Bid-for-position web directories, or just “bid directories”, are an thrilling new way to get text hyperlinks. As the name suggests these directories let web site owners and visitors to bid for a higher position in the listings. Traditional web directories, by contrast, list hyperlinks by some predetermined criterion, such as alphabetical order, Google PageRank, listing date, and so on. Bid directories let folks not only to bid for a top position but also to enhance their bids as required to sustain the position.
Why get text hyperlinks? A website without having links is like a company in the middle of nowhere. Links are the electronic roads that connects your internet site with the rest of the planet. If “place, place, location” is the mantra for a building a successful brick-and-mortar business, then “links, links, links” ought to be 1 for a productive site. Besides becoming a source for direct targeted traffic, text links aid drive targeted traffic to a web site indirectly by rising a site’s rankings in search engine final results.
Though natural links, i.e. hyperlinks placed voluntarily by other webmasters to your site, are preferable to bought ones, it may not be practical to rely on natural hyperlinks alone, specially for a commercial web site that competes with countless other people providing related goods and services. Unless your web site is truly distinctive and helpful to individuals, a category to which most websites do not belong, getting links may possibly be your best alternative to boost your link recognition.
The guidelines for acquiring text links on bid directories are related to these on other internet sites. Basically put, you ought to acquire links in a way that simulates natural linking. Your link profile looks much more natural when your inbound links come from directories with a range of Google PageRanks (PR). Though there is natural tendency to target only high-PR directories, a link on a promising new bid directory, which may or could not have a PageRank, can be a very good investment down the line. Besides, PR indicates nothing to other search engines, including Yahoo!, MSN, and AOL.
Maybe the most critical element for deciding no matter whether or not to get a link on a selected bid directory is how aggressively it is marketed. The very first question to ask is, how several other sites link to the directory in question? But marketing goes beyond the sheer amount of inbound links. The subsequent question to ask is, where are the links are coming from? You can get an idea of a site’s link profile by querying “link:www.domainofinterest.com” (without having the quotes) on Yahoo!. Whilst inbound hyperlinks from competing bid directories is certainly 1 way to create hyperlinks to the directory, it must not be the only way. The directory’s hyperlinks look more natural when they come from diverse sources, such as article directories, social bookmarking internet sites, blogs, and forums.
The Google PageRank of a directory is typically a excellent indicator of how aggressively it is marketed, but PR could also be one of deception. For instance, an unscrupulous webmaster might replace the content material of an current PR-7 website with a potentially far more lucrative bid directory and market it as a “PR-7 bid directory”. A tell-tale sign that this has occured is when the domain name of the directory has absolutely nothing to do with web directories or search engines. An additional very good sign is when its category subpages are PR- or do not have PRs at all. That is not even to mention the many techniques bogus PRs might be obtained.
Most bid directories are produced from commercially accessible scripts customized to the siteowners’ tastes. The level of customization is indicative of the directory owner’s effort to stand out from the crowd and often their commitment to do whatever it requires to make their website succeed. So, all else becoming equal, it’s far better to go with a bid directory with a very customized style than 1 that looks like a hundred other people.
Numerous bid directories categorize hyperlinks alphabetically by the first letters of their titles, as a telephone book lists people’s names. These directories are not particularly helpful to visitors searching for web sites on a specific topic, say gardening. Visitors should not have to click on each and every letter from A through Z to find sites pertaining to gardening. Considerable time would be saved if the web sites had been categorized by subject, e.g. “Property and Garden”, rather than the 1st letter of their titles. A lot more importantly, hyperlinks that are grouped with others of related content are viewed as far more relevant by the search engines than these grouped with unrelated internet sites. As an advertiser, you’ll get far more for your dollars from a directory that sifts websites into topical categories than one that makes use of alphabetical categories– all else being equal.
Let me finish this write-up with a word of caution. Whilst bid directories should be a aspect of your link creating campaign, do not put all your eggs in one basket by relying too heavily on them. There is a bit of a novelty element in bid directories, and no one knows no matter whether they will set a new trend in advertising or eventually die down as another fad.
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