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Referral Directories

Are Directories and portals a good value for money? Absolutely!

Here is a valuable resource that is often overlooked by website owners in favor of pay per click (PPC) search engines. While PPC search engines provide excellent traffic for relevant keywords (often at high cost), directories and portals have the ability to provide a steady stream of extremely targeted traffic. Permanent listings in some of the better directories/portals often only cost the price of one weekly ezine ad (and in some case much less). The Attorney Store Business Directories

In most cases these sites usually don’t provide the mega traffic that pay per click search engines can provide (you usually have to pay for mega traffic generated like that) and certainly won’t guarantee you traffic (not even the big boys will “guarantee” traffic, read their terms), but they do help gain extra exposure over time, and quite often the traffic you do receive grows as they grow.

So what are some other benefits of being listed in these sites?

• You don’t have to worry about fraudulent click throughs carving up your advertising costs.

Some web site owners with big advertising budgets spend literally tens of thousands of dollars per month often losing a few grand because of unscrupulous affiliates through false click throughs, plus there is always debate whether some PPC search engines themselves use unscrupulous tactics. (Do some research). On the other hand, with small directories and portals you pay once only for your listing and often it's listed for life. List your site and walk away.

• Increased traffic from search engines.

Directories and portals are divided into categories and your site is listed in a category relevant to its content. These categories are similar to little niche pages; the difference is they don’t generally contain the textual content of a niche page, instead, containing only links relevant to that niche

What does this mean for your site? You now have yet another link pointing back to your site from a web page that is relevant to your content. Search engines like that. This can give you slightly higher rankings in search engines increasing traffic to your site. Benefit: You now get extra traffic from being listed in the directory/portal and the major search engines favor you slightly more, which in turn increases search engine traffic to your site. Increased targeted traffic is always welcome especially when it is free or extremely low cost. Submit your business listing for free to the MerchantCircle.com business directory.

• Quality traffic

Directories and portals generate quality-targeted traffic producing higher conversion of sales. Quality not quantity, saving you bandwidth and at the same time convert more visitors that arrive to your site.

How do you find them?

Major search engines are a good start, although, often you can sift through many results before finding a good general directory to list your site in. So dig, there’s gold in those search listings. Often directories themselves will have a category for directories, follow through with your research and you will find a few that may suite your needs.

• Ok. I’m listed, what now?

Keep your listing updated!! This extremely important area is often overlooked by the owners or marketing departments of web sites. Thousands of businesses are losing thousands of dollars (in some cases per day) simply because their listings are not up to date. Many directories have the facility for updating listings, if not email them and request it. Its worth the small effort, updating once a month to 2 months should be fine for most sites/businesses.

The value of the “directory or portal listing” shouldn’t be overlooked when considering an advertising budget. Some listings yield results immediately, while looking from a minimumalist perspective, some take a little time before the results happen. One thing is for sure “your traffic will be quality traffic”. Its something all web site owners are looking for.

Use directories/portals in addition to PPC search engines and reap the benefits of this great online resource. Are they good long term value? Absolutely!

The Attorney Store Directories