Last week we looked at how on-line directories can be a powerful source of incoming links to your decorative concrete business website.
The reason why Google puts so much authority on directories is because, usually, there is a real live person involved in submitting and approving the link submissions, not some lifeless heartless robot that just automatically posts useless links to the directories.
Let’s look at some popular directories and the pros and cons of each:
Yahoo Directory:
Yahoo Directory is an important directory, and a lot of weight is placed on it because a person must submit the link, a person reviews the link and a person posts the link in the appropriate directory…it also costs around $300 to submit your link, so Google thinks you must be serious if you spend that kind of money.
Pros: Lots of authority
Cons: Pricey
Best of the Web:
Best of the web is another paid directory. It is not as expensive as Yahoo, but it also uses real people to accept and review the link, and it requires that you invest $199.
Pros: Good authority
Cons: $199 investment
Local On-line Directory:
Not every town has one of these, but the towns and communities that do are begging for local user involvement and want you to post as much stuff as possible to serve as content for their site.
Here in the Ozarks we have OzarksFirst.com which is run by a local news organization.
These are great for showing up in locale specific searches, such as if someone searched for “decorative concrete springfield, mo.”
Pros: Great for local search – FREE (usually)
Cons: Not as monitored as other directories
Dmoz – Open Directory:
Dmoz is often referred to as Google’s directory. It is completely run and controlled by real people reviewing each and every submission to each and every category.
Because of this, it takes forever to get into the directory.
Pros: Lots of authority – FREE
Cons: Good luck getting in
Start submitting to directories and start getting some authoritative links to your website so that when people search for what you offer, you show up at the top of the results.