Directory Submissions

Directories can be very useful sources of traffic providing you do your research and choose carefully. You can spend a considerable sum of money with big name directories and see little or no return.

Directories that contact you by telephone or email are primarily focused on selling space and achieving targets. They are unlikely to be interested or even capable of driving traffic of a niche or specialist nature. Directories of this type will usually only feature in the search engines under 'Business Directory' and not under the keywords that are most relevant to your business.

Larger directories may not list you in the category you desire, and worse still, they will almost certainly edit the description you provide them with to remove some of your keywords, thereby making your directory listing less effective by appearing in less searches. It's absurd that a company you're paying to list you in their directory, from which you hope to obtain more traffic, should intentionally render your description less effective. I have had a 14 word description submitted to Yahoo reduced to 3 words!

Contrast this with my approach to submissions made to Now2Business: I check customers descriptions and improve them if necessary so that they get even more visitors!

Finding the Right Directory
Compile a list of keywords and phrases associated with your business and search for these on Google UK. Visit the websites listed on the first 3 pages of results to see which are directories, how effectively they display business details and how much a listing costs. Choose the directories according to which appears most often or in the highest position for your chosen keywords.

You will probably discover that the best directories for you are actually small or specialist ones. The cost of submitting to these is likely to be very low, enabling you to submit to several for less than the cost of submitting to one big directory.

Don't submit to a single directory and expect a huge and consistent stream of traffic. The traffic from any source will vary over a given time. Submitting to several directories will help to smooth out the peaks and troughs in the numbers.

Open Directory
OD is free, but you're at the mercy of individual editors in terms of the time it takes to get listed. This can be days or never in my experience! OD is used by Google for its directory, and has some influence over your rankings in their search results, and is therefore very important.

Yahoo
Yahoo is difficult to get a free listing with, but they do have a paid Express Service currently at $299 for a 7 day turn-a-round. This may seem expensive but if you get a good listing in Yahoo it can deliver a lot of traffic. But it is fairly big 'if'. You need to ensure that your site is compatible with popular browsers and contains sufficient original content. The Yahoo fee is to review your web site, not to be listed in the directory, so they can reject it without refund. In this event there is an appeal procedure or you can pay a reduced fee to have it subsequently reviewed after you've made any necessary alterations.

Specialist Directories
There are thousands of specialist and trade directories that will list you for free or for a fee and in a short space of time. What you need to establish is the level of traffic to the page or directory you're being placed in and the relevancy of the traffic to the web site. If they're looking for a fee then ask them for statistics for page impressions to the page on which you'll be listed or how many times your core keywords are searched upon. It's not much use if they have 10,000 visitors per day to their home page but only 1 visitor per month to the page you'd be listed on.

Remember that directories are businesses too, and have to generate revenue directly and/or indirectly by having you listed in them. Examine the structure of the directory to see how easy it is to navigate/search and look at the quality/usefulness of the listings in the overall context of the directory and their possible relevance to visitors. Is the directory sufficiently focused for your needs and does it have a good number of relevant pages indexed on the search engines?

Do your research and maybe even contact one or two of the companies listed in the directory you're contemplating to see how many referrals they're receiving and what the quality of the enquiries are like.

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