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If you want to target all, or even just more of the SE's and directories, than you would want to work on your SEO campaign.
And, this may be something that the person had said to you to shell out the money, as SEO does not always have to cost a fortune.......especially if it is done in-house.
I think that before making a decision like this, you need to analyze how important the internet is to your business.
If there isn't any competition for keywords strategic to your web site, you might get lucky, but most of us have to work at tuning a site's content to achieve visibility.
You pay BT-Looksmart to submit your site, but they don't guarantee you'll be listed. A good SEO will tell you before you spend the money what your chances are and how to improve the chances of a good listing.
You submit a description, and the words in that will largely determine where you'll rank in actual searches. Most of the value of a Looksmart listing comes from its partners such as MSN and Altavista, and most of those users will search rather than browse through the directory category by category.
An good SEO knows how to craft a description that suits the editors at Looksmart, but contains the words needed to attain good ranking in a search too.
That doesn't mean you have to hire a good SEO, you could instead choose to become one for yourself, but you'll need to put in the time and effort to learning a specialised field of knowledge.
Ammon Johns
The European SEO strategy primer [webmasterworld.com...] and
Is good SEO practise enough in Europe? [webmasterworld.com...]
They should clear things up and contain the hands on stuff you need.
BTLooksmart's position in the grand scheme of things is up to them. To their credit, the PubConference sponsors were clever enough to figure out that mixing with the pros would be productive for their business, i.e., good marketing. That's all, really.
Not sure what you mean by that but to clarify; attendence at the Pub Conference is not an "endorsement" of any sponser.
>So, what is their place?
They provide traffic, mainly through their partners. Personaly they are part of all SEO work that I do, but will not provide enough traffic on their own. If you are serious about being sucessful on the WWW then you need to aim higher, cover all the major engines/directories and not have too many eggs in a particular basket.
Submitting Uk sites, i find what is critical before entertaining any pay schemes, is to work out the marketplace on the net, who is competitive for the products and services, what time and resources you have to get involved and generally reading and implementing.
Strategy is key, and that's where these guys previous, know their stuff, as you will spend 6 months plus learning the basics, which will usually entail making every submission mistake there is to make.
Probably the best idea, is to check out all the search engine forums, and read anything that in some way relates, to your original premises. After that and some keyword/phrase searching of competitive sites, will give you a feel for the complexity of the task ahead and your desire to either do it yourself, or get a pro to do it.
One thing i do know, is a submission to BTlooksmart alone, especially .co.uk, as the combined impact of all partners, would'nt equal traffic from Google, Yahoo, Fast, ODP and the rest not signed up to LS partners.
BTW wasn't a little red horse on offer from somewhere for attendees at the conflab?
