The importance of online trade directories

B2B sites really are getting traffic

[Macguru]

As an amateur in Web site promotion, I took only easy ones to get the hang of it. But I accidentally came across a serious B2B client. His business is somehow specialized, it was not difficult to get him good rankings. They bought 3 programs, optimised submission, selective link exchange and submission to online trade directories. I submitted the site to hundreds of online trade directories. The results are stunning, more than 55% of high quality traffic come from online trade directories. Every link from those static HTML directory also boost popularity on SE. I never imagined such results. Back to the basics really pay.

[chiyo]

We see that too. For specialist sites, getting linked from the appropriate directories is key. And yes they are getting traffic because "serve all" SE's just keep up with the specialist nayture of "vortals". Google, I feel, is the only one that comes close to provideing good SERPS for specialist terms. Im pretty sure that trend (towards specialised databases run by people who really know the field) will continue.

Maybe major SE's are using "hubs" more than we think to define a quality link too.

[2_much]

hi macguru, how did you find those hundreds of specialized directories? did you perform keyword searches?
I want to do something similar but have been able to find very few that apply to my categories. Any ideas?

[Macguru]

>how did you find those hundreds of specialized directories?

They are not specialised directories, they are general trade directories with categories. I used a link exchange software called Zeus to build most of the list. It uses its own crawler that you can easily configure. I used a keyword search in 4 languages. English, French, Spannish and Japanese. More than 78% online trade directories found are in English. Most of them also uses dynamic technologies, so the inbound link benefit is minimal.

A lot of them charge annual fees and package a print version with the service. It took more than 3 months at two hours a day to build this list without submitting. A manual selection was required. I had to visit all those sites to sort out junk and fill manually some fields in a simple FileMaker database. Country, categories, fees, languages, ect. for later use.

It is an expensive service suitable for big digits contracts. My client is very satisfied and already wants to extend this part of the program to other langages.

I later found that all the Yahoo's have a distinct category for trade directories and the list was improved that way. Seems that dynamic technologies are hard to find for most robots and it is logical to feed from directories to find directories. It is a first experience for me. May be results are beginners luck. But it is so powerfull yet I believe B2B prospection to be a different game with it's own set of rules.

[2_much]

Macguru, thanks for the detailed response. I've had Zeus on the shelf for a few months but I guess it's time to unrack it. As a complement to this, I think searching for links in Fast and Google is also pretty effective, so that's where I'll be headed.
Thanks again!

[Macguru]

If you want to use SE to harvest online trade directories and store the output in some database. May I suggest another technique: Copernic. If you get the pro version and set it to get maximun results from selected SE, what is great is that you can validate the addresses - 7% are dead junk - then export it to DBF format. Some simple script can remove double entries to keep only home pages.

Once such a list stored in a database it is really easy to match the customer criterias and make an evaluation in a very effective way.

[Brett_Tabke]

The topic directory is such a good avenue of promotion - can we not talk about it too much? lol Just kidding.

Ya, those specialized directories are great not only for the traffic, but that it is all prequalified. It's not the potluck nature of search engine surfers. I've tracked directory traffic at a couple of sites and found the directory traffic has a 100% higher clicks-per-user rate than se traffic. I've not studied the conversion rates on ecomm sites, but I'd imagine it is just as much higher too.

[Macguru]

>The topic directory is such a good avenue of promotion - can we not talk about it too much? lol Just kidding.

OK,OK! next time I sit on a pot of gold, I will keep the opposite end shut! Newbie entousiasm is hard to control. (felt so proud of it! had to let it go! (my girlfriend got sick and tired to hear from it...))

The problem my client faced from thoses visitors is that most contacts are trying to sell him something instead of buying. We edited template responses with editable fields. Not expecting this much of correspondance, I did not prepare them well to face it.

Still got much to learn, and for a long time to go, in this very fluid and dynamic game.

This place is the best I ever found for that!

P.S.
Thanks to all for the therapy

Vincent

[cyberbear]

I have been submitting to numerous specialized directories relating to ecommerce services (merchant accounts,hosting,shopping carts,web design)and have been getting some success. Most of my previous submissions to directories where limited to Yahoo,ODP,Looksmart,About.com,NBCi.com,Go,etc.)I have been searching for additional ecommerce directories and it seems that I waste a lot of time weeding through all the garbage and spam. Is there a definitive directory of directories pertaining ecommerce services or business to business ecommerce services. Thank.

[Macguru]

Hi cyberbear,
The ones you can find on Yahoo directory will save you a lot of time sorting trough all that garbage. I kept about 20% of those harvested with Zeus and 60% of them found on Yahoo. I think you could discriminate regionally for such a service as ecommerce. There also is a new portal here in Canada called Bellzinc.ca. I think building my own list was worth the effort. ODP also have a couple good ones.

[skibum]

If ya'll come across good ones, and are comfortable sharing the golden nuggests with the rest of the web, consider submitting them to ODP. Not only will it make it easier for other people to find them, but being listed in ODP should give all the links of the chain a bit of a bounce in the SE's

Edited by: skibum

[Mike_Mackin]

What category?

[skibum]

Guess one would have to find approprite categories in various industrial categories. Might be able to work out something with the directory owner, and exchange and ODP submission for some free listings in their directory. I'd bet there are a number of ODPers lurking here that might have further suggestions.

[Macguru]

The "trade directory" keyword search on ODP gives many results on many categories, same thing on Yahoo. There is less spam and junk on directories and they list more of those using dynamic technologies overall the site.