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pagetitle
Driving Qualified
Traffic Using Directories
by: Lee
Traupel
Some education
is essential to enlighten you about this form of interactive marketing.
Directories
aren't Search Engines; they are web sites or information portals which
use analysts on staff to
review submissions from companies who want to be listed in their Directory.
Yahoo would be the
penultimate example of this type of a portal. But there are literally
thousands of other sites
that group and list web sites based on their analysis criteria. Here are
some tips garnered from
years of providing these services to our clients.
1) How do
you find Directories? I don't have an easy solution for you, as we've
spent years
developing and refining (ongoing) our own list of Directories. But, look
around on the Internet
using Search Engines to find popular sites that list resources in your
vertical market segment.
2) Directory
listings are a great value, as they provide a long-term listing, unlike
Search Engine
rankings which are much more volatile. Once you achieve a listing you
are typically locked into
a Directory's database for a very long time.
3) Let's
start with the twenty-ton gorilla in this market, Yahoo! Spend time carefully
reviewing their
various categories, then take the plunge and use their "Business
Express" service which costs just
under $200. (USD) to submit your site. Don't, I repeat don't submit unless
you have carefully analyzed
where you belong in their huge category selections; if you make a mistake
you only have one chance
to get a new or revised listing, as they aren't very forgiving of those
who don't do their homework
before submitting.
4) Be patient
when submitting to Directories, as most are getting tens or hundreds of
thousands of
submissions per day - it will take 30-90 days to actually get listed.
Keep an accurate record of sites
you have posted to and then check back 60-90 days later and resubmit if
necessary, but don't spam
them, as this will not garner any results.
5) Never
submit a site unless it is ready for primetime, with no broken links,
under construction pages,
incomplete text, graphics that aren't loading properly, etc. Indexers
are very busy, once they see a
site which has problems they will click to the next entry on their list
and your hard work is to no avail.
6) Be prepared
with the proper marketing materials for this type of a campaign, including
a working
title for your site which is 6-8 words, several groups of keywords that
are separated by commas and
spaces of varying lengths, approx 10-20 and 30-75 keywords, and a longer
description of your site
which can be one to two sentences.
7) Part of
the required expertise involved in this process is in the actual category
selection - carefully
select which category or categories where you think your site fits by
looking at others in this category to
determine if you fit into this classification.
8) Be aware
we are seeing a shift to fee-based submissions to shortcut the process
- Yahoo started the
trend over a year ago, now LookSmart and other top tier Directories are
starting to do the same.
The tradeoff is of course minimizing time to market - we recommend using
the commercial services to our clients.
9) Want to
know if this process has actually done anything for you? Check your log
files or web site
analysis software and look at where your traffic is coming from.
10) If you
are getting significant traffic from a small list of Directories you may
want to go back to their web
site and pay for their premium listing services to drive more traffic.
These enhanced listings services typically
enable you to bold your listing or add graphical content which enhances
the textual description, usually only for
a few hundred dollars per year.
This text
may freely be republished or distributed provided the following resource
box is included intact
either at the beginning or the end of the article and a complimentary
copy or notice (link) is sent to the
author at the address specified below:
Lee Traupel
has 20 plus years of business development and marketing experience. He
is the
founder/CEO of a Northern California based, privately held Interactive
Marketing Agency and
Software Company, WolfBlast Interactive, Inc., < http://www.wolfblast.com/
>
and can be reached via e-mail at: mailto:wolf@wolfblast.com
This article
(c) copyright 2000 by wolfblast.com
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