How to Use Directories to Get More Traffic
What I'm telling you comes under the general rubric of search engine optimization (SEO). Unfortunately, a lot of what you read about SEO is outdated.
Outdated information is a problem when it comes to internet marketing. When I first got into this, I read a few books about the subject. I would read a book, get excited, fire up the computer, and find out that the ball game had changed so much that what worked in the book was no longer valid.
The Internet changes so rapidly that information gets outdated fast-we're talking about in a few months, or even weeks fast!
Only less than a year ago, people were making small fortunes with what are called Made For AdSense sites. (MFA for short) These were sites that were optimized for a search term, say "dog training". Only when the site came up in Google's listings and you clicked on the link, you were taken to a site that was nothing more than a huge list of dog training stuff.
These MFA sites got so bad they were disrupting the search experience. So, Google effectively pulled the rug out from under these guys.
My point is you can still find stuff about how to do this on the Internet as if it were a viable way to make money. So, a lot of what you read about directories is outdated.
I'll just tell you the stuff that works! Okay!
Now, let's get back to directories.
Directories are sites that list other websites and categorize them. I'm not sure what percent of people actually use directories to find stuff-but based on the traffic I get to my sites, I think it's extremely small.
In other words, listing your site on various directories for the purposes of getting direct traffic is not where it's at. (This might be with the exception of Yahoo!'s directory.)
The reason you want to consider listing your website in some good directories is for the link that comes from the directory site to your website.
One of the main ways Google ranks your site in a search engine result is by the number of links that are coming into it. Links are like votes. More links, more people like you, more chance other people will like you, the higher your pages get placed in the results.
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