Different Types of Directories
Directory submission is a key to marketing your online presence, getting traffic and improving search engine results.
When it comes to cost, directories fall into 3 basic categories. There are free directories, directories that charge a one time fee and directories that charge an annual fee. What are the differences between them?
Free directories are just that, you can get listed in them for free. The one question I always get is this. Is it worth it to submit to the free directories? I would say yes with some qualifications.
Make sure that the free directory you are submitting to actually reviews the site submissions. You do not want your site listed next to a bunch of spam sites or worse yet, a site that may not be family friendly.
Watch for free directories that are filled with adsense. Some directory owners will set up free directories just to get the traffic to their site so they can make money off pay per click and banner ads. Dont fall for this game. If your site is of quality, you dont want it listed next to adsense ads you have no control over.
Get listed early in the free directories life cycle. Before the directory owner loses interest in a directory that has no revenue stream and gets hundreds of submissions a day. Once you are past the initial opening phase of the directory, it could take months for an approval into the directory.
Knowing this about free directories the best approach to take with submitting to them is. Submit to as many as you possibly can that fit the guidelines. If you can, hire a third party to do this for you as submitting to hundreds of free directories to find that one diamond in the rough can be overwhelming. Not to mention very time consuming.
One time fee directories are another type of directory. These directories charge a one time fee for a site review and admission to the directory. This is a far better choice than free directories. To get an idea, having a link in one well promoted and maintained paid directory would be equal to having a link in one hundred free directories.
There are several reasons to go with paid directories over free directories. First ask yourself why you want to be in the directory in the first place. The answer that I always get is you want marketing exposure that can drive traffic to your site and help improve your search engine results.
To accomplish any of these the directory has to market and advertise. How will a directory do that if it is free? How can it help you achieve your marketing goals when it does not have the financial ability to do so? Expecting a free directory to deliver the results you want for your business is flawed logic. Quality paid directories also review each submission. Thus ensuring it meets the directories guidelines for acceptance. They are able to edit descriptions and text prior to listing prior to listing.
Paid directories have the financial ability to build links and traffic to the directory. By doing that they pass page rank and traffic to the sites listed within the directory. Thus they are helping to build and make your business successful.
The last type of directory we will cover is the Directory that does annual reviews, for which there is a fee. When it comes to finding a directory that is committed to helping you achieve your goals with internet marketing, this is a huge sign youre dealing with a premium quality directory.
Think about it. You want a directory that will help improve your search results and send you traffic in an ongoing basis. When a directory charges $20 as a one time fee to be included in it, logic dictates that the $20 will only last so long. It will only buy so much in the way of marketing for the directory and when it runs out what then? Then the quality of the directory will begin to decline.
When a directory requires annual reviews it benefits the listings within the directory in additional ways.
First it helps keep out sites of low quality. Sites can change and change quickly. One may meet quality standards and be accepted into the directory, but what happens if after acceptance the site changes its content and no longer fits within the directory? Annual site reviews help to curb this problem.
The premium directory also has a flow of revenue for ongoing promotion. It continues to build traffic and strength which is passed on to improve the traffic and search engine strength of your website.
Annual directory reviews are a way to measure a directorys ongoing commitment to achieving the goals of their listings. It is a sign of a high quality premium directory that is committed to you and your long term goals.
The Authority Web Directory is a powerful, human edited directory. Submit your site now and visit the Authority Web Directory of Directories.
Using Your Local Community To Build Your Small Business On The Web
For a Local company one of the biggest aspects of SEO is getting people in your community to link to you. Almost everyone has an online page of some sort whether it is through MySpace or an actual website. Your friends want you to succeed and so will often be willing to place a link to your site somewhere in their page, along with some words about what you do. This last point the text being about what you do is important because the incoming links help more if they are surrounded by information that relates to your website. Without this information the relevance of the links goes down.
One thing that sets Washington apart is how wired it is, there are many more people online here then any other part of the country, what's more it is the most literate part of the United States as well. For these reasons various forms of online PR and article marketing are likely to do very well for getting people in the local community to link to your site, especially if you have something on your site of interest to link to. Having something to link to is important, almost everyone has a website but very few people have enough incoming links to get a good position. In order to get a good position it is important that you create unique content, content that will make people who see your site want to link to you. In a small community it may be more important to get local sites to link to you, as these will allow you to look more important to the search engines local based searches.
Having content on your website that is worth linking to may be easier then you think (depending on what you do). Small businesses owners like you have a wealth of knowledge that people are often looking for. The use of tools in hardware, paint color schemes that are popular, clothing styles that are unique, information on books and authors. All of these things are pieces of information that you as a small business owner can have special access to, and so can place on your website.
For a restaurant it may be even easier to provide something worth linking to in the form of recipes. People love recipes and so by providing some you stand a good chance of gaining incoming links.
Another way to get incoming links is to join the organizations in your local community; your chamber of commerce for example could provide a good link to your site. A school in your area could also provide a link to your website if you made a donation related to your business or where on something which they organized. By the same little leagues and other such entities will often link to donors, so you can ask about this. In all cases remember that it is best to get these links in such a way that discusses your business.
Remember also as you go out to get these links however that you don't want to do it too fast. It is advisable not to get more then 2 or 3 links a week and maybe even less, because Google will punish you if you get more. In a local community this is also easier to control because you can ask people to wait to link to you if necessary.
Ty Hulse is putting together information on internet marketing in the State of Washington at http://www.internetmarketingwashington.com
Matt Cutts On Article Marketing
Article marketing has just become an even more powerful form of web promotion. This well known, tried and tested web marketing tool, had, in some people's eyes, lost part of its value in recent years. Article marketing in now back in fashion however, as Google have started to clamp down on paid links and excessive reciprocal links. No longer are people able to just buy their way to the top, it is now the grafters, people like you and me, who are willing and happy to produce quality content for the web, that will once again rise to the top of those all important rankings - let the good times roll.
My name is Steve Hill; I have seen very positive results from this form of web marketing and often advise people that this is how, in my opinion, they should go about promoting their website/s. So often in the past these people have stated that they do not have the time to write and submit articles, or that why should they start to write when they can just purchase a pr7 backward link on ebay for three months to gain the same results? I always found it hard to answer that question, but Matt Cutts and his crew have now made it a whole lot easier.
Certain people will still take chances on purchasing backward links, perhaps they are lazy, perhaps they are stupid! Why take the risk? If you set yourself a goal to write say twenty articles per month, you will soon see your site moving up the rankings. Yes it is hard work, it is quite boring work at times, and yes it will take time to have an effect, but have an effect it will.
Some people argue that article marketing does not work due to duplicate content. This would be true if you were also including the same article that you have submitted to sites like ezinearticles, on your own website, but let's face it, that would be rather daft!
Steve Hill is a webmaster from Birmingham, he has interests in a number of websites including:
stuttering
cheaper telephone calls
dvd replication
