Directories, most of the time get traffic from long tail keywords so digging in your analytics might be a bit time consuming but in my opinion it is worth it. For example, at some point a couple of months ago I noticed that I was getting traffic for some long tail queries of a main popular query. I just did a simple change, created a category for the main keyword and added about 4 sites to the category manually. The result? About 50 additional uniques per day from such a simple change.

Another important thing with your analytics is to set goals, identify which traffic sources bring conversions and try to increase your traffic from these sources.

Now, back to our topic. As I gain more and more experience running a directory, I find that the most important thing when it comes to link building is sustainability which basically means natural, organic links. At first I thought that getting natural, permanent links for a directory is really hard. However, I must admit that I was wrong. What do I mean? Generally speaking the natural links that a directory can get are limited and they are links that all other directories already have. So what can you do and what more can you offer to attract links? Let’s take a look first at what is a directory or at least what it should be, a collection of useful links and resources. Are collection of links linkable? Yes they are!! Here is an example, I was searching big G for free icons. At least at the datacentre I am hitting result number three is this list. No original content but nonetheless, really useful content that has attracted over 4000 natural, permanent, free backlinks and I would guess a fair amount of traffic as well.
Of course, the problem with a directory is that people will not link as easily to a directory’s category, let’s face it blogs and even simple pages are more linkable than a category of a directory. A simple solution to that problem would be to add a blog to the directory, create your fabulous and useful categories filled with links and then blog about it and promote the blog story instead of the category. Obviously, the blog story will have a link to the category page or you may also use other ways to funnel traffic and link love to the directory but that’s your call.

Edit to add: A subject that I haven’t covered is how to promote your list of resources, here are a few simple ways (and an opportunity for me to test how my new theme handles lists )

1. Social Bookmarking
2. Pinging high profile bloggers that blog about subjects related to your list
3. Doing a search “list theme resources” +site:.edu (or .gov) and sending a few polite emails notifying the webmasters that maintain the .edu and ,gov pages that you identify as potential link targets

I have posted previously that in most cases we are missing the obvious. I believe that this is the case when most directory owners are promoting their directories in order to get paid submissions. Let’s look a bit at the potential clients of a directory.

1. Webmasters (Obviously), that in most cases have quite a few websites and are mainly making money from from CPC, CPM, affiliate programs etc

2. SEOs that are are offering directory submissions for their clients, either as part of the complete SEO service they are offering or as a standalone service.

3. Brick and Mortar Business Owners that are working on their sites themselves.

Most directory owners are going almost exclusively after the first group and completely forget the third one, which in my opinion is a mistake.

Let’s see why.
The first group, (webmasters) are submitting their sites mainly because of the potential SEO benefits, since even if the directory sends them traffic it’s highly unlikely that they will get a direct positive ROI out of that traffic through PPC, CPM etc.
On the other hand a brick and mortar company can have a positive ROI with just one visitor if it is the right visitor and as a result it is much easier for them to justify the expense of a paid submission.

The difference of course is that these people will submit one site and that’s it while webmasters will probably submit several if they like the directory. Yes, that’s true, I am not saying that webmasters isn’t an important target group, I am saying that we shouldn’t forget about the small business owners.

Of course, you might argue that these business owners that are working on their own on their sites will probably visit webmaster related sites as well. I may be totally wrong about this but I would say that the majority of them don’t. At least this is what I have seen the last few days that I was searching for potential sites where I could advertise and that have traffic from small business owners.

1. Directory submitters which are mainly webmasters
2. Casual Browsers

The first category is important because they are the ones that will submit their sites and provide the directory with the necessery content. They are also the ones that will purchase listings if you offer a paid submission option. However they are just a small part of what should be our overall target audience. The casual browsers are the ones that really matter. If you want to build a directory that will last in time I believe that first and foremost  this is the group that you should try and target and if you manage to achieve that, then webmasters will follow, simply because you will be in a position to send traffic to their sites.

Let’s take a look at the relevancy part of my theory. In my directory I currently have about 500 categories that I am planning to expand as submissions come in. Out of those about 100 are Art related, 40 Business related etc. Only 25 of them are Internet related and not all of these categories are about webmasters. What does that mean? The way I see it it means that most of the content at my directory isn’t webmasters related and as far as I can guess the search engines judge relevancy based on content, that makes you think how relevant are webmaster related link after all.

Of course, I am not saying that webmaster related links are useless (they send the paying traffic after all) but that a link building strategy targetting a variety of links might be a better choice.

Now here are a few common mistakes when adding a title for a directory submission taken from examples in my current review Que (Things that you shouldn’t do)

Here is an example of a site trying to target multiple keywords in the title and thinks that I might actually approve it (specific keywords were removed)
Service 1 Location 1, Service 2, Service 3, Service 4, Service 5, Location 2
They don’t even mention the title of the site or even try to spam me with just one keyword they are going after at least five keywords and guess what, they have just lost a link and I guess if this is their standard practice many more in other directories (the site is not bad btw)

Here is an example of what I call an advert title:
Submit Your URL Here
What does that tell you as a title, great huh? and no it’s not the domain or the name of the site that is obviously a directory (tragic) and for Christ’s shake it’s not a term with an overture or something.

Of course there are always the separated multiple keyword titles like keyword 1 / keyword 2 / keyword 3 / Site name(the site name is optional )
Yes those are great, why? because I don’t even have to visit the site to reject it, thanks for saving my time.

Another great practice is the “Category Title” where they submit for example in the web design category and the use as a title for their site “Web Design“. Imagine having a directory page with 50 sites titled web design you may get some decent rankings for the term unless SEs penalize you for keyword stuffing.

To be continued…… (too many mojitos to go on now)

Directory lists: That’s a good place to start, there are a number of available lists of free and paid directories. Some of them are:
Directory Critic
VileSilencer’s SEO friendly list
Seocompany’s list
Addurl.nu
Tips and Tutorials
Directory Tracker
Directory List
and my favorite and the one that I was keeping to myself (until it was posted on DigitalPoint)
Search Engine Colossus
Infosales
4th Media
Hitslog
Isedb
Ranking Directories
Incoming Links
Directory Source
Site Vortex
Best Web Direcories
Strongest Links
Koopy

There are a few more but you need to search a bit. The good thing with directory lists is that they send traffic, so besides the PR benefit you can get traffic and submissions. Personally not all my directories are listed at the sites above. The main reason is timing, I am waiting for a couple of things to happen before I submit them.
These links are nice but they are not enough because probably all of your competitors will be listed there so if you don’t have any other links pointing to your directory you simply won’t have an advantage over them.
You have to work harder than that, here are a few ways to get backlinks, if I have missed something feel free to add to this list by leaving a comment.
1. Competition Analysis: Analyze the links of the competition and try to identify natural, not bought, not exchanged links. Then try to get a link at the same site by sending a nice email to the webmaster. This is how I found the Search Engine Colossus. Lets look at an example of how you can digg deeper and deeper for links. Let’s say that I was analyzing the directoryX and I found Search Engine Colossus. I send a submission request and get my site listed, do you stop here? No, then I analyze Search Engine Colossus which of course isn’t a competitor but a related site, aged with tons of natural backlinks and with a proper analysis you will sure find more places to add your link and more sites to continue your link analysis.

2. Directory Submission: OK the obvious, submit to many directories and if you are too lazy hire someone to do it for you.

3. Offer Reciprocal Links: I have never tried this technique but I guess that for a directory with decent PR can work quite well. The reason that I am not trying it is that I am afraid that the quality of the links will be very low. A lot of webmasters set up a page especially for reciprocal links and reciprocals directories (some of them don’t even link to this page from anywhere in the site, lol ), so I am afraid that it will only lead to get a lot of links but from “linkfarms”. The only directories that have been doing this and are successful are blog directories. Bloggers (mostly non-webmasters bloggers) are link happy and will gladly provide a backlink especially if you offer a cool little button.

4. Link Bait: Let’s move now to the tough part how can you create link bait for a directory? The obvious way is to start a blog on a subdomain ie. blog.directory.com and use the blog for link baiting. Not all traffic or PR will pass to the directory but it’s better than nothing. I guess even a blog in a different domain can help (Don’t look at me like that I didn’t create this blog for this). After that you need to improvise, here is an idea that I was thinking of to use at one of my directories but I decided not to so I might as well post it in case anyone else wants to try it. Free directories get a lot of spam submissions but they get a few really high quality submissions as well. The idea is to create a Site of the Month-Editor’s Pick or something else like that section. Then create a cool graphic award button and when you get quality submissions send an email saying You have been awarded the editor’s pick award feel free to use this badge at your site (Of course the badge will be linking back to your directory). This is of course pretty rough but you get the idea. Not everyone will add the badge but a few (mainly bloggers ) will probably use it. I got this idea by looking at software download sites and wondering where do they get all of their backlinks. Moral of the story look around and you will find ideas.

5. Network Sites: Obviously again, if you own a network of successful sites it helps a lot. However I believe it is important how you are going to use your sites. I hate giving advice about staff like that so I will stop here.

6. Free Stuff: Everyone loves free stuff, in this case it could be webmaster tools that people can add to their websites (with a link back of course). This is something that a lot of sites like Seochat and DigitalPoint (the geovisitors) have been doing with success.

7. Articles: This is a standard technique to get backlinks, write articles and submit them to article directories, It’s a technique however that I don’t really use, probably because I am too lazy. Another way to use articles is to create an article section at your directory and use it as a link trap. I have seen a relatively new directory (won’t give names) doing this and it got at least one nice PR8 link at an authority website and probably quite a lot of traffic (not bad if you ask me).

Finally keep your eyes open, there are always opportunities to get links, study the big directories and other smaller ones but don’t forget to check similarly structured websites for ideas (see point 4 example). The good thing with directories is that during link building you don’t need to worry to much about anchor text etc. Any link that is on a nice website and that can send you traffic and maybe pass some PR is a good link.

Let’s look at them one by one

Brand name is probably one of the most important factors. How can you build a recognisable brand name for your directory? The lucky ones where the ones creating directories early when they were just a few of them and webmasters could list by heart the available free and paid directories. However unless you can turn back time that’s not an option. So what can you do?
Name: pick a brandable unique name that others will remember along with a nice domain of course. I see directories named keyworddirectory and there are other directories named directorykeyword. Big mistake in my opinion. Take a look at Umdum, hah! Umdum, wtf does that mean? yet I remember it and that is what is important. Of course this doesn’t relate directly to the initial question but it is an important factor that we shouldn’t forget. Other methods of getting brand recognition, drop the name and a link to your directory wherever you can (don’t spam but don’t loose any opportunities either). Think a couple of ways to differentiate your directory but don’t apply them from the start, apply them gradually and always make announcements about them and turn the announcement into discussion. And yes announcements announcements and again announcements about everything redesigns, new features, promotions, number of listings reached, categories restructure, anything at all. Finally, banner advertising at webmaster related sites could be really helpful although I haven’t done any yet for my directories. Even if you don’t get good ROI you gain brand recognition and to be honest you can never pay enough for brand recognition.
I almost forgot, building a name for yourself at webmasters forums and in general in the webmasters community, that is corelated with the directory is also important.

Medium to high PR: Although I hate it most people prefer to submit to directories that have a decent PR, above 5 is the most common although I have seen successful PR4 directories. Very few people will pay to get listed in a directory with lower PR. Getting a PR of 4 or 5 shouldn’t be hard for most webmasters and I don’t really think that this need any further analysis.

Large number of listings: Ok this isn’t exactly essential but it helps, why? because whether we like it or not webmasters are like any other shopping group, they follow trends, if others submit (especially competitors) they are more likely to submit. So offering free listings at the start is essential for people (that are not well known by webmasters) starting a directory if they want to get their directory populated. Of course there is always the solution of submitting sites manually but it’s not fun . However manual additions by the owner is probably the best way to populate a directory because the quality of the sites will definetely be high. Now that I think of it I could have probably saved a lot of time if I manually added all the links in my directories, I would’t have to spend all that time renaming, changing descriptions and moving submissions **Hint Hint to submitters**

So what is the conclusion of all this? I guess for a guy like me with a directory like Your Index I will have to wait definetely until the next PR update and until it has at least double the listings that it has now. Now about the brand name, I really doubt that I can manage to create a recognisable brand name for at least 6 more months. So I will try and move gradually (Even if I turn to paid and then back to free and then back to paid that’s three announcements ) and see what happens.