Free advertising

[Search For Shops]

My site: [url="http://www.searchforshops.com"]www.searchtheshops.com[url] is new shopping directory, allowing customers to either promote their site, or for them to view new shops that are listed within the site.

At the moment, to sign up for an account and submit a listing is free, however this will be going up to £4.99
when we have a good amount of customers.

Also available is the chance to have your banner in circulation on every page on the site for just £14.99, normally this would be for for 30 days. But as the sites new, we are offering a special deal for 3 months at
the normal £14.99.

[wapurvis]

It can be a good idea, but search engines distinguish between simple link-backs and reciprocal links and dont rank the latter very highly when indexing (I know, i've worked for them! lol)

[fisicx]

A search for 'shopping directories', 'shop directories', and 'retail directories' produces a SERP of 3,2 and 1 million hits respectively.

And whilst I have admiration for your endeavours - do you really think you stand a chance of getting near the top of the SERP?

In any case, there is new evidence that directories are no longer a useful SEO tool: Google.com Cache Problems Grow For Directories And Large Websites.

I suggested to another directory owner about the need for a USP. Make your directory personal - vet and comment on each listing, allow for customers to comment on the store and investigate niche areas and specialist outlets.

A DB driven directory is an easy site to build. And because it is easy for you it is easy for everybody. And easy solutions will not make you money - there are too many people working their socks off who will trump you every time.

What are you doing to drive pople to your site? And when I get there, what do you offer to make them want to sign up?

Incidentally, your j-bid.com banner is wider than the page width givin me horizontal scrolling. In any case, it takes customers away from your directory to an auction site - is that good for your business?

[sharpendtraining]

I don't like the pink deco (OK maybe thats just personal - It is the sort of pink I would use on say an underwear shop)

But I found it quite difficult to read

No about us and no contact details save a web form - means I wouldn't spend there....

[JustOneUK]

There have definately been a number of issues raised about the Digital Point co-op, most remain undecided. I would not want to have my classifieds site blacklisted in any way, however it may well be worthwhile experimenting with a new (or lesser) site.
You cannot stop people from linking to you, and if someone chose to do so from several thousand sites... so be it, but joining a network makes me think twice, you hear a lot about linking and link farms on the web, and with the profile of the co-op...who knows!

James.

[PintoPotts]

I would be interested in this scheme, please send me a pm with details.

[Himore]

Personally I would prefer a low volume of highly targetted traffic, rather than a high volume of people who've basically been 'conned' into stumbling upon the site.

I tried a link exchange years ago, and in the end just stopped accepting requests from people with completely unrelated sites wanting to link to my page. It will do you no favours with Google, as one of their top factors for getting a good pagerank is that of the relevancy of links to your site.

If you sell car parts, for example, and have a load of links to your site from people who sell baby items, or gardening products, then that is doing you no good. Links to your site from car forums and auto dealers would, however, be good.

There are numerous ways of driving traffic to your site, but really think about the quality of the traffic you'll be getting before choosing an option.

Also, as mentioned by other people, links to other sites on a commercial webpage look very unprofessional (unless there is a very good reason for that). You want to keep people on your site and not give them multiple exit strategies for leaving in the form of external links.

Nick

[karenlim]

Hi I agree with Himore.

There is no shortcut to building a good foundation.
The key fundamental is still giving your target audience high quality content
which can provide value to them.

Blogging can be a mode to provide them the content as we talk about life experiences on the topic we are well versed in. For the same reason I update my blog at least alternative days

[speedyturtle]

Thanks for that ill give it a try.


SPEEDY
enjoy

[Mack]

Good thing i have seen digital point is very good web tool i enjoyed it an thanks for giving it here.