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Published
Article
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| Driving
Qualified Traffic Using Directories
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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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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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.
Please click here to Contact us or call toll free 530.432.8764
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"Working with Intelective Communications
is pure joy and enlightenment. They are so much at the leading edge that it's
inspiring to be connected with them in any way."
-Jay Conrad Levinson, Author of Guerrilla Marketing
book series and Marketing Pioneer |
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