• high contrast

Web Marketing Tip: When link building - target website directories first

Added on Tuesday 6 May 2008

Most people know that as part of their website promotion strategy they should spend time getting other websites to link to their own - i.e., websites working in the same area that are already doing well in search engines.

The number and quality of links to a site is viewed as an important indicator for search engines of how useful your website is - and therefore how high your site should appear in search results.

Getting links is hard work

However getting reciprocal links is hard work, takes lots of time and because it has a high failure rate it can be a dispiriting process.

I'm not saying this isn't something you should do or that it isn't an important strategy - but I would recommend that you don't start by targeting individual websites. Instead, kick start your link building by aiming to get listed in website directories.

Directories are easier to get listed on

Directories are easier to get listed on - they tend to have a higher page rank* - and for many and all you need to do is fill in a form.

One major drawback is that they are not all free. So start with the one's that are and then consider how much of your promotion budget you want to spend on the one's that are not. For example, if you are not already in Yahoo - then - as this is an important directory be listed in - it may be worth paying their submission fee.

I did a quick search for directory listings and found the following links - some of which are compiled by commercial SEO companies (so proceed with caution).

Lists of free directories:

• Free Directories
• Directories
• Dirstats.com
• Seopedia.org
• Seocompany.ca

*Page rank: a system developed by the founders of Google to determine the importance of a web page relative to others in the same area - each page is given a number - with higher number given to more important pages.

What I'm reading

At the moment I'm reading, 'Killer Web Content' by Gerry McGovern. In my opinion, this one of the few 'must read' books when it comes to developing website content.

Mr McGovern starts with the assumption that, 'most content just gets in the way'; it's filler when it should be killer. His emphasis is on helping the reader to discover the difference between the two. From that - among other things - he develops the concept of 'care words'.

"Your customers have a small set of words that summarize what they care about. Find those words and you're half way to success."

Finding care words

The book provides techniques for finding out what these care words are for your customers - and then how to use these in the content you develop.

It is full of obvious but seemingly profound ideas like:

• Focus on how people search, not on how search engines work.
• Your content must deliver new knowledge. If it can be found on another website, why are you repeating it on yours?
• Your job is to drive action. 'Your information succeeds when you drive the action you intended to drive.'

Gerry McGovern packs a lot of useful ideas into what is quite a slim book. It's fairly easy to consume as it's well written - though it does require a lot of work to put his ideas into practice. For anyone serious about getting their website content sorted - I'd recommend it.