I’ve been noticing that Alexa rankings have been growing in popularity as ways to rate a directory for traffic. Google Page Rank is a metric that relates to inbound and outbound link counts. Alexa rankings are heavily biased on visitors who have the Alexa Toolbar installed. Therefore if you are selling advertising space based on traffic, having a low Alexa ranking (i.e. loads of traffic), then this will help you to command a good price.
There are many ways to increase your Alexa rank, such as displaying the Alexa widget on your directory such as the one below. Apparently if a visitor clicks on this widget, it counts as traffic to your site even if they don’t have a toolbar.
Using the Alexa redirection (e.g. http://redirect.alexa.com/redirect?www.directoryspy.com) will count a single ip address as a visitor. If you use this for older posts, and possible for internal linking, then you can quickly increase your ranking with very little effort. For internal linking, you’d probably want to use some code to do the hard work for you.
Another tip is to use the traffic auto-surf exchange type systems. I imagine most are dodgy, but I’ve been researching UpMyRank for a while now, and it’s already working to boost one of my websites (not Directory Spy). Any script that runs from a single ip address is a sure fire way to getting banned. UpMyRank is almost a peer to peer traffic exchange. It’s definitely worth giving them a shot.
For a few more tips, I’ve found this fantastic article on DoshDosh with 20 quick ways to increase your Alexa rank.
If you’re doing something interesting in the directory world, then please let me know! I’ll blog about what you’re doing on Directory Spy completely free. But there is a small catch, it must be interesting and unique!
Perhaps you have:
- An interesting mod that you wrote (e.g. I wrote the phpLD PR Update Tool)
- You have some clever features on your directory
- You have an amazing directory design
- You target a peculiar niche in your directory (e.g. I have a spy gadgets directory).
- Or anything else that’s directory related?
Please comment on this post with your cool directory ideas!
Prashanth Nair (dotcompals) offers a unique directory submission service. Prashanth will submit your website details to to all the new free SEO-friendly, non reciprocal directories announced on the major webmaster forums such as Digital Point and DirectoryCritic.com.
The service allows you to suggest multiple anchor texts and descriptions, and you get a Google spreadsheet report updated daily allowing you to see what directories your sites have been submitted to. You can also get discounts for multiple orders too! The service costs $20 per month per website. I’ve been using it for a long time now, and I seriously recommend this service!
Prashanth submits your site to any new directories within 24 hours of them being announced. Since these are new directories, the chance that your listing will be accepted is very high. This quickly gains you solid backlinks to your website. Some directories grow to be very popular, and so the strength of your links grow over time too!
This is a very cost effective way of promoting your website. Even if you get only 50 backlinks a month, that’s still only 40 cents a link!
It was only a matter of time before someone created a Digg for Directories, but it’s actually a good thing in my opinion. Digg for Directories already features over 1000 web directories, and the most popular are already working themselves to the top of the list, such as Directory Dump, V7N, Seven Seek and Aviva.
You can easily digg your favourite directories by clicking on the vote tab. If you want to submit your own directory, then registering takes a few seconds, after which you can submit your sites.
Perhaps other directory related sites might be permitted in the near future? I would be keen to get Directory Spy listed on the site too. Once it’s been made easier to put the voting code on the directories themselves, I can imagine Digg for Directories will explode in popularity. And then onedollar will make a fortune in advertising revenue. Nicely done!
The Cyber Web Link Directory uses what feels like a unique twist to the popular bid-for directories that are popping up all over the place.
The majority of bidding directories allow you to bid for a position in just a very small number of categories. So whoever has the most money will appear at the top. Regardless of the niche of the listing.
Cyber Web Link Directory has taken a normal directory with plenty of categories in it, and added bid-for position functionality to it. This means you can bid to be at the top of a category that is related to your niche. It’s a subtle twist, but it does mean you are more likely to get a good ranking on a relevant page.
I do like it when someone adds useful twists to common functionality. Good luck with the new directory wamchu!
