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.
About the author:
Lee Traupel has 20 plus years of business development and
marketing experience. He is the founder/CEO of a Northern
California based, privately held, profitable Interactive
Marketing Agency and Software Company, Intelective
Communications, Inc. http://www.intelective.com and can be
reached via e-mail at Lee@intelective.com
