You Hot PJ blog readers are a clever lot so I don’t have to tell you that there’s no point forking out for the design and development of your website if no one can find it!

The more qualified visitors your website receives, the greater your brand awareness and the more leads you receive.

So what is a cost effective way to improve your online presence? Assuming that your website is well designed and well optimised for search engines – if not, give us a shout!

One method is to add yourself to online web directories. Read on to find out which are some of the more effective at getting you results.

What’s the difference between a search engine and a web directory ?

A search engine – Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. – indexes website pages and ranks them in terms of relevance when people search for words on those sites.

A traditional web directory specifically categorises websites that are manually submitted to the directory. A good example of when you might get more relevant results from a directory rather than a search engine is when you search for something like a bakery in a specific location. Think Yellow Pages rather than Google.

What are the benefits of being in a web directory?

A good web directory will provide you with three things:

1. More reach. If a web directory is easy to use and promotes itself well, people will go to that directory to search for information, products and services. If you aren’t listed with that directory you may be missing out on leads.

2. Incoming links. Search engines like Google will rank a site more highly if it has a number of good quality incoming links – that is, websites that feature a hyperlink to your own website. The more links you have from reputable sites, the higher your chances are of appearing well in search results.

3. Actual search engine results. Have you ever searched for a company and seen search results featuring entries from NZS.com, Finda and Hotfrog? It’s not uncommon for a company’s entry in a web directory to appear BEFORE the same company’s own website! Good web directories know search engine optimisation inside-out and are always pushing for good search rankings.

Even if you don’t have your own website (and perhaps ESPECIALLY if you don’t have your own website) you can put enough information into a web directory listing to start building yourself an online presence.

3 Web Directories Worthy of a Listing

There are literally hundreds of free web directories out there. Many of those even add your website to their directories without your input. But some directories are certainly better than others. Let’s take a look at just three of the more professional looking directories.

Finda.co.nz

If you’ve done a lot of searching online, no doubt you will have seen the Finda name appearing in search results. Unlike some other directories, Find allows you to add up to 10 images with your listing. Very handy if you want to show off some of your products or services.

Finda also offers a free e-mail service that provides you with statistics on your entry. It can be quite handy to know how many times your entry has appeared in search results and how many people have clicked on that entry.

To put Finda into context, let’s take a look at the results for the “Trocadero Bakery” search term:

Trocadero don’t have their own website and yet they appear at the top of the search results. All of these results are from free web directory listings – Finda, Wises and AA Maps.

Also worth noting is that the fifth result is a blog article from our own Hot PJ blog! We had a bit of fun reviewing hot cross buns last year and wrote a blog article on our results. Don’t neglect the power of blogs for great search engine presence!

Finda states that it receives over 500,000 page views per month.

HotFrog.co.nz

Hotfrog is very similar to Finda. It’s simple to use and offers examples of good descriptions throughout the submission process. My personal experience is that it doesn’t have as much exposure as Finda but it’s still worth submitting your company details to increase your reach as it’s so easy to use.

Hotfrog states that it receives over 250,000 page views per month.

NZS.com

In many ways, NZS.com is in a different league to the other two directories. NZS is the only site of the three that provides a wealth of resources and information from reputable professionals to help you market your business online. NZS is actually more of a search engine combined with a web directory with a whole heap of resources thrown in for free!

NZS.com also operate a blog, a Twitter account and a Facebook account – all designed to add value and increase the online presence of the NZS.com site and your company’s listing.

NZS.com visitor number statistics state that it was reaching over 1,400,000 page views a month last year!

In Summary

You could spend hours and hours adding yourself to the mass of directories that are out there and, for a large number of them, it wouldn’t be worth your time. But you really can increase your search rankings by adding quality entries to a few reputable directories.

If you’re only going to list your company with one web directory this year, I would make it NZS.com. There’s a heap of features and information to help you get started and the site is constantly growing and developing.

If you have time, add yourself to the other key New Zealand web directories mentioned here as well, and also add yourself to the Open Directory Project – an international directory that many search engines recommend listing your company with.

However! Don’t neglect your own website! It’s no good increasing your site’s visitor numbers if your website isn’t converting visitors to sales. If you would like a free website review guide, drop us a line and our Christchurch based web design team we’ll e-mail one to you.

Posted on January 14th, 2010 by Mark Lincoln
Filed under: Marketing, Social Media, Websites