What is a good directory listing?

Tips to help you get listed in the best directories and avoid the cowboys

Posted 8th May 2006

In the September 2005 stopECG posted a warning about Business Internet Directory Ltd. The warning related to their misleading advertising tactics, however as part of the analysis we looked into the company and tried to assess how worthwhile it would be to advertise in their online directory. This general generated so much interest that we have decided to expand it!

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If you run a small business and have not had phone calls offering you directory placements you are in the minority! The problem is that for most of us it can be hard to understand the jargon that surrounds search engine placement and directory listings. Sadly there are companies out there that know this and are more than happy to sell you a listing that will be of poor value to your business.

If there is a golden rule that will save you from making mistakes it is Never Agree There And Then, It costs you nothing to tell a salesperson to call back or visit again. If you sign up for a listing on the spot you have nothing more than their word that it is worthwhile!

CONTENTS
  1. A Good Directory Listing?
  2. Key Points
  3. Following Up
A Good Directory Listing? ^^ Return to Contents ^^
A Good directory listing is one that is going to bring you customers. there are several reasons why a directory may fail in this, if they are failing to deliver customers to their clients the sales team will be unlikely to tell you! Once you have told the salesperson to call back you need to go through the points below to see how well they are performing.

Key Points - What to look for when assising a directory

Target Audience ^^ Return to Contents ^^
Most people visit directories because they are after a specific product, they are unlikely just to browse the pages and suddenly decide they need your goods or service. It is therefore important that they attract your customers in the first place, it is also important that they then direct them to the right businesses within the directory

Who is attracting your cutsomers? This is where your research begins, make a list of Keywords, these are the words you would type into a search engine if you were looking for a company that did what you do. For Example, you deal in Electrical parts, try searching for electrical supplies, then narrow it to your area, electrical supplies Nottingham perhaps you pride yourself on competative pricing... cheap electrical supplies Nottingham. Don't just do Google, Try MSN, Yahoo, Search.com, Alta Vista, Excite and Lycos. In each case you will see that various directories have positioned themselves pretty well, does the list include the one plan to you advertise with?

Now hold on just a sec.. Did you use the right keywords? Your view of your business might not be the same as your potential customers. It will do no harm to ask family and friends, "If you were looking for my business online, what would you type" By doing this you will get a list of keywords, keep it safe, this subject will come up again!

Search engines are the primary way a directory may seek customers, however there are some directories out there they may have a much deeper reach within a specialist area than the big boys, if that is the case you probably already know them because your associates will use them or because they advertise in the trade magazines you read. Such a directory is likely to offer you better value for money than some large general database with a pushy sales team!

Traffic ^^ Return to Contents ^^
Online traffic is the number of people who visit a site. If a directory has a lot of traffic they are more likely to be able to send some of it your way. However the claims made by salespeople regarding traffic are often spurious at best. Worse still it is hard to get a good independent appraisal of the traffic on a website. Perhaps the best free tool is Alexia http://www.alexa.com/
Alexia utilises its toolbar to track surfing habits and the popularity of websites; you can then look up any domain and get a rough snapshot of its popularity, stopECG recommend you do this before paying for any online directory listing as some directories have very low traffic.

On Alexia select the Traffic Rankings tab at the top and then type in the domain name of the directory you are considering listing with, for example: www.yell.com (A major UK specific directory)

On the next page you will get a number, Traffic Rank for yell.com: We checked on 8th May 2006 this was 901 That means that on that day there were 901 websites that Alexia charted as getting more traffic than Yell.com. So the bigger that number the worse the site is doing! Actually 901 for a country specific directory like Yell is pretty good.

Try a company stopECG knows well for its shabby advertising tactics, www.eurocityguide.com on the same day their traffic rank was 956,287 which means that Alexia charted close on a million websites doing better than the European City Guide, indeed they were doing worse than www.stopecg.org, with a rank of 636,554!

Alexia has another tool, click the link that says Traffic Details here you will see a graph charting the success of the site and also get information about the long term trends in their traffic, this may help you to decide if the specific directory is improving their position or not

Remember: If the directory lists millions and millions of sites even high traffic may get spread pretty thinly, but if the directory is smaller then each company listed is likely to get more visitors sent their way

Hits Vs. Vistiors
Part of the mumbo jumbo a sales person may use are the terms Hits, Page Views, Visitors or Unique Visitors to denote traffic to the website he works for. Alas these terms have pretty elastic meanings and you will need to cross examine to find out any meaningful figures.

StopECG's rough guide
Does that make sense? Ok, here is a head mashing explanation of why it all means very little. Hits being the number of times the website has been accessed may be a measure of the Page Views or a measure of the Visitors depending on who you are talking to. As a single Visitors may look at many pages the tally for Hits will vary hugely depending on how it is measured! Worse, some websites can tell if you have visited before and will only count you as a Unique Visitor if you have not been on the directory recently while others will consider you to be a new and unique visitor is you move off to a search result, fund it unsuitable and then come straight back!

What can you do?
You know that salesperson who is calling back... Print off these questions and ask him as many of them as you see fit. In all fairness no directory can predict the level of targeted traffic, there are too many variables, for this reason the questions we suggest are more general

Got any other questions you think should be on this list? Please send them in!

Ease Of Use ^^ Return to Contents ^^
Actually this is critical, there are some very good directories out there and there are some that are poorly designed, what a good directory should do is deliver the visitor quickly to the service they are seeking without hassle, pop-ups or failed searches

So go to the website of the directory you are considering advertising with and look for some goods and services, then look for the same things in your area

What you are looking for is quick, accurate and succinct results, if you have trouble using their website, so will others and that will mean less people will find you!

Following Up ^^ Return to Contents ^^
OK, so are sold on the idea, now it is time to get the most from your listing! First that list of keywords you made, make sure that the most important ones are incorporated in whatever description your listing allows you. Write a short sentence that describes your business while incorporating as many keywords as possible. Remember the sentence should make sense, if you just type a string of keywords then people will find your listing but may not click the link!

Keep the sentence and the keywords on file for other directory listings and for submitting to your own website Search engines

Tracking the success
There is one last warning before you sign up! Only sign for one year, that way if you find that the directory is not delivering you can ditch them.

There are a few unscrupulous directories that have very restrictive and quite possibly unenforceable 'contracts' that demand a minimum period of insertion such as 3 years. StopECG recommend against signing any such document, if a directory is worth its salt they should be happy to let you sign for one year and appraise the situation annually. Worse there are some lowlife who will try to get your signature without drawing your attention to such restrictive clauses, BE CAREFUL

StopECG reccomends that if you sign a direct debit mandate you should make sure it expires after one year so that you are forced to renew it and won't simply forget.

It is amazing how many businesses keep no record whatsoever of how their customers found them, when you get a new customer, ask them how they found you! Even if you don't keep a written record you will remember the good referrers because their names will keep coming up, then when the time for renewals comes along you can ditch the directories that are performing poorly

If you have your own website, ask the company that hosts it for access to the visitor logs, these should tell you who is sending visitors to your site, or use the excellent free webtracker from Extreme Tracking. again, when the time for renewing subscriptions arrives you will know which directories have been worthwhile



This article does not cover how to get your own website onto the search engines, you can discover more about this (It's a BIG topic) at:
http://selfpromotion.com/ (Author gets a a whole $1 referral Fee if you use this link and then sign up for the enhanced service)
http://selfpromotion.com/ (Author gets no referral Fee)










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