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| Building A Website Directory
That Works |
| Posted: 4-05-2006 |
| Author: Rod Charles |
There are a lot
of directories on the internet and there is probably room
for a lot more although building a directory that is beneficial
to the users, webmasters who add their site and yourself
takes a little bit of forethought and a lot of work.
There are many types of directories including general
directories and niche (often reffered to as vertical)
directories. There are also many ways these can be structured.
The first step in planning to build a directory is deciding
what it will be a directory of. You could choose to be
general and have a vast array of categories and sub categories
where a website on any topic can be submitted or you can
choose to have a niche directory which are often reffered
to as vertical directories. Vertical directories are becoming
popular with users and webmasters due to the entire site
and it's listings being related to one topic.
Your next choice is whether to have static pages and create
each page manually or use a script that creates pages,
manages your listings, site submissions and more. Using
a script is the popular and sensible choice and if you
have programming skills you may choose to build your own.
Otherwise there are numerous directory scripts available
and some are even free, for example: PHP Link Directory,
Barracuda Links Directory or WSN Links to name a few.
Once you have your directory up and running with all the
categories relevant to a general directory or your chosen
topic the next task is get listings as without those it's
not much. For other webmasters to submit their link they
need to be able to find your site so getting links from
'directory of directories' sites are a good place to start
in promoting your site. Although there may be catch, those
sites may not want to list yours if it's not populated
with listings to some extent so choose some quality sites
and add them to your categories and sub categories.
For a start you may need to give free listings to get
things going although there's something to watch in who
you list on your directory which is summed up by quality
attracts quality and trash does trash. Screen your listings
and be sure they aren't banned by search engines,low quality
sites, scrapper sites or just plain spam. The quality
of your listings will reflect the quality of your directory
to users, webmasters and to some extent search engines.
Your next choice once your directory starts to grow is
how you will benefit from your work. Choices here can
be running Pay Per Click advertising, banner ads, affiliate
ads or charging for links or maybe both.
To get submissions from quality sites and maybe payment
for links webmasters will be looking at or for Higher
the Google PR the better, well keyworded title and category
description, low density of links/listings per page and
the quality of the other sites listed. Here is a neat
trick, add top ranking sites under the appropriate categories
and other sites trying to achieve top ranking for that
particular keyword/category title will probably submit
to have their site listed.
From there it is a matter of constantly promoting your
directory via links to your site, advertising and marketing.
About The Author:
Rod Charles is the owner of the http://www.directories.myfinancedirectory.com/
site where you can find over 1000 directories categorised
by submission type or topic. |
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