What is left to offer in directories?

When I search for good links for my site, targeting is the most important to me.

Targeting

Target linking does produce results, it means my link is placed on web space that has value and sends the right traffic. If I don't choose the correct web space, will my visitors notice? Ofcourse they will, and they'll not just notice, but take action by refusing to renew adverts, because I failed to send them a desired amount of traffic to their sites.

With all this 'link chasing' webmasters aren't bothered by the correct link, they just want any old link, as it's a numbers game - but advertisers will be concerned about this, and who can afford to upset the punters.

So what does make a directory valuable? With Pagerank now only worshipped by webmasters, and now regarded as a joke on us (Thanks Google ), and directories now heavily penalised too - what is now left that makes a directory truly valuable.......

Facts and thoughts on this are:

Backlink
Popularity of directory
Strength of directory domain name
The directory's industry
Uniqueness
Service Extras eg: extra information
Viral Ability
Is it service driven or merely a cash cow


So what's left to offer in the directory link world - your thoughts please

 

Customer Service comes to mind

 

A directory that actually sends traffic to my site.

 

Yes, good old fashioned service works well. I don't see much content on directories, perhaps they never had that factor to them, or maybe it's just not the place for content. Just notice the same old:

Standard listings
Featured paid listings
Maybe a forum....


but that's about it. Interesting.....

 

Ek, for the record i wrote a long reply as to a lot of ideas re your post and deleted it, as it is hard here to sometimes bother,

in reply to above, we have done away with all of that standard, feature etc etc, it will not exist with us, each and every customer is important and will be treated the same, and we will have an option for business should they wish extra exposure.

can't pm you the list as your pm is cactus

 

Directories (certainly online ones) don't need anything other than a link and a brief description as the idea of the game is to get the visitor to click on the actual link and visit the site in question, the rest is just eye candy.

 

Well people know i live in the basement listing to my trusty tunes, so here's a tune for those still believing LINK Enjoy and get fired up, there is plenty of good left in the directory if you get outside the square.

 

I tried to rep but it wouldn't let me.

EK, I disagree with your targetting method purely because the exact opposite has worked for me for a wide range of sites including directories.

You said that your visitors would notice if the traffic coming to your site was relevant because that link has been targetted. Fair point. But your visitors would also notice if non-targetted links had built up to give you a decent ranking in the search engines for related terms that were delivering related traffic. So it works both ways.

 

But thing is SS, any non-targeted links deciding to link to a site is out of anyone's control.. If 50 'useless' sites link to me, the whole effort is pointless for the linking sites, as my advertisers won't hold any interest to the untargeted in-bound traffic.

The serps are only slightly useful, and it's near impossible to stay on that first page for every keyword (unless you got wads of cash for SEO), - so linking for targeted traffic is the key and much easier to do.

To be honest, probably only 2 of my keywords are in the first 10 pages of serps - that's out of maybe 20 keywords, so the results aren't great as many make out. And is why I will be concentrating on pure target link building.

Targeted linking works

 

I completely disagree with that statement, SERPS are incredibly useful if you know how to get the best from them.

It is also not as near impossible as you claim. I will use my latest project as an example. A-Z Proxies (link is the first in my signature) was launched on May 12th, so it is just coming up to 2 months old.

The target keywords just for the homepage are:

web proxy list
working web proxies
proxy list
working proxies

I am in Brazil but using google.com and these are the results I see when checking right now:

web proxy list 4th out of 1,470,000
working web proxies 1st out of 7,870,000
proxy list Not in top 10 yet, according to my software currently ranking 77th
working proxies 1st out of 268,000

For the three keywords where I am in the top 10 I have been bouncing around on that page between positions 1-5 for the past 5 weeks.

I have only obtained 1 targetted link to that web site, everything else has been directory submissions, unrelated links, or externals setting up links themselves.

No disrespect but perhaps that speaks more about your ability to target the correct keywords or rather keywords that can be attained and maintained.

I never said it didn't, just pointed out that both work.

 

Are we making directory for seo companies or only for visitors which are surfing on net?
i only focus for traffic on my dir. no PR, no backlink counts just for alexa...

 

Just checked you keywords via Google.com as I'm currently in the US, doing a photo-shoot. I noticed several things to do with your keywords which you may find useful.

web proxy list down to 5th

working web proxies - 1st

working proxies - 2nd

Proxy list No 77


What happens is webmasters make mistakes when choosing keywords. They make up what they think searchers will look for, become attached to those keyword, but the keywords won't work. For instance where you chose the following:

web proxy list, yep nice and high - but as a searcher I'd never think to type that in. Same goes for 'working proxies', I'm more likely to just type in 'Proxies', and I reckon it will be tough for you to rank for Proxies for various reasons.

Also the keywords you chose, I just typed them using a keyword tool:

Searches according to Wordtracker

web proxy list - just 12 searches for that
http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com...&adult_filter=remove_offensive&suggest=Hit+Me


working web proxies - No results found for 'working web proxies'. Please try again.


working proxies - 382, better but still not something many will think to type in as there are more familiar keywords to use.
http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com...&adult_filter=remove_offensive&suggest=Hit+Me


Proxy list - this is the best keyword you used so far with 1383 searches
http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/?seed=proxy+list&adult_filter=remove_offensive&suggest=Hit+Me


Let's use 'web proxy list' for the moment, it only has 12 searches, so why bother with it. It clearly isn't doing much for you according to Wordtracker, so why use it.

So out of all those keywords, only 1 'Proxy list' - is delivering fairly decent traffic. This is what I'm saying, the most popular keywords are owned by big companies because they spend many £1000's a month keeping the top spots in serps. We've all been No1 for a few weeks for some keyword or other, but maintaining it is very tough. I can't maintain No1 ranking, and my site has been in the press, so that tells you exactly how difficult this is.

I'd be very surprised if you site stays at No1 for that keyword for another month. I bet mine got knocked down at least by 10 positions in the last week. - it happens, so what's the point in fighting something that's impossible to beat.

 

You have to take this as its meant. You don't necessarily need wads of cash to stay in the top 10 in the serps, we've been there for 8 years with a whole range of our targeted keywords with some having 77 million to compete against and have never left this. The worst we've done is page 2 and working on it. The key we've found is to maintain high standards and not necessarily lots of content, Google for all its sins are right on one thing, they know how to associate the keywords with the site contents.

 

As I say, they regularly float between 1-5 for those three keywords, depending on the day and where you search from. 'Proxy List' is a rather optmistic keyword at the moment and I am not expecting to start competing for that for at least a couple of months as it is highly competitive and my site is too new.

Yes webmasters do make mistakes and you just did because you dont really know this niche so assuming the role of what someone is likely to search for and coming to the conclusion that it would just be 'proxies' is rather niave. There are many different types of proxy available and the majority of my target audience will already know this, or they would search for proxies and learn about the various types before coming back and searching for a specific type that they are interested in.

I dont bother too much with keyword tools such as Wordtracker because they are extremely inaccurate. I can post a screenshot of my analytics account showing those keywords for the past month if you wish to see evidence, or you can just take my word for it that those numbers are no where near accurate.

'web proxy list' is actually the most popular keyword at the moment, however I am sure that 'proxy list' will produce more traffic when a page one ranking is achieved.

I am not sure if you have any interest in this or whether I am flogging a dead horse but lets assume you are open minded and interested in learning from me for a moment.

At this exact point in time, my web site has received 5264 unique visitors this month and 50297 pageviews. Not bad considering we are now considered in 'off' season for proxies, but anyway I digress... thus far I have spent a grand total of $36.99 which can be directly attributed toward achieving search engine results.

According to my stats package these keywords delivered traffic to the homepage of the web site this month.

web proxy list - 358
working proxies - 296
working proxy - 134
working proxy list - 104
proxy list - 86
webproxy list - 69

All of those keywords are based off the target keywords for the homepage and in total delivered 1047 visitors. In addition there was a total of 1024 visitors delivered via long tail keywords of which, I would estimate about 80% (819.2) were tails from the homepage primary keywords.

The articles and other sub pages on the web site were only recent additions so they do not account for much traffic or keyword usage yet. All other traffic came in direct or via referals.

So I have a total of 1866.2 which came in as a direct result of my primary keywords. If I take that and divide it up by my total expenditure (which would be an over estimation seeing as some of that would also account for referal traffic) I would have:

36.99 / 1866.2 = 0.019821026685242739256242632086593

That means on a CPC basis I have paid very roughly $0.02 per visitor.

You cannot buy that for my target keywords period. Take a look for yourself using the Google Tool with those 6 traffic keywords above. You will see that the average works out to be $0.15 - $0.29, I'd rather pay what I am paying.

* Also you might note that the keyword 'working proxies' is much more expensive than 'proxy list' despite it's search volume which shows that wordtracker is as I say no where near accurate for this niche.

Anway, whether or not you found that interesting (I am sure someone did) the fact is that the SERPS are much more important and simply cannot be ignored.

Well the press has very little to do with helping you maintain a no1 keyword position other than the potential to pick up a few back links.

Yes I agree that the most popular keywords are practically set in stone by the large companies that spend thousands of pounds, but I am not targeting such a keyword.

Lets take 'proxy list' for example which is currently held by the domain samair.ru if you analyse his back links and the text links associated with the links it is not hard to determine that he hasn't bought out that term and isn't spending thousands on SEO. He just has an old web site which has built up a semi-decent link profile over the years most likely because he was one of the first people to provide a 'proxy list'.

That is not impossible to reign in and it is not impossible to do in a relatively short time.

A keyword like 'proxies' on the other hand would be impossible and I wouldn't even waste a second trying to rank for it.

Well there are no guarantees, only challenges and it's one I am prepared to undertake as I have been doing it quite successfully for many years. Not just in Google but in all of the search engines.

 

So nobody has any intention of improving directories beyond adding select/quality sites to one then.

But that's not providing a service - any fool can add websites, no what I mean is adding new functions and information, taking the old tired directory model and making it noticable.

 

Event_King, can you show me your directory please, im curious.

 

There's nothing like a new kid on the block coming on the scene knowing it all so we can all learn from that knowledge.

Let me know if one ever comes along.

 

The purpose of a website is to sell advertising space or with a directory - it's listings correct. So to do that a website has to attract and retain visitors, and that means content that makes a site sticky so people return to it.

So why do so many directories not do this - I find this puzzling.

 

attract / retain, some good stuff there, would be intersted in peoples visitor stay, i know we run at or over 10 minutes per visit average stay.

EDIT; this months stats

 

Some of my Visitor stay includes:

30mn-1h = 3.7 % stay on site, and many stay far longer.


About 40% stick about for 3 to 4 hours at a time, and we've had a few remain on the site for 5 hours +. So there's something to be said for having a sticky site.