We had a topic about promoting your directory on the forums, and some of the tips were excellent, so hopefully you find this information helpful to you too.
First, we have some tips from Bruleo:
The correct ways of promoting are very subjective and are always different, depending on your target market, your directory niche etc.
However, some things I found through trial and error:-
1) Don’t go over the top with reciprocal links. Too many and to the wrong sites can do more harm than good.
2) Don’t put too much faith in pagerank… it really is a waste of time and effort….. honestly! Anyone that says otherwise has been sucked into the global hype. Better to concetrate on SERPS… Contrary to popular belief they are not mutually exclusive and one can be enhanced without the other.
3) Use well aimed keywords that are specific to your categories. Avoid / remove generalized terms that are not related to the listing
4) Use the most accurate terms as the first words in your keyword list. Usually the first and best word should be the website name or title, followed by words in the URL…. that gives your page relevancy.
5) Cross promote. If you have other sites, use them to promote others in your network. However, do it sparingly, a change the links and content around occasionally.
6) Regularly clear out dead sites, or submissions that no loger point to the pages that were submitted. You will find that over time, many submitted sites disappear and are replaced by third-party parked pages. Get rid of those quickly!
7) Don’t accept bad quality sites or submissions with poor quality descriptions. The description a user gives ultimately ends up as your sites’ content and juts makes your site look poor.
There is obviously loads more… but that should give you a start.
And here is what David had to say:
Whether your directory is a niche or not, my advice would be to find a “niche” on the web where there is an audience you can promote to. Just to give you an example, maybe you decide to become really active in a forum like Work at Home Mom (don’t have to be a mom or even female). You have a signature link. You make friends with some members. You maybe write some articles about what they are doing in your phpLD, and you get members of that community interested in your site. Then move on and repeat the same thing somewhere else such as the Warrior Forums.
Marketing offers endless ideas of ways to promote, so this is what I just came up with. If you don’t like my idea, that’s okay, but most important is to:
1. Find a good idea
2. Develop a logical plan
3. Take the steps necessary to implement the plan
3. Measure the results and analyze
4. Rework the plan a little
5. Follow through and make sure you are spending your time effectively.I would expect my plans would take about 2-6 weeks per forum with an hour or two every other day.
Good luck!
