Why a directory? Building a directory is a great source of traffic, search engine recognition, promotion, and income. In fact, it has to be one of the cheapest, easiest ways on the internet to make your businesses website stable. But how? It's easy. Creating a free, search engine friendly web directory will encourage other webmasters to come along and submit their site. Many websites list SEO friendly directories for free; for example Info Vilesilencer. This brings you literally hundreds of unique visitors a day to your directory. As your directory gets greater and greater well known, you get listed on more and more websites, your traffic goes through the roof, and as a result search engines recognize you as a relevant search result. How does this improve my business? If you advertise your website on your directory you are reaching out to hundreds of visitors a day with absolutely no cost to you. This also improves your businesses search engine rankings, with increased link building. How can this increase my income? There are two ways. A direct and indirect way. The direct way is by selling advertising space on your directory, or registering with PPC advertising such as Google Adsense. This will make an easy & stable income on the side for your business. Alternatively, the indirect way arises through the traffic to your website. If you're gaining a larger amount of traffic you're generally selling more. If you're interested in starting up your own directory, check out http://www.snowblind-development.com for more information.
Good advice. What would your suggestions be for: Should you place the directory on a subdomain of your main site or in a sub folder or on its own domain? If you are creating multiple directories should you spread them across different ip's? Due to a large amount of general directories my thoughts are to start targetting niche or vertical directories, what are your thoughts? Sorry about the question dump!! Keen to get peoples thoughts. Cheers
They're good questions Rexona, Search engine wise it depends on what you're trying to achieve. By putting your directory on a sub domain some search engines like Google will see this as like being on a separate domain all together - and therefore the links will appear 'external'. Internal linking is important too however. If the directory has a lot to do with your website I would suggest you put it in a folder rather than a sub domain, but if it has nothing a sub domain may prove to be a good idea. The IP question is a good one. There is debate in this field as to whether or not having links from the same IP affects your position in the search engines. To encourage other users to submit to your directory having the directories on separate IP's is a good idea - however if it's for your direct personal benefit this is something you have to decide. Niche directories are a good idea if you want to attract a specific crowd. For example, if you want to attract webmasters - create a niche Webmaster directory. If you just want to attract the most links, and the most traffic it is probably better to create a general directory, and you can differentiate your directory in other ways. If you have any other questions feel free to ask
cheers for the tips. If I could ask a few more.... Is buying old directories or picking up domains that havent been renewed a way to fast track a directory? Or should you start from fresh? What do you think is important in a directory script and choosing the right one? In your first post you mentioned traffic, I could see that it wouldnt be to hard to get webmaster traffic from getting links in directory lists but they really only want links and probably arent going to be interested in your adsense ads or affiliatte links. Which begs my next question - How do you promote the directory, particulary a general directory, to get traffic for profit. Or for general directories is the smart money on building massive PR and charging for links? Again sorry for the q's but I get the feeling you know what your'e talking about..
It really depends on a situation-by-situation basis. If the directory has a lot of inbound links, a lot of content and pages listed in search engines, and decent traffic then it's worth purchasing. As with anything it's really a toss up on how much you want to pay for someone else’s time, when you could use the time and do it all yourself. Again, it depends on what you want to achieve. You want to choose a directory script that suits what you want to do. Our script at http://www.snowblind-development.com aims to cater for as many of these needs as we possibly can, and we're constantly developing it to meet the wants and needs of clients. To start with, you probably want a script that is simple to install, and easy to use with a lot of optional functions. The SBD Directory Script has just that (there's more on the website if you're interested). At one stage I had 19 websites of my own running the script. The click through rate on average for all of them combined with Google Adsense was 6% over 5 months. It was not optimised or anything, so it goes to show that the webmasters visiting will in fact click on adverts that they are interested in. At the moment more than 6% of users click on the advert at http://www.abcsubmission.com/. The best way that I've seen is to make the directory completely free, with static links. This attracts a lot of natural linking, as directory-listing sites such as info.vilesilencer.com will link to you. The PR idea could be good too There are a lot of strategies. The questions are good - keep them coming
DON"T TAKE THIS ADVICE, because they giving you this advice because they sale directory script. It was fine by 2002 and 2003 there are more than 3000 directories out there, first take advice of other director owner, It was fine by 2002 and 2003 now directory owners are facing competition. Incase if you deside to run directory than search for directory script and compare, also see that script users live site, link popularity and search engine index of live directories, who use those scripts Best advice to sale any service, most popular: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) or Directory Submission service Search in google for this two keyword Also we are starting this service too. Sorry Snowblind, but it is not good to make blind for our own profit.
With a reply like that I don't know if you're aware or not, but all three of the links in your signature are directories. To me it sounds more like you're trying to eliminate the "competition" before it starts. Yes, there are a lot of directories out there, but that doesn't mean you can't get traffic: here's why your directories are unsuccessful; - None that I can see are listed in any of the popular directory lists. These are a #1 source of traffic for any directory. For my own personal directory, these lists bring in 99% of the traffic – and this is probably why you're missing out. http://www.abcsubmission.com brings in 200 unique visitors a day and is only in it's early stages. This number improves weekly. - By the looks of it, you do not accept enough websites into your directory. They have been going since "2002 and 2003" yet most of your categories are empty? If they did so well back then - where are all the links you accepted? You must surely have a large backlog. The speed of acceptance in a directory has a lot to do with whether people will bother to continue submitting websites. http://www.abcsubmission.com has only been going for a few months, yet is already has over 8,000 websites accepted. As far as I'm aware there are no categories empty. Until last week when I made a post on this forum, I never actively marketed this directory whatsoever. It is not has hard as you make out Shivam, you're just using the wrong techniques. SEO is a great way to get traffic from search engines. You will find directories are used for SEO purposes a lot if you look more into this yourself. Good luck.
Shivam - If your getting into the submission service business wouldnt it be good to see new directories going online particulary ones that accept free submissions???? Anyways... Back to asking some real questions. Snowblind - When you say you have over 8000 submissions listed what sort of screening process do you apply as isnt it a big negative to link to untrustworthy (for the want of a better word) domains or banned domains? And what directory lists do you suggest as the best to have your directory listed in? And for the directories I have at the moment what would be your suggestions for getting country (namely Australia) relevant listings? cheers
Personally I didn't get where he was coming from when he said: and then later on... Anyway, time to answer some questions Personally, I accept any website that isn't an obvious scraper site, however if I were really serious I would be watching out for banned domains more often than I do. I try to deliberately focus them on category relevance rather than "is this domain banned on search engines or not" For a maximum amount of traffic I'd try and get on as many as you can. http://info.vilesilencer.com sends me the most traffic, and always has, so that is a must. However, the reason my directory gets so many submissions is because it's on a lot of them. Directory lists are good for on-going traffic, though posting on Digitalpoint is a good way to get a kick-start, this should give you a good amount of initial submissions and popularity. What do you mean by that? Do you mean you're after websites from Australia to submit to your directories, or are you after links from Australian directories -- or for an Australia directory? Cheers for the questions.
Snowblind1 how do you found better ! allowing free submissions ! or requesting reciprocal links !, i have a financial directory made with phpld with pr 5 at the home page and im awaiting the next pr update to see how will be the sub-categories pr, thank you !
Of course this post is used so he can sell his script. Identical as a page on his site Indeed I still think directories can be good.. at least good for your sites but of course add an description that is informative and long.. Adding adsense.. I will add that too.. if your visitors are only webmasters wanting to submit their links, than this will bring you $0.. you need visitors that seach for the information you provide I think you don't want to give "free" regular links, because after a while you get a lot of links out and nobody pointing to you.. so could much easier be seen as link farm :-( If you want to start a directory.. just buy domain name and use the free phplinkdirectory script.. no other costs to have.. so nothing much too lose Regards,
Snowblind - cheers for your answers, yes im looking for websites from Australia to submit to my directories. As for just buying a domain and slapping a script on, why bother. If your hearts not in it find something that it is. It will be so much more rewarding. Tasari, I think your comments on adsense are pretty much right and this is where thought needs to be put in as to whether the directory will see mostly webmaster traffic in which case I believe the best bet would be to have seo resources, tools, affiliates (that relate to webmasters) along with your listings. If you can find a niche and optimise your directory and get some end user traffic then adsense may just work and if you get some good pr you may be able to charge for links and with lots of work build it into an authority site. Thats what im thinking anyway...
how rexona ? with submited links titles and descriptions i guess !? can you please explain, what i seen at the major search engines concerning directories optimatisation is always the some meta tags (submit link fo free, add your link for free, and the same categories structure and names) and there is a lot of competition, also someone can answer me about what i asked about allowing free or asking for reciprocals for my directory please. many thanks
Feels like russians are taking over the internet... All topsites & directories & dating seems to be located there, see how many directories there are in russia and ukraine, at least 100.... even though they seem in the end to be linked to the same place....
Google Adsense does that by itself. As I said, with mine, I had a 5% click through rate. It earnt quite a nice profit on the side. There was little effort involved, I just had to review the links. Directory lists link to you, and these provide more traffic than you will ever get by trying to optimise your directory to do well in the SERPS. As I said earlier, 99% of my directories traffic comes from these lists. Though with this said you still want to encourage positive relationships with search engines so submitters can see your directory as beneficial. That's a great idea that works well for a lot of people The site-wide you provide them with alone would be worth more than a cost of any directory script I know of. If you're planning to make money from your directory it's probably best to purchase solely to remove their link in the footer. That way you have the opportunity to make even more money, if you wish, through putting a different link in the footer. Cheers
I i wish my directory was easy but the fact is I spend about 3 hrs a day marketing the site to newly found karting businessses and karters for free inclusion and still am struggling in obtaining members. But it's like the old saying goes.....good things come to those who wait....but better things come to those who take
Hi GeorgeB, You can check all you like but I promise you I have no association with rexona. I guess it must be harder to market for such a small niche even with the traffic from directory lists. I have no problem getting visitors with my general SEO friendly directory (http://www.abcsubmission.com); the directory lists give me all the traffic I need