Promoting a Directory

Any recommendations ?
I havent got a problem promoting my directory to webmasters, I get a steady stream of sites being submitted everyday.
How can I attract searchers ? Id like to be able to give my webmasters some actual traffic as opposed to just the benefits of linkbacks.

With so many directories floating around these days, you will have to exploit a niche. Maybe based on Goegraphy or Industry. In my opinion, it is nearly impossible for a General Directory to be a success from a visitor point of view without some major backing from an established and respected site. There are just too many new ones around.

Yeah, I guess its just a case of time. Im steadily growing, so maybe in 5 years it will be a success from a user point of view ;)

I run a few directories and niche is the only way...

Even with a general directory you can convert to niche with ease....
content is king... Tell the user (not webmasters) that your list of umm.. Fishing websites are the best cos its covers this and that and cod and what ever nice niche k/w you can get in... the bammmm google will love it.. few links ... and your in the serps... (all dep on comp)

hope that helps..

From the perspective of a site owner, we have had steady significant traffic from a couple of niche directories. All other directories hardly impact traffic. I'd guess that a niche directory works well for both visitors and the sites in the directory.

Dave

We get some traffic from niche directories, that are ranking well in SERPS.

The trick to getting searchers for a general directory is to optimize your topic pages for the specific keywords and keyword phrases that will bring the page up in search engine results. Unlike the average website a well developed directory has the opportunity to have many thousands and in some cases millions of keyword and keyword phrases that will bring your topics up in search engine results. Like any good website a directory needs to be search engine optimized. This of course requires the optimization skills and many months of studying your cached pages and search engine results. It is a common belief that a directory needs to be optimized for the keyword directory. The keyword directory will bring you submitters but not browsers. It has been my experience that you are far better off optimizing for topic titles. It can be an enormous amount of work but will benefit the user and submitter to the directory in the long run with top ten search engine results.

when you say searchers, what exactly are you wanting the people to be looking for?

I guess that would depend on what they were browsing the search engines for.

thats what i just said stoner lol you must be high, my question was aimed at dalecom to do with promoting a directory, why do visitors visit directorys? they use search engines so we optimize, optimize for things you want control of, what do you want people to type in for a directory?
ive just opened a directory, and this post made me think, is it link popularity for another site you own maybe?

I have a related directory question, and please keep in mind this is coming from a new guy to this world of SEO (be gentle).

I'm noticing that sites that I frequent are adding off-site directories for the topic of the site (the webmaster of a widget site is creating an off-site directory of widget sites). My impression is that this isn't really to build a great directory, but rather, to build PR, and pass it back to the original widget site.

Would this be an accurate assessment of the purpose behind some of these directories? If so, do some of the established folks here use this tactic?

Robert-

Some may be doing this strictly for the PR but it would seem their time would be better spent promoting the original site. I use directories to get visitors as you have full control over the advertising. If its a related site, this can be worth much more than any PR benefit.

Along that same vein, I always add a related forum to my sites, basically "sponsoring" the forum. Forums are great for ranking for mispelled or weird word combinations. They produce extremely natural writing which helps so much because people tend to search the same way. If its connected to your main site, your forum gets the strength from all your earlier hard work and can rank quite easily for multi word searches.

All of this drives qualified traffic to your main site with very high conversion rates. Just be sure the quality is there as it can be very difficult to get a forum off the ground.

Back to the directory, the same principles apply. Because you basically have others writing your content (submissions) it is a very time effecient to rank for a huge amount of "secondary" keyword phrases.

Others create directories to give automated "bulk" to their sites. Directories can add hundreds or thousands of pages to your site.

I would swear that you're familiar with my primary site, given the information in your post. My primary site is a forum, and I was considering this directory as a means of acomplishing 2 things: PR bump and increased traffic. And you are more than right; getting a forum off the ground is not an easy task. That being said, after implementing the things I've learned over the last month or so, our site traffic has tripled, Google indexed pages are up roughly 500%, and we're in the process of pursuing a conventional model for advertising sales, much like a print magazine might.

If you don't mind my asking a tactical question about a directory - which would you see as the more beneficial route to take:

1) Host the directory off-site, off-IP address and require a link to our forum site.

2) Host the directory off-site, off-IP and require a link back to the directory, but include a link in the header or footer of the directory to our forum site.

3) Some derivative of the above.

Also, would you make the affiliation between directory and forum an obvious one, or not?
As always, thanks for the great information.

Paul -

The nice thing about most directory scripts is that they can be adapted to suit a multitude of uses. The most common that I have seen are:

Regular Directory - Allows webmasters to submit their sites and visitors to browse categories for info
Organize Recips - Only you can "submit" listings and it is used to organize your recip partners so they are still useful to visitors. This should be combined with relevant content IMHO to have added value.
Organize your Resources - Again only webmaster submits sites but all categories are super relevant and are meant to bring in traffic

When you mention off site, I am assuming you mean a new domain. If that is the route you will be taking, then I would definately host it elsewhere. If you are going to do the work, it is better to get the full benefit and not risk any devaluation, even if your host says they will be on a different class.

My recommendation if it is for full traffic is to have it on the same domain. Again this will be influenced by what type of directory you will have from above. This allows all your SEO work to be applied to your "new" directory. If its a new domain, you will have to SEO from scratch to see any rankings from your various keywords. You mentioned earlier you are trying to minimize visibility of your motives or techniques. This option won't do that but there is the tradeoff that it will benefit your site more.

As far as a linking back strategy. If it is a seperate domain, I would give people 2 or 3 choices of where to link to. If their only choice is your forum, they may not want to (they may not consider it relevant) so its better to have them recip to the directory than link to nothing.

In the end it will be a personal choice as you could argue advantages for both your proposed scenarios.

Either way, Godd Luck!

To robert
hosting a forum over a few servers split into a few categorys would be a cool thing to do
(just basic xpansion) same as a directory in my my mind, if you have the traffic go for it.

also if i was promoting widgets i wouldnt make a off site directory about sub widgets, just because thats promoting my competitors
but at the same time you have to swap links in relevant categorys, theres a lot to think about