Tag Archives: SEO

Webinar: Keyword Research for Online Directories

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Keyword Research for Online Directories

Following our recent webinar, we discussed the critical role of keyword strategy in boosting the visibility and success of online directories. If you missed the session, here’s a recap of the key takeaways, from understanding keyword types and search intent to conducting effective keyword research for your directory.

What is Keyword Research?

Keyword research involves identifying search queries or terms that users enter into search engines. This process is essential for creating content that aligns with what people are searching for and optimizing your web pages for higher rankings on search engines.

For online directories, keyword research can be the game-changer that helps you attract your target audience. Whether you’re optimizing listings, blog posts, or custom pages, understanding the right keywords ensures your site is visible to those looking for relevant information.

Types of Keywords and Search Intent

During the webinar, we explored two major types of keywords:

  • Head keywords: Broad and far-reaching, often highly competitive.
  • Long-tail keywords: More specific combinations of terms, usually containing three or more words, which are typically easier to rank for and highly targeted.

Additionally, we discussed the four types of search intent:

  • Informational: The user is seeking knowledge (e.g., “How to start a directory website”).
  • Navigational: The user is looking for a specific page or website (e.g., “eDirectory login”).
  • Commercial: The user is exploring options before making a purchase (e.g., “best directory software”).
  • Transactional: The user is ready to complete a purchase (e.g., “buy directory platform”).

For online directories, informational and commercial search intents are the most relevant. People often search for information about specific categories or local listings, making it essential to target long-tail keywords to attract the right traffic.

Webinar: Keyword Research for Online Directories

Keyword Research for Online Directories

Keyword research is especially important for online directories, as these platforms usually target niche audiences. By combining long-tail keywords with your listings’ categories, subcategories, locations, and custom pages, you can tailor your content to the specific needs of your audience.

For example, if your directory lists local businesses in a specific city, targeting a keyword like “best coffee shops in [City]” is a perfect long-tail search query. By addressing specific user queries, directories can rank higher for searches relevant to their audience, increasing both traffic and engagement.

How to Run Keyword Research for Online Directories

The webinar also covered the practical steps for running an effective keyword research process. You will need:

  1. A spreadsheet to organize your keywords and track their performance.
  2. Access to SEO tools such as SEMrush, MOZ, Ubersuggest, Ahrefs, or Google Search Console.

These tools will help you identify keyword volumes, competition levels, and search intent. For online directories, it’s essential to focus on long-tail keywords that relate directly to your niche and target audience.

Conclusion

Keyword research is an essential component of optimizing online directories. By focusing on the right types of keywords and understanding search intent, directory owners can ensure that their listings and content align with what users are searching for. Utilizing SEO tools and targeting long-tail keywords will not only boost visibility but also bring in more targeted traffic, leading to higher conversions.

Be sure to check out the recording of our webinar to dive deeper into these strategies and start implementing them for your directory today!

USEFUL LINKS AND TOOLS MENTIONED IN THE WEBINAR

*We are not affiliated, associated, authorized, endorsed by, or in any way officially connected to the tools and sites mentioned in the webinar.

This session was recorded on October 9th, 2024.

Want more tips? Shoot us a note at marketing@eDirectory.com and don’t forget to join our Facebook group.

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NEW GOOGLE UPDATE ON MOBILE SEARCH RESULTS BENEFITS RESPONSIVE WEBSITES

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NEW GOOGLE UPDATE ON MOBILE SEARCH RESULTS BENEFITS RESPONSIVE WEBSITES

On April 2015 Google announced their plans to boost the ranking of responsive websites on mobile search results by using mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal. Today there is no turning back, go mobile or go home. If your directory website isn´t mobile-friendly, don´t panic. We are here to help you.

Directories, searches and internet usage

One report from comScore put Google Search as the 4th most used Mobile App, with over 81 million unique visitors. A Google report shows that 48% of mobile purchases started on Search Engines and 26% on Branded Apps. Are you still in doubt about going mobile?

People are always searching for goods and services and the amount of time spent on mobile searches will keep growing. Is your online directory ready to appear on all first page´s search results?

Mobile App or Responsive Design: what is the best choice?

The actual scenario moves pretty fast. Users behaviors too. Some of your next customers are web-browsing fans, some are app-addicted. Both methods are essential for brand awareness over the internet. The main goal here is to be where your audience is.

How can eDirectory.com can help me on this journey?

Our software is always aligned with internet´s best practices, whether it’s our SEO center or our Design Templates. We also offer an app builder and app publishing service for you to have a complete platform ready to please any user and member.

10 of Our Favorite SEO Tools

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Keeping track of your site’s search engine optimization (SEO) can be difficult enough without having to spend so much time compiling the data for your links, page/domain ranks, indexing status and more. Luckily there is an abundance of tools online to make sure your data is accurate and organized while saving you an abundance of time.

These tools are critical to your organic search strategy because they allow you to focus on the elements of your site that Google and other search engines deem important.

Here are 10 of our favorite SEO tools:

1) Google Webmaster Tools

Cost: Free

A no-brainer, right? Google’s Webmaster Tools is probably the best way to understand the way Google sees your site and get insight into how your site will rank. The Tools include beginner-friendly resources and data that help to explain the fundamentals of Google search and give you a good base to start your SEO research.

Use the Tools to check on your number of pages indexed or use Google’s Fetch as Google tool that allows you to see a particular URL as Google sees it, which is critical when troubleshooting for poor SEO performance. Use the information it provides to modify any pages in question to improve results.

Another great feature of Google Webmaster Tools is PageSpeed Insights. This tool measures the speed of both your desktop and mobile site, which is valued by Google. The PageSpeed scores range from 0 to 100 and the higher the score the better.

2) Moz Pro Tools

Cost: Free 30-day trial, then plans from $99/mo – $599/mo

Moz Pro is an advanced all-in-one SEO tool that will help you track and improve your site’s rankings. Moz has a great set of research tools that enable subscribers to identify SEO opportunities, track links, examine social reach, identify errors, compare against competitors and optimize your overall efforts.

The Moz Pro dashboard will provide you with data on your search visibility, domain authority, site visits over time, keyword rankings, external links and more. There is also a Crawl Test tool that employ’s Moz’s own web crawler, nicknamed RogerBot, to analyze up to 3,000 links on a URL of your choice. Once completed, you will then receive an email report that details the data for each page the site links to. This is very useful to identify crawlability factors such as duplicate content and redirects that could be influencing your SEO performance.

3) Woorank

Cost: Free 14-day trial, then $49/mo for a Pro Plan or $149/mo for a Premium Plan

Woorank’s provides in-depth site analysis to help site owner find opportunities for improvement. This analysis is easy to understand and divided into eight sections: Marketing Checklist, SEO, Mobile, Usability,Technologies, Social, Local, and Visitors.

Such a wide range of information and insight makes it easy to always find new opportunities and discover areas for improvement with your site.

4) Check My Links

Cost: Free

Check My Links is a browser plugin that allows you to check if the links on your webpage are functional and working properly.

While checking for broken link it easy for anyone controlling a site to make corrections or double check before a page goes live. The tool will highlight all the good links in a green color, and those that are broken in a red color, which makes it easy to spot the ones that don’t work or are no longer active and need to be updated or removed.

5) SEO Report Card

Cost: Free

With SEO Report Card you can analyze your site to determine how well it stacks up against some chosen competitors.

The SEO Report Card will supply you the following:

  • Rank Analysis: A snapshot of how your website ranks on Google, Yahoo, and Bing! based on the keywords you provide.
  • Link Building: The number of websites that link back to your site.
  • On-Site Analysis: Tracks how well you have incorporated your main keyword throughout your site.
  • Website Accessibility: Data on your site’s speed and ease of accessibility for crawlers.
  • Trust Metrics: Information on your domain’s level of trust and authority.
  • Current Indexing: Data for how many of your site pages have been indexed.

6) HubSpot’s Website Grader

Cost: Free

HubSpot, the pioneers of inbound marketing, created the Website Grader. It is an online tool that creates personalized reports based on these areas:

  • Performance: Tracking your site’s page size, requests, speed, and more.
  • Mobile Readiness: A check to see if your website is mobile-friendly in terms of responsiveness and viewport settings.
  • SEO. Tracks data like page titles and meta descriptions to see how easily your site can be found on search engines.
  • Security. This checks on the SSL certificate as well as the overall trustworthiness and security of your domain.

Your website URL and an email address is all that you need to get started and they will then provide you with a score (1-100) as well as a detailed report.

7) Screaming Frog SEO Spider

Cost: The Screaming Frog SEO Spider LITE version is free and the paid plan is $160/year

The Screaming Frog SEO Spider is a program that crawls the URLs of the domains you enter for common SEO issues. It saves a ton of time by compiling the data and examining all of the URLs for you.

The Java program is fairly intuitive, with easy-to-navigate tabs. Plus, you can export any or all of the data into Excel for further analysis.

8) Found’s SEO Audit Tool

Cost: Free

The SEO Audit Tool is a tool for site owners looking to identify and fix any SEO errors that may be on their website.

Simply enter your URL and receive an SEO audit with information for three main areas:

  • Technical issues: This looks for errors with things like domain canonicalization and XML sitemaps.
  • Content issues: This focuses on keywords and meta data for your site.
  • External link analysis: This evaluates the quantity and quality of your external links.

9) Varvy’s SEO Overview Tool

Cost: Free

This SEO auditing tool provides users with analysis for your domain strength, links, image SEO, social counts, page/technical SEO, page speed, and more.

The complete report dives fairly deep into different aspects of your website’s performance and provides colored indicators to help you identify any issues.

One of our favorite features is the detailed image overview. This section focuses on the images on your website by analyzing the alt text. It checks to see if you are using too many words, missing alt text, or if the alt text appears weak, the tool will notify you so that you can make any necessary changes.

10) Remove’em

Cost: $249 per domain or a subscription option starting at $99/mo

Artificial or unnatural links (such as purchased links and spammy content) can seriously damage your SEO and do harm to your search rankings. Remove’em is a tool to help you clean up any of these damaging links.

Remove’em will scan your backlink profile and create a list of contact information for the links and domains that you should reach out to have removed. Plus, you can also use the tool to export the list of links to have Google disavow them using this tool. (With this tool you can ask Google not to take them into account when assessing your site.)

Reminder: SEO Crash Course Webinar tomorrow at 10:00AM

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A quick reminder that we’ll be conducting a complimentary SEO Crash Course webinar tomorrow, October 10th at 10:00AM EST.

Some things we’ll cover in the webinar
-What is SEO?
-A brief History of SEO
-Black Hat SEO
-First steps to Optimizing
-It’s All About the Keywords
-On Site Optimizations
-Off Site Optimizations
-Leveraging Social Media
-How can eDirectory Help?
-Additional Resources

For those interested in learning the basics of SEO and what you can do to better optimize your directory site, this is a great presentation.

Hope to see you there!

New Webinar Dates Posted

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Check out the list of new webinar dates posted in the ‘resources’ section of our website.

A quick synopsis on each of the upcoming presentations

How to Steer Your Site to Success – an overview on steps to making your site have better potential for success. These include strategy in selecting a domain name, introductory SEO tips, engaging with your listing holders and putting the right partnerships in place to help your site

SEO Roundtable – Submit your site or watch live as your peers sites are critiqued on they could be better optimized to increase search traffic.

Free Group Training – Free of cost introductory training course conducted by Jessica Delucchi. Great for new users as well as those hoping to become a bit more familiar with the system

SEO Crash course – While a lot of people know about SEO, very few people know what goes into making your site a well oiled SEO machine. We’ll cover the history of SEO, the basics of on site optimizations as well as the best approach to launching a successful backlink campaign.

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

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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.

News Aggregation: Why You Should be Doing it

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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.