July 2006 - Directory Blog entries

7-29-2006

Clean Up and Updates

A lot of cleanup work was done the last two days. When the directory got initially populated everyone was free to submit listings. We started going through those listings checking for bad apples or bad neighborhood websites and removed them from the directory. This process is still in progress. We also started changing categories around and to make them more clear and straight forward.

7-27-2006

The Value a good directory can provide

Please keep in mind while reading this, that this directory is still in the process of growing and that heavy promotion is happening as we speak. Traffic levels are not extremely high and that makes this posting today very important if you think about submitting your site.

Here are a few screenshots taken from AWStats. The first screenshot shows the URLs of the site that are most popular. Click image to see a large version of this screenshot.

The image shows the URL and in yellow the number of how often this page has been the entry page to "The-USA.net". 23 times was this URL the entry page for visitors. This means that this webmaster received 23 times the exposure he was hoping for when submitting his site to our directory.

Take a look at the number to the far right. 15 - this is the number of how often this page was the exit page for a visitor. Meaning - 15 visitors left this directory from that specific page. Now consider that we do not place ads on this directory and that the page in question had only one active external link highly visible: the URL of the website listed! Yes, some people might have typed a new URL, but chances are pretty high that visitors clicked on this link and visited the site listed on that page.

Let's go onto that specific page. Here is a screenshot:

Two things have been marked by me. First on the left - the missing Alexa.com thumbnail image. This webmaster apparently never bothered to visit Alexa.com to submit information about his website. Here it comes back to haunt him a little bit. How nice would this be for a person interested in his site to see that little thumbnail screenshot Alexa provides and that we use on this directory?

Second - the website description. Click on the image to see it in large and to be able to read everything. This is the important piece. This webmaster spend a good amount of time to write a detailed listing description with good keywords that he submitted to our directory. This description with good keywords in combination with our se-friendly listing and the ongoing website promotion listed this page high enough in search engines that people clicked on it and found this directory. This is the value a good directory is able to provide. You deliver the website URL and description. We do the promotion.

So, submitting websites to directories is a good way to promote a website. What are you waiting for.

7-26-2005

I saw a couple of questions about why submitting websites to pay-for-permissions web directories at all. I think this is a great opportunity to give a little more insight into that topic on our blog.

Submitting your website to web directories is one of the most popular ways of advertising a website on the Internet. It’s also one of the most effective ways to get permanent back links to a site. The-USA.net is a pay for submission directory. That means to become listed a webmaster will have to pay to have his/her site reviewed and eventually listed.

In webmaster forums often the question is raised, why to submit a website to a paid directory when there are so many free directories. The problem with so many free web directories is that most of them are not properly maintained by the owner and good and bad websites are mixed with each other and the directory does not provide any value. A paid directory is usually advertised actively on an ongoing base while most free directories are not.

As the owner of a pay for submission directory I am trying to provide recurring value to anyone listing the website with us. We frequently advertise this directory on many other websites and we  do care about the quality of a) inbound links and b) the quality of websites listed. We also provide an insight into the traffic statistics so that a webmaster can decide for himself/herself if this directory is worth to be considered for a paid listing.

Submitting your site to paid (pay for submission) web directories is worth the money. Web directories like "The-USA.net"  that offer paid submission do their best to increase their own Page Rank and traffic to their own directory site. Submissions are closely monitored and thus, spam-sites or made for ads websites are automatically declined from listings. This way you are assured of a good exposure and getting a link from a clean, "good neighborhood"  website.

7-25-2006

Interesting fact: Currently "The-USA.net" pulls down an average of 4.32 megs of bandwidth per day. Yesterday as an example above average bandwidth usage was recorded with 6.17 MB bandwidth. As I did not do any file upload/download operation (except for updating the blog (1 page)) this seems to point to visitors actually browsing the site. This is a clear benefit for anyone who has a website listed with us. Look forward to a detail posting of July's statistics in early August.

7-24-2006

Up until yesterday this site experienced over 12,000 page views already. I know compared to many other sites that is nothing. But considering that I started actively to do marketing with the end of June this is good news. I am not artificially pushing page views or the number of unique visitors. A single post over at Digitalpoint.com, would double or triple the number of visitors for the month, but that is not that kind of traffic that webmasters would be looking for. They want more organic traffic to hit this site as it is a cleaner indicator of how good this directory is. I will provide screenshots of the monthly stats early in August for the month of July.

7-23-2006

Submitted a paid link at forplex.com today. It's a paid directory where listings are available for about $6.00 a piece. I have to keep track of this link to see if it brings in any traffic as well as to see my listings page after the next Google update. My listing experience was very pleasant. Submission was easy and straight forward. Within less than one hour my submission was approved and visible on the website.

Just did calculate out how much money I have spent this month just on promoting this directory and to advertise it on different websites and other directories. As of today for the month of July I spent $225.80 USD on advertising. If you are a webmaster, this is an important clue for you about the value this directory will be able to provide for you. Keep in mind that advertising will take some time to show results and the next Google update for PR might be interesting to watch.

7-22-2006

I visited the directory announcement forums at Digitalpoint.com today to look for more directories to submit my site to. Ran into another nice looking directory and was ready to submit some sites, when I prompted to register first. This completely turned me off. I hate that. If the registration would add any value to my listings or makes it faster to get listings approved, I am all for it. But if it is there just because - forget. I ain't gonna submit a site there and waste valuable time.

I also spent $4.95 for a listing over dirarchive.com for 2 of my sites. You can find the link back to The-USA.net here.

PS: Links from the blog carry the nofollow tag that Google likes so much. Listings in our directory of course do not carry this tag.

7-1-2006

A new month is here and my monthly budget for July is now available. I want to start the month off with some high value directory listings for this site. Spent $40.00 at Sevenseek.com and $35.00 at WOW Direcotry.

06-30-2006

The month is over. Since I decided to re-work this website around the 20th of the month I have already invested quite some money to better promote this site. As of today $110.28 dollars were spend to promote this forum. I expect to see the first results of this promotion in about 3-4 weeks.

6-25-2006

Wow. Just sold the first two featured listings.

6-23-2006

The new directory is online and unique design has been developed. To start the site off with listings I used the Digitalpoint.com directory announcement forums to populate the website with data (listings).

June 2006

I decided to scrap the old directory as it was outdated software-wise. No easy way to submit a site and of course no search engine friendly behavior either. I purchased a license of phpLinkDirectory to see how far this script can take me.