The Real Truth about Niche Directories…

In my opinion, the easy part of Internet Marketing is building a website. Build a site that looks good, contains useful content, and is attractively and logically laid out and you're in the money, right?

Well, not exactly. Now comes the hard part. How can you get visitors to your site?

One good way is to determine how your site differs from others. Try to determine what particular niche the site fits into. Then, niche directories can help give you an edge over the competition.

Niche directories are especially useful because they can help build theme-related links. A niche directory is made up of links that specialize in some particular area, or point to sites that offer a product for a non-general audience - an audience that usually has more money to spend, and more incentive to spend it.

Advantages of Niche Directories

Search engines are now placing more emphasis on the relevant anchor text and the theme of the links coming into your site. That means links from sites that are related to yours may end up weighing in your favor when it comes to getting a higher placement in the SERPs.

What's good for the search engines is also important for other visitors. People who actively look for niche directories are highly targeted visitors. When they come to your site, they're likely to be eager to read your reviews, sign up for your newsletter, join your forum, and check out your products or advertisements. They may even be more targeted than a visitor who comes straight from a Google search, since they chose your site from all the sites in that niche directory.

Whether your ideal visitor is into classic car restoration who is looking for that hard-to-find 1932 Ford carburetor, or a physician looking for integrated medical software, they have one thing in common. They are both people who are searching for specialized goods and services, they're motivated to spend, and they usually don't mind paying top dollar.

Since niche directories are usually smaller and, by definition, more focused, they can help your site become much easier to find. Both potential customers and search engine spiders will find it easier to discover you.

Finding Niche Directories

As with other things, it takes an extra investment of time to locate a directory in your niche. The vast majority of web directories combine many niches under one general umbrella site.

One way to locate directories is to go to a large meta-search engine, such as Dogpile (www.dogpile.com), and type in "niche + search engine." You will have to wade through a lot of junk to find what you're looking for. But the advantage of using Dogpile is that it allows you to compare results from several of the biggest search engines at once.

Another, but more tedious method, is to hunt for niche portals and blogs that contain links pages. Social bookmarking communities, such as Spurl (www.spurl.net) or del.icio.us (http://del.icio.us/) are even better places to hunt around for topical lists of websites. That's more work, but should pay off handsomely in the future.

Sample Niche Directories

Here are a few samples of what you might find when searching through Niche Directories.

Art Online www.art-online.com
Niche: Art. Free. Review process timeframe is open ended.

AutoGuide www.autoguide.net
Niche: Autos. Free and paid listings. Extensive site review process.

Business.com www.business.com
Niche: Business $199 annual inclusion or pay-per-click (PPC) listings.

Horse Web www.horseweb.com
Niche: Horses. $25 per month for featured placement. Review 3-5 weeks.

Pet Web www.petwebsite.com/links.asp
Niche: Pets. $50 per year, free for non-profits.

Keep looking and linking, and soon you will see your traffic and profits increase to where you always knew they could be