How To Create A Directory Website

Everyone dreams of that “holy grail” – a website that makes money on autopilot. Many people, mistakenly, believe that all you need to do is put up a website, add a “buy now” button and magically you will get rich. It doesn’t work like that.

Firstly, your site needs to get visitors. Secondly it needs to be selling something that those visitors want. If you can get that combination right then you will make sales.

One excellent way of making money on autopilot is to set up and run a local business directory website. What do I mean by a directory website for local businesses? I mean a site that lists several businesses in the same niche.

The beauty of a local business directory is that you don’t need thousands of visitors to make it work. Why not? Because you aren’t making money from the visitors, you are making money from the advertisers. What’s important is how many businesses are competing to be found for your target search term(s). Your aim is to get the majority of the visitors using that search term(s). Some of my most successful sites only receive around 30 – 50 unique visitors a day. But they are all looking for the same thing and there are several businesses competing for their custom – and they are all happy to join my site(s) so they can be found in that all important position in Google. Aim for positions 1 to 3 on page 1. Obviously being no1 is the best place to be!

Why just one niche? Because it’s much easier to SEO a site that focuses on one niche – real estate agents, chiropractors, taxis, car dealers, for example.

Having an exact match, keyword targeted domain name is a great help with SEO.
It makes it much easier for site visitors to find the information they want. The success of your site will depend on your visitors actually finding the business they want and either clicking through to their website or contacting them. A large, muddly, site with lots of options and lots of different business types will just confuse your visitors – they will leave without clicking through and your advertisers won’t be happy.

How do you build a Directory Web site so that it will get those all important visitors and make you those sales?

First, do your research. Think of a specific niche or niches. For example, suppose you want to set up a directory site for dentists in Chicago. Then use the Google keyword tool to help you identify the most searched for phrase/phrases associated with that niche.

Don’t be put off if you live in a small town and there are only a few dentists, plumbers, riding instructors – or whatever profession you are targeting. Directory sites in small towns can work very well. The key point to look for here is this – are there more businesses in that niche than will fit onto page 1 of Google? If there are, then these are exactly the type of businesses who will be interested in paying to list on your site. Your aim is to get your site onto page 1 of Google – the businesses who haven’t made it to page 1 will be keen to get on your site to promote themselves.

Now head to your domain registrar and see if there are any domains available that are an exact match for your search phrase. When searching for exact match domains it never ceases to amaze me how many have been purchased but aren’t being used. What a waste. Take “Chicago dentists” as an example. At the time of writing this – chicagodentist.info is a generic registrars advertising page, chicagodentist.com is a blog, chicagodentist.net is “under construction”, dentistchicago.com redirects to a real site, chicagodentist.info is a generic advertising page.

This is good news for you. None of these feature on page 1 of Google for a search term that gets 3600 monthly searches in phrase match. A golden opportunity for a well SEO’d site to rank well. There are still some variations of the words “Chicago” “dentist” “dentists” and a strategically placed “in” available if you want to have a go with this niche.

Once you’ve registered the site you need to install a classified ads directory theme or plug-in. Now comes the work. You need to add some keyword rich content to start getting your site listed. Add a blog to your site and start writing about the benefits of using a Chicago homoeopath, or staying in a Chicago hotel – or whatever the niche of your site is.

Then you need to start promoting your site – all the usual SEO techniques work well here. Social bookmarking, online directories, article directories, well chosen forum/blog commenting (please don’t spam your links on unrelated forums with pointless posts). If you have a VA – then this is work that they could easily do for you.

Once your site has reached page 1 on Google, you can start contacting local businesses – and start asking them to pay to list on your site. This has several benefits – with real listings your site has more content, so will rise even further in the search results. Once your paying customers start getting business via your site they will recommend your site to their colleagues – so you get even more paying customers.

If your directory theme or plug-in allows for automatic rebilling, then the site will, literally, run on auto-pilot once you have the first few clients on board. They will be automatically emailed and rebilled each year. No need for you to lift a finger.

The perfect auto-pilot business.

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