Business

5 steps to creating an online business directory

Starting an online business directory can be quite easy, but if you have no idea where and how to start, reading this article will help you get started.

Step one:

The first thing to know about starting an online business directory is what your target market will be – in other words, what type of businesses you want to eventually list in your new business directory.

If you already have a current online or offline business, then you will already know your target market and can move on to step two of this article.

However, if you have no idea what your target market will be, then you will have to do some research, I would recommend starting a business directory on something popular and that will bring you income in the future. That will gradually help you grow your current business.

Here are some very popular and profitable niches for an online business directory that you could start with.

1: Property Directory

2: Travel Directory

3: Online Dating Directory

4: Automotive Directory

5: Fashion Directory

There are many more and to find them, go to eBay.com or Amazon.com and see what is popular on those sites, or you can go to Google and do a search for keyword terms like “Popular Niches” or “Popular Niches”. “or” Popular business “gets the idea.

Then, once you’ve decided on the niche for your new business directory, you’ll need to purchase or register your domain name.

Second step:

Buying or registering the correct domain name for your new online business directory will be the most important thing, so you need to make sure you get it right from the start.

A good domain name should be no more than two or three words long, and it should contain the niche name and word directory and should always be a .com. If you can avoid it in another way, you should go for the .net. domain if the .com for the domain you want is already in use and not for sale.

So, for example, if you were to start a new business directory about the real estate niche, the ideal domain name would be RealEstateDirectory.com or RealEstateDirectory.net, but all good domain names like this have already been taken, but they may be available. sale so just visit the website and see.

If you find that the domain name is not for sale, you can also try adding a hyphen between the two words. Click on RealEstate-Directory.com or RealEstate-Directory.net and see if they have been taken or not, and if they are taken to see if they are for sale.

If you have to go with a three word domain name, you can enter something like your town or city name in front of the domain to make it … Like this NewYorkRealEstateDirectory.com or NewYorkRealEstateDirectory.net and see if it’s taken.

A great free online resource that I have found to help you brainstorm a new domain name and see whether or not they have been taken is RegistrarStats.com, give them a try.

Once you have found the domain name for your new online business directory, it is time to register it, I recommend Godaddy.com for this as they are the cheapest and offer the best services.

Step three:

Now that you have your domain name for your new online business directory, it’s time to find a hosting company, and I’ve tried many and the best I’ve found is SeoHosting.com, which is owned by HostGator.com, and they’ve been around for a long time and have thousands of satisfied customers.

Step four:

Now that you have your hosting account for your new online business directory, it is time to create the directory.

Now you can do this in different ways, but it all comes down to how much money you want to spend.

If money is not an option for you, I would recommend hiring a PHP encoder from a website like RentaCoder.com or ScriptLance.com or eLance.com and get them to create a custom solution for you, this way you will create your new directories. of companies stand out from all the other cookie cutter directories that are online these days using a ready-to-use PHP directory script.

Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with these types of scripts, and we used one of ourselves for our own link directory, but we’ve gone one step further and created a custom template for our directory that turned out to be a very good investment.

The directory script we use and recommend if you have a very limited starting budget is PhpLinkDirectory.com.

Step five:

Now we come to the final step and what is the promotion of your new business directory, this can be done with or without spending money.

Below I will list five free and five paid options. You can start to help spread the word about your directory.

Free options:

1: Join online forums and discussion groups related to your new business directory and make a post inviting business owners to include their website / business in their directory for free or at a discount.

2: This one is related to 1: Make sure to add a Sig line that links to your directory in all the posts you make on the forums that you have joined.

3: Submit your business directory to other free online link directories, just do a Google search for the keyword Link directory.

4: Link to your business directory from your other websites that you already own or run this way, search engines will find your directory and index it.

5: Email friends or clients and ask them to link to your business directory and in return link to your website from your directory if relevant.

Payment options:

1: Start a Google AdWords campaign to instantly start driving traffic to your business directory, but be careful because if you don’t know what you’re doing with AdWords, you could end up spending a lot of money to no avail.

2: Buy some paid links from other websites or directories that are similar to your own business directory.

3: Submit your business directory to the Yahoo Directory at a cost of $ 299 per year. Being listed in the yahoo directory will make your directory more trustworthy in the eyes of search engines and your visitors.

4: Buy newspaper advertising offline if your directory is aimed at businesses in your local area.

5: Buy banner ads on other websites that are related to your business directory and try to negotiate for a period of 6 to 12 months because it can greatly reduce your banner advertising costs.

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