Link Blog

A lot of SEO's are realizing the importantance of niche directories. However, it seems to me anyway, that many of them are realizing the benefits for the wrong reasons. Most search engine marketers are singing praises for niche directories because of the organic link building that comes with getting listed in directories that are related to specific communities.

Of course the links are beneficial, but in my opinion that is secondary to the benefit you receive by having your site displayed to people that are looking for what you offer.

I believe that communities have always been the best way to generate traffic to your website. It is just that until recently the tools needed to build a community have been difficult to use - most of them certainly weren't for any novice - hard to find and expensive! More and more people are becoming familiar with tools such as blogs, forums and directory software. Not to mention the programmers producing these tools have paid attention to what people need to build a community and have made their software easy to use for anybody. With the development of services such as blogger and livejournal putting up a blog is a snap - even if it is your first day on the web. Best of all these services are completely free.

There are so many opensource scripts available for community building and adding website stickiness, that you should have no problem finding what you need.

There is a discussion at ThreadWatch regarding small directories, where one directory owner states that some of his advertisers have reported his site sends them 90% of their traffic. He chalks this up to the sites being in flash and not well indexed in the serps, which might be part of it. However, I believe it has almost as much to do with the advertiser's identifying their market and placing an effective ad in front of the right eyeballs.

Of course, there are a lot of "faux" directories. You know, sites that have added a "directory" structure for link exchanges or to trick a search engine into believing the site is an authority site, when it is just more spam crap. If you know your community you will easily be able to identify these types of directories. Even if you are new to a community these sites are still fairly easy to spot - and believe me, if you can tell so can a search engine spider. It might take a spider longer, but eventually, they catch on.

You know your niche and that makes it easy to find other people that share your interest. Seek them out and start submitting.

Happy Linking,
LinkQueen