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.
