Hosting a Niche Directory on your Site
-
I'm keen to hear feedback from anyone who has installed a directory onto their e-commerce site.
By directory, I mean that - subject to human review and possibly a small fee - a relevant site owner in my niche can create a listing that is effectively a page on my site where they control the main content, links & images.
People using our site would enter the directory section from our resources / advice top level category and browse the index of the directory to reach a listed site's dedicated page.The idea for it came up when we were discussing ways to get more backlinks. Offering people a whole page directory listing seems like a good way of negotiating a link in return that isn't just from the other site's link page.
I'm looking for everyone's stories on this: your reasons for doing it, how you went about it and the tools you used and what your results where, in particular: was it worth it?
We aren't thinking about starting a new site for the directory, it would be added onto our main site (which is old and has good PR etc etc). However, it would still be good to hear from both sides of the fence on that issue.
Over to you.
J
-
Hi! We're going through some of the older unanswered questions and seeing if people still have questions or if they've gone ahead and implemented something and have any lessons to share with us. Can you give an update, or mark your question as answered?
Thanks!
-
Thank you Eric,
Speed is also one of our priorities and I'd be delighted to have good reason to buy some more server vrooom.
The charge for a listing idea was just being thorough, I doubt we really will, after all, we want backlinks. Affiliate links are a better of raising some nice lunch money.
You're spot on about the niche relevancy & user experience - we hope the directory will be popular, judging by all the calls we get about related products that we don't sell!
Was your site selling any / many products? Was there some clever tracking going on around people who left the site through the directory?
J
-
I have a some experience in this. I added a directory package to an already up-and-running site, utilizing eDirectory (http://www.edirectory.com/) and we kept it on the same domain (ex: directory.example.com). Overall, aside from a few hick-ups, the installation and implementation went well, and search engines are crawling the directory. The tough part is to make sure that your template on the edirectory, matches your site. This was easy with navigation and not so easy with banner ads, but we eventually got it looking good. Depending on the size of your site, expectations of your directory and resources, you may want to consider diversifying the hosting of the directory onto separate (virtual) machines, but that's of course up to you.
The one thing I did want to mention is that when creating a directory, especially if you're considering charging for ANY aspect of it, is thinking of it from a visitor prospective. Why would I want to pay (or spend time uploading to) a directory to host info/images/etc I could do elsewhere, or am already doing elsewhere? Having a niche site might negate that question, tho. Good luck!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Will GA Autotrack affect affiliate sites not using autotrack?
I want to add autotrack.js to affiliate quote forms hosted on my site. However, I do not know how it will affect affiliate websites (not associated with my quote forms, but with the same Google Analytics code, that do not use autotrack. I read that "Autotrack is not an official Google Analytics product and does not qualify for GA Premium". Will it harm my affiliates in any way to have autotrack on their quote form but not on their websites? It will have their GA website tracking number.
Affiliate Marketing | | RoxBrock0 -
International Re-sellers Scrapping My Site Should I be Worried?
We are a USA based company and we only sell direct to the US and Canada. However, we have partnered with other companies that are now distributing our products in other places like Australia and Mexico for example. These partners have scrapped our site and have used large chunks of our content to create a website for themselves on their intentional domains (ex.. .au and .mx). How concerned should I be about this? Should I reach out to them and require that they use rel="alternate" hreflang="x" or request the to stop? I have never had to deal with international SEO issues before, so any advice and direction would be appreciated!
Affiliate Marketing | | ChadC0 -
Affiliate site
I have a client I am doing SEO work for. He sells a system that helps people win at video keno. He sells a system for like $200 that shows people step by step how to play and win. Its a good site and he has a ton of verified winnings. My point in saying that, its not a fly-by-night system he wrote in his basement. I know - gambling, not easy for SEO. I don't know why I didn't think of this sooner. Wouldn't this potentially be perfect for affiliate marketing? He offers a good commission to whoever sends him traffic if they buy. If anybody could direct me to a resource or two that is reputable and would handle as much of the set up and management of this I would be very grateful! Thank you! Matthew
Affiliate Marketing | | Mrupp440 -
In what ways would an affiliate site be okay with Google?
I know Google has slammed affiliate sites hard. But affiliate marketing can be a real business and had an idea for one, but I would like to know if ALL affiliate sites are looked at as evil in Google's eyes, or if it's just those with thin and duplicate content in the product descriptions. I know they want brands to come up ahead of affiliates of that brand, and that makes sense. If I sold Acme Widgets products, Acme Widgets itself should come up ahead of my site. But what if the site sold widgets in general, with the term widgets not a branded keyword? If all product descriptions are unique and well-written content, on a site that is high quality, would it still be downgraded by Google just because there are affilate links in it? I guess overall the question could be boiled down to, are affiliate sites hit because they have horrible content or because they have links to affiliate programs in them?
Affiliate Marketing | | bizzer0 -
Google Analytics Tracking Pixels for Third-Party sites???
Hello, Does anyone know if it is possible to track an event on a third party site and have it post back to your Google Analytics account? For example, I am sending traffic to a partners site and I want to know if that traffic I am sending them will hit a specific point of conversion (a sale) and I'm wondering if it possible to place a tracking pixel on their thankyou.html page that gets recorded in my google analytics?
Affiliate Marketing | | shawn810 -
Using follow links on client and resellers site
Hi, i have a backup software product that I sell to business. I would like to create a badge that says something like "powered by x backups". This would be an image with a href url pointing back to my company site. I would intend to give the client a discount if they were to place the small logo in the footer section of their website. I would also like to offer this to resellers. For example "Authorised reseller of x backups" badge that could be placed on the resellers website. I would like to do this for two reasons: To promote my company to the visitors of the clients website To build link juice Would this be effective in building quality links? It this type of link building allowed by google? If not, how strict are they? Is there any variation of my intended promotion strategy that would be more effective? Thanks
Affiliate Marketing | | blakadz0 -
Google Panda & Effects On Affiliate Sites
Quick Question, We all have heard that outbound links for affiliate marketing will be filtered via Panda however how does this work when using the Google Affiliate Network URL's? Has anyone found different signals with using Google vs. Another Network?
Affiliate Marketing | | Ben-HPB0 -
Specialized on a Niche.
Here is a question,
Affiliate Marketing | | stakouman
if i have a keyword that have over 150.000 searches/Month and the competitors are very low, but if i give the keyword on google search, the site that are listed at top 10 have a Page Rank from 2 to 5, or even 8.
How can i know if the Page Rank from this sites, have to do with the keyword i wont to optimized? Does the Page Rank have effect to the top 10 Ranking, even if this sites are not specially optimized for this keyword.
A example:
www.amazon.de has a PR 8, they sell Books. If i wont to Optimized for a specially book Category, do i can compare to the amazon? or because the Central Page has a PR8, it does have effect on all the under-sites by Amazon, and it will be to difficult to Optimized for this? even if the Searches for the special category are a lot and google keyword says the competitors are low? How can i see if the PR has to do with the keyword, or the site just have this kind of PR without being specialized for the keyword i look after? thanks for all
stavros0