Building a Successful Web Directory

Building and maintaining a web directory can be a difficult task and time consuming. I will cover a few ways that you can optimize your directory and get the most out of your web directory. The promotion for a web directory has also changed now that Google has stopped paid links.

This article will be most useful for someone thinking about starting a web directory and has not yet established one. When starting a web directory you will first need to buy a domain, do some research for a domain. Generally its best to buy domains with the keyword in it, but seeing as there are so many domains already bought with the keyword directory in it, this may be hard. Its best to have an idea or template that you want to put up on your web directory before you even open it. It is well worth the money if you purchase a custom template for your directory.

Once you have a domain and a template you will need to figure out what type of directory it will be… the most popular directories now are probably PHP. They have some free versions of PHPlinkdirectory. Promotion is the key to your web directory, this will make a big difference. Start off submitting your directory to as many web directories that you can find to get more backlinks. You can even take it a step further and write some articles and submit them to article directories. Socializing on forums and submitting your site to Directory Critic will also result in a good amount of traffic.


Before Google penalized paid links, buying and selling links for directories were a popular way to promote your site, this can still be done on high PR directories but no-follow will be turned on and you will only receive traffic from this. Another good way to promote your directory is get a banner made and ask other directories if they will put up your banner on their site, but most likely you will have to pay a fee per month for this.

Running a web directory can be time consuming and frustrating because most people who run them will not see much income. Adsense isn’t a great way to make money with directories because most people that go to directories are only there to submit their website. One alternative to making money with your directory is by selling advertising space, for example this could be a banner or just simple text. But remember you have to put no-follow on or otherwise you will be penalized by Google if this is caught. In the early stages of your directory it will be very hard to make money, the best thing to do is avoid banners or ads for the first 4-6 months until you have made your directory a name in the community.

Once you get a PR3 or PR4 on your directory this is when you will most likely start to see some money being made, whether it is from featured links or selling banner space to other sites. You can set a per month fee for the banner space. Another advantage of having a web directory is utilizing the email templates that are sent out to users who submit their site to your directory. You can use the template to promote other sites you may have or even a friend’s site. One of the biggest make and breaks for a directory is the way you edit the links that are submitted to your directory. This is very important that you must review every link that is submitted to the right category and use correct English and grammar in their titles and descriptions. It’s also a good idea to check the page that is being submitted to make sure it’s appropriate for your directory. This may be time consuming but it will ensure only quality sites will be listed in your directory.

by Todd Daon