Top 5 Ways to Jumpstart Your Directory’s Search Traffic Today

Posted on

1.) It’s all about the listings. While it may be a bit difficult to generate traffic from long tail search terms via business listings, they will eventually be what bring people to your site, what keeps them on your site and what will bring them back in the future.
2.) Quick, easy and relevant back links. Find online publications, websites, blogs, forums and other relevant publications where you can market your site and what it offers. Remember, as much as it is a backlink, it’s also an opportunity to share your site with others and tell them what it’s all about.
3.) Pump out the unique content. Search engines love fresh content, so feed them what they’re looking for. Consistently publishing blog posts, articles or whitepapers is a great way to serve search engines the fresh, unique content they’re looking to index and serve up in search results.
4.) Be the authoritative voice of your space. Similar to #3, getting more involved in topics most relevant to your site’s subject matter and covering relevant stories through interviews, feature stories, grand openings, conferences, tradeshows or events. If you’re running a local search site and a Mario’s restaurant opens up in the neighborhood, a feature story about their grand opening and an interview with the owner or Chef are exactly the types of content people look for. In addition to producing unique content, you’re also producing content that is likely to get back linked. After all, how likely is Mario to post your article in his ‘reviews’ section on his website, or share the story on twitter, facebook, etc.
5.) Keep the site up to date. Out of date, inaccurate information can really damage the integrity of your directory. Keep your site up to date is huge to drawing more search traffic in. At the same time, keeping your site up to date gives your site visitors faith in publication. The more they know your site is getting updated, the more often they will visit your site.

What’s Buzzing in the World of Online Directories – Top 5 Types of Directories

Posted on

One of the best parts of my job is seeing the creativity people bring into our software. The ideas entrepreneurs and businesses have to run sites that user our software are sometimes nothing short of mind blowing. From some of the biggest publishers in the world, to directories of certified mold inspectors, the truth is, we’ve seen it all.

A lot of people will call us or write an email outlining their idea and how they would use eDirectory power their site. What many people don’t often ask is, “What are the most popular kinds of directories” or “What are some of the most successful types of directories you see.” While some of the most successful sites using our software seem to often times be the most niche and obscure, there have been a trend of types of directories that are gaining traction.

1.) Green Directories – Everything today is about being more conscious of our carbon footprint, and most importantly, recognizing our environmental ignorance for the last few thousand years. Hybrid cars, solar powered buildings and shopping bags, much of our world is focused on green-powered products and online directories can serve as a great resource to connect people with all that is green. Whether that is businesses, products or events, eDirectory’s software has powered countless numbers of green directories. This trend isn’t going anywhere, either.

2.) Local Search Sites – Still perhaps the most popular use of our software, local search sites and portals are on the rise with the buzz and growth of local search. We’re seeing local search site owners compete with newspaper and other print publishers in their market.

3.) Magazine Directories – if you run a magazine, online directories can not only provide an additional revenue stream to your business, it can also provide a valuable tool to your site visitor. Supplier/Vendor/Parts-Acccessories and other industry-related directories are becoming increasingly popular with magazine publishers.

4.) Dispensary Directories – with the growth of medicinal marijuana dispensaries in states like Colorado and California, we’re starting to see a significant increase in dispensary-related directories that help patients find nearby facilities.

5.) Legal Directories – in addition to other professional directories, one that seems to always be most popular are legal-related directories. The trick here is developing these types of directories in either a limited geographic region or with a limited scope of practice.
Examples: Pittsburgh Attorney Directory or a Nationwide Medical Malpractice Attorney directory. Either a thin vertical focus or thin geographic focus.

If you’re interested in discussing your directory idea or strategy, shoot an email to marketing@edirectory.com

eDirectory releases version 9.5

Posted on

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

eDirectory releases version 9.5

eDirectory has released version 9.5, and with it, a significant restructuring of the base code in order to develop a more robust platform to build upon in the future.

While users won’t notice many changes in the layout or appearance of the sites in version 9.5, the eDirectory base code team, under the leadership of recently appointed Product Manager, Darren Cornwell, has made a multitude of changes in the way the code is structured.

Notably, the import tool has been completely redesigned to be a bit more effective and seemless upload process. Imports are now limited to 100mb or 100,000 lines. With only a single file able to import at a time, the system will see significant performance improvements in a shared environment.

“With the new release of 9.5, eDirectory is now considerably faster. The basecode has undergone major rewrites in various sections, there is now the addition of a new import / exporter which makes updating and retrieving data much easier, based on customer feedback. In addition to these, there are a whole host of tiny fixes and updates which serve to continue to keep eDirectory as the leader in the online directory space,” said Product Manager, Darren Cornwell.

Additionally, the blog has seen several updates to it in 9.5 You can now add banners to the blog, through an ‘Add to Blog” module in the banners section, as well as have the ability to feature and disable categories as well as add subcategories to blog categories. For SEO purposes, the sitemgr now has the ability to change settings regarding SEO on blog components.

Like the blog module, the Deals section also saw a few notable changes. Site owners can now show recent reviews on both the deals home page and deals results page and like the blog, site owners can now add banners to the deals section. Lastly you can now access traffic reports from deals section, as well as pull statistical reports.

###

Case Study – American Ceramic Society’s Implementation of eDirectory to Increase Member Engagement

Posted on

It’s not too often we have the opportunity to talk about the work we do with non profits and member-based organizations. When you think of online directories and the implementation of eDirectory, you often think of local search sites, buyer’s guides, yellow page sites, dining guides or vendor/supplier directories that are focused on driving traffic and generating revenue.

While most of our users are focused on revenue and site traffic, non profit organizations use eDirectory as a way to improve member engagement. Most not for profit industry organizations, like the American Ceramic Society, have a strong editorial presence in their field, producing magazines, journals, yearly reports and other online content. The other facet to their organization is very much member focused. These organizations work to understand issues going on in their industry that may be causing their members pain, and providing the resources and tools to help advance the industry as a whole.

When I learned that the American Ceramic Society was using our software, I was interested in sitting down with their Director of IT and Web Services, Scott Freshour, to understand how eDirectory worked within their organization. I found that after developing an internal system, and working with one of our competitors, they came to us to try and develop a advertising and marketing vehicle to their members, but also, develop the foundation for a directory that would also be printed to a paper-based directory.

New Webinar, Training and Roundtable Dates Announced

Posted on

We just posted a bunch of dates for webinars we have coming up in the next four to six weeks.

Training – Free One hour group training on how to use the software. Great for new clients or those users that haven’t had a great deal of time to invest in using the software.

SEO Crash Course – SEO is a word a lot of people throw around a lot and sometimes it can be a bit intimidating. If you’re looking to learn about the basics of SEO and how to implement them into your directory site, this is a great introductory session.

How to Steer Your Site to Success – Strategies on selecting a path for your directory, where to focus your attention in the beginning and how to leverage partnerships to make your site a success in the long run

SEO Roundtable Discussion – Existing eDirectory clients can fill out a registration questionnaire to have their site evaluated live on this demo. We’ll walk through common things site owners forget when optimizing their site, as well as offer strategies on how to improve the SEO of their website.

Sign up today!

News Aggregation: Why You Should be Doing it

Posted on

Whether it’s through email, on a webinar or at a tradeshow, the most common question I get from clients is:

“What can I do to keep bringing visitors back to my site”?

For any site owner, let alone a directory site owner, it’s not an easy task to keep getting new traffic to your site. Most of the people come to a directory site to find specific information about a business, browse through the listings and find all the details they need to make an informed decision. This is largely what brings people to your site. The ‘long tail search terms’ that are either geared toward business categories or specific businesses. For instance, if I’m running a local search site, search terms are probably going to look something like this:

“Annandale Virginia Restaurants”
“Annandale Restaurants”
“Evergreen restaurant Annandale”
“Korean restaurant in Annandale”

These folks come in, find the restaurant they’re looking for and they’re off your site. With static data like listings, what can you do to bring people back? What content can you offer that promises to be different from one visit to the next? Start with aggregating news in your industry or area. In any town there are at least 4-5 news sources covering the area, each of which are largely reporting on the same stories. By aggregating the stories across multiple media outlets, you provide your visitor with tight, consolidated news headlines. Reddit, Digg, and other sites are run on this concept and it can work at the hyper local level, too.

Two Examples:
1.) A hockey blog that aggregates league wide news: http://blogs.sites.post-gazette.com/index.php/sports/empty-netters/30066-empty-netter-assists-10-02-11

2.) An online news aggregator for different verticals/industries:
http://www.marketingdive.com/

Let’s say, for instance, I want to aggregate news in Fairfax:

A reward is being offered for anyone with information on farm animals that were recently slayed in the Herndon area. [Fairfax Times]

Two people were killed in a car crash on Lee Highway last night. [Fairfax City Patch]

The airport board has backed down on their union preference for the Metro silver line. [Fairfax News]

Winery at Bull Run will be opening in Centreville. [Washington Post]

By aggregating the best news stories in your area, you offer a valuable, convenient resource to visitor, produces fresh, new content on your blog and will help increase search traffic and returning visitors to your site.

eDirectory releases version 9.3

Posted on

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
eDirectory releases version 9.3
Annandale, Virginia – May 16th, 2012 – Arca Solutions, the parent company of eDirectory.com, has launched version 9.3, which introduces new a variety of new features and capabilities in the basecode of the software.

Version 9.3 was concentrated mostly on a number of smaller, but impactful features, mostly those suggested by the customer base. One of the more notable aspects of 9.3 is a new real estate template, which can be used for those trying to create a real estate listing-driven site to showcase properties. The direction of future releases may be concentrated more on creating niche, vertical focused ‘templates’ that work off of the base code, but each offering a different set of features that are most pertinent to their respective focus. For instance, the gallery on the details page uses a slider as opposed to a popup window and the template as a whole only uses the listings, blog and banner modules.

“The Real Estate theme is the first of many beautiful, stylish new directory themes to come. This release makes eDirectory the best solution on the market for creating a professional grade, multilingual real estate site,” said Arca Solutions CEO James Chubb.

9.3 also offers category sitemaps, meaning users can now generate category sitemaps for all languages. Other additions include an email import notification, the date selection tool now supports all languages in the system and the listings section within the site manager has been tweaked to preview listings more easily.

Lastly, an RSS feed has been added to the deals module and the advertising page has been restructured to support both graphical themes as well as the newly released real estate theme. To learn more about these features, please contact a sales representative by calling (703) 914-0770.

eDirectory is a division of Arca Solutions, Inc, a digital media company headquartered in the Washington, DC metro area.

“Your software isn’t cheap..”

Posted on

Having been at eDirectory for several years now, we’ve run into our fair share of competitors. We’re confident that out of most of the solutions on there on the market, there isn’t a more powerful solution for the price. With a steady growth in the market, we know we’re not outpricing ourselves, but many people come to us and say that our software is over priced, too expensive or outright not affordable.

A few things to consider:

Script Vs. Software One thing that makes me cringe is when people refer to eDirectory as a script. It’s not that a script has a bad notation necessarily. It’s just to me, a script is something you buy for $25-$200, are sent an automated email with a link to download the script, which you have to install yourself. Support is limited or non-existent and you’re likely ONLY getting a program that runs business listings.

What are you getting for the price? eDirectory, a software solution, provides our clients with near 24/5 support from a global software organization. Additionally, our software has many features that simply aren’t included in most others, which include, but aren’t limited to:
[custom_list style=”list-9″]

  • Daily Deals
  • Classifieds
  • Events
  • Banner Advertising
  • Automated billing
  • Click to Call
  • Send SMS to Phone
  • Advertising Package Builder
  • Multi-site feature
  • Android & iPhone Apps
  • And many, many more…

[/custom_list]
This is what distinguishes us from the $75 script you’re looking at. Enterprise features, elite support and a product dev team pumping out new releases every quarter.

Build Vs. Buy A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to speak with a client of ours at a non profit organization, the American Ceramic Society. They have a directory of businesses in the ceramic industry and use it to not only engage more with their members and those in their community, but to also increase their visibility. For them, eDirectory was their ‘charm’ as they had first tried building the system in house and then tried going with one of our lower end competitors. While this may have been an interesting case because he had tried both an in-house solution and a competitor, I would confidently say that 30% of our clients have at some point come to us and purchased eDirectory after trying to build the solution in house. For every time one of our sales executives is told ‘We’re going to build it in house’ by a prospective client, I tell them to make sure to follow up with that prospective client in 3 months and see if they’re still as committed to developing it on their own. It’s simply not cost effective.

The average PHP developer will cost about $55 dollars an hour. So after you lay out a project proposal and spend time defining your requirements, let’s say you’ve already put in 4 hours explaining to a developer what exactly it is and how it’s supposed to work. You’re already down $220.

Our software costs $1799. So at this point, are you still confident in thinking that this developer can finish the project for less than $1579? If you are, this means your developer is capable of building something in 28 hours what has taken us 7 years and a team of 10 basecode developers to come up with.

Could you do it yourself ? Sure. Would it take 750+ hours. Yes. But why reinvent the wheel? Even if your site needs customization, at least bring the already-invented-wheel to a developer of your choice and have him customize the foundation, which has already been built.

$1799 to invest in a business? With so much developing with the growth in online directories, dining portals and local search sites, and so much advertising opportunity accordingly, is $1799 a cost prohibitive price point to developing a successful online publication? People come to us and share great ideas about how they envision leveraging our software to create unique and information packed websites. It’s like their eyes glow just thinking about the possibility. From experience, $1799 rarely stands between a person or business with vision and ambition from developing a successful online business. If it does, maybe there’s more to consider about that venture before continuing to pursue it.

Feel free to give me or one of my sales reps a call to talk about your directory.

Jared Elder
Marketing Manager
jared at e directory dot com

Top 10 most valuable items to a local search site

Posted on

Our Top 10 list of most valuable items to a local search site

  1. An ambitious site owner – If you don’t truly have a stake in the community your local search site is covering, chances are good all the rest are pretty hard to follow. It’s tough to update, write about or maintain a site that has subject matter you’re really not interested in. Think about it.
  2. A well balanced focused – Not too geographically large (a local search site for the entire state of California) but not too geographically small (a local search site for a town of 400 people).
  3. Events – Keep up to date with what’s going on in the community. Whether these are paid event listings or free, a local search site should keep their events up to date and accurate.
  4. A good hook – What makes you better than the next online site that covers your area, or for that matter, Yelp, a local newspaper or other going out guide?
  5. An editorial voice – Your site should provide some type of editorial content where necessary. Whether that’s an academic article, a blog post or human interest story, it’s important to have a focus and voice.
  6. Fresh Content – Google loves fresh content. Search engines in general like to see that you’re updating the website and producing content of some kind on a consistent basis.
  7. Blog – Similar to #5, a blog is likely what’s going to keep your finger on the pluse of a community. Whether you’re reviewing a restaurant, interviewing a business owner or aggregating local news, it’s important to keep the content flowing.
  8. Unique Content – Aggregating news and posting events isn’t enough. You should be doing your own feature stories, interviews or reviews and coming up with editorial and information content that is going to keep people coming back.
  9. Otherwise un-aggregated content – List out specials, sales, happy hours, nightlife, drink specials, lunch specials or dinner specials, things that visitors would otherwise have to go to each business’s website to find.
  10. Data/Listings – A large reason why people came to your site in the first place is to find information about a local business. Whether that’s a telephone number, hours, reviews or menu, it’s vital to keep all of your listings up to date.

Blogging: A Voice to your Online Directory

Posted on

From time to time, eDirectory runs promotions that provide free sales and marketing consultation for our clients. The idea is, having seen hundreds of our customers create online directories, we’ve grown to see some of the basic approaches to creating a successful site. We’ve documented most of these in “Marketing a Directory,” “Selling A Directory,” and “Manning a Sales Team.” One question that comes up most in these 30 minute or hour long consultations is ‘What can I do to have people keep coming back to my site.” While we don’t have a magic formula to creating a dedicated visitor base, there are a few ways to use a blog as a hook to keep visitors loyal to your site.

A blog can act as the voice of your directory and set a tone to your site. This tone can often be what keeps readers coming back for more. Think about it — almost everyone today has a ‘round’ of websites they visit in the morning as they sip on coffee and dig through the inbox. What are those sites to you? What keeps YOU going back to them everyday? Here are some ideas to think about:

[custom_list style=”list-9″]

  • Local Search – If you’re developing a local search site, you want your site to be the destination for all of the restaurant menus, drink specials, nightlife, local businesses and events in your region. If you are to be trusted as the go-to destination for everything that’s happening in your area, it’s good to go above and beyond cookie cutter listings on your site. Talk about what’s going on in your community. Local search sites should keep their finger on the pulse of the community, and that is one huge advantage true local search sites have over Yelp, and it’s something site owners can’t afford NOT to leverage. Yelp doesn’t list all the events in Kearney Nebraska, it doesn’t feed breaking news stories in Kearney either, so it’s something readers would appreciate having access to. Interviewing local Chef’s about their cuisine and suggested entrees, local business owners on their company and concentration of work, aggregating local news in your area – all great additions to your site that can be easily funneled through a blog.
  • Buyers’ Guides, Business Directories, Product Directories – What is going on in your respective industries? If you’re developing a business directory, or buyers’ guide that focuses on a particular industry, it’s assumed you have a certain depth of knowledge to the subject at hand, as you should. What is going on in that industry? What things are happening that would affect the way people buy a certain product? What new products are hitting the market? If you want people to come to your site regularly, it’s vitally important that you update your site constantly and a Blog is a great way to do just that.

[/custom_list]
Some tips to consider when it comes to executing your blog effectively:
[custom_list style=”list-9″]

  • Keep focused. It’s easy to blog about things you find interesting and want to write about, but does it fall in line with the scope of your directory? If you’re keeping your readers up to date on a new restaurant opening in Kearney one week, and going on a political rant the next, you’re likely going to lose readers along the way. Readers have expectations on what they’re going to get when going to your site and that’s why they will go there on a regular basis. If the scope of your blog is constantly changing, your readers will likely lose interest in being a loyal visitor. Make sure that you’re writing to keep your users informed , not for the sake of hearing yourself talk (or reading your own words, so to speak).
  • Check Facts. One way to lose credibility and respect pretty quickly is to post erroneous stories or ones with inaccurate facts. Read up on what you’re about to write, make sure it’s accurate and go out of your way to cite the sources you’re pulling information from.
  • Keeps a six inch voice. Just as you were told in school, it’s important to maintain a proper voice level in the world of blogging. When writing about a story, make your voice heard, but don’t try talking over people. If you’re posting industry news, breaking stories or perhaps tackling a big event, try to keep your commentary limited as you get started and get a feel for both your style and tone. Short, precise commentaries often compliment what you’re covering best.
  • Everything in moderation. Similar to the previous bullet point, it’s not only what you’re saying that is important, it’s also how often you’re saying it. Some directory sites may struggle to push 1 or 2 entries a day, and that’s sometimes all you need to keep an engaged reader. If the topic of your directory is more broad or general, you may have to consider dozens of stories to comment on. Pick the gold nuggets and always consider blogging the stories that may not get coverage elsewhere.
  • Write Responsibly. Remember everything you publish is for the world to see. If you’re writing about industry news, businesses, local events, be sure to do it with style. Remember, blogging doesn’t take accountability out of the picture, write with proper style and etiquette before you hit the publish button. For a few tips, check out: http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2006-10-11-n47.html

[/custom_list]
Blogging is a great addition to any directory site, as it puts a voice, a face and sometimes an attitude behind a site full of hundreds or thousands of listings. It’s another way to engage with your site visitors and show them the investment you’ve made into the directory you’re developed. Reviews, Interviews, Feature Stories, Event coverage — all great elements to cover via the blog that are likely to get re-posted by others, but more importantly, it’s going out of your way to show site visitors your conviction to the subject matter.