffic and links? What domain name should i use: for expl I'm in restaurant supplies business should i try: www.restaurant-supplies-directory.com or restaurantsupplies-directory.com etc Any suggestions are much appreciated. What script you guys recommend to use? I have more questions but that should be enough for now. Thank you for reading and responding!
If your familiar with the subject then you should have no problem with it specially if there's less competition about the subject. Surround yourself with the Niche your building and the popularity will flow your way, use social sites like Twitter and Facebook along with many others. You probably have a restaurant supplies brochures, find the companies web site and solicit them in a non-spam like passion to let them know of your presence on the web and how much it could benefit them by giving them a little more exposure to a potential client. As far as domain goes, either one looks fine and it is just a matter of preference. Search Engines have learned to determined the difference in "dashes" and will not reflect any negative as far as SEO is concern. Early 90's there was a long debate whether if that was a factor or not and how will the user remember the dashes in the domain, frankly I have said it many times before, it does not matter because people in general are forgetful, hand them a business card with the name of the site printed on it. I prefer the no dashes since you have both of them, have the other redirect to the preferred domain. Forgot to recommend which scripts. I prefer phpLD as my choice.
Agree to start one as a free services except the featured link type. use phplinkdirectory script, you can get rewards, over 3xxx free categories to use.And get links daily.
Thank you for the reply. I currently don't have any domain registered yet. The restaurant supplies was an example, my business also contains the supplies part. I'm just not sure if I should use Xsupplies or Xsupply + directory. Is there any SEO benefits between the two. No offense I didn't want to say the complete business name because I don't want someone else register the domain name, from previous experience, nothing personal I have very good connections in the business and most of the national vendors will be happy to add my directory on their website's links section. I'm sure that will be a great help. Thanks
If your main objective is to list Restaurant Suppliers and little info other than a descriptions of them, I would go with something that indicate for what it is - a directory containing a list of restaurant suppliers, this tells the users what it is and as far as SEO goes it does the same thing since search engines caters to what users action and most likely it will rank very well for it. Furthermore, you can test this yourself on a certain Niche, here for example I type "restaurant directory in miami" and I get a list of directories that list restaurants in Miami. The name of the site is very important but there are many other variables that goes with it for a full force impact: It doesn't always have to be a name "Directory", you can go with XsuppliesList.com,Zsuppliesguide.com,Xsuppliesindex.com etc,..As long as it tells the users what it is, SE will follow because SE is based on users experience. Other factors are: Title of the site Descriptions, this is what they see on the site search Contents on the sites that describes related subjects Where have you been linked, is it with a related sites like a supplier or a restaurant that linked to you. As far as SEO is concern, think like a user and see what they would search for. Give it a test and you'll come into the conclusion on what to use for your name.
Takes alot of work! and usually doesn't start paying quickly. Best advice is find a niche that doesn't have that many and target that. If your luck find a aged domain with a higher PR to start.
Definitely it is worth starting a directory. But it should be much user friendly and you should allow to create dofollow links.
- If you are going to run niche directory - this can be a very useful site that makes revenue. There are many ways to get traffic and links. Most popular - are web directories, forums and blogs. - Both domains are not very good because they are very long and hard to remember. Besides first one contains two dashes that again reduces its value as a domain name. Look for something shorter and more original.