Is Building a Local Directory of Businesses on a Subdomain Good SEO?
-
Hello Fellow Moz'ers:
I own a small digital shop in a major US city. We had a marketing idea which I'd like some input on the soundness of. We are creating a professional services directory of 'digital professional services providers' in our hometown. The directory's membership will only be open to firms located within our city limits. The directory will be curated and maintained, ongoing, by us.
Our motivation is 75% selfish and 25% benevolent. The idea is that, by building the directory on our subdomain, we hopefully will collect links, which ultimately will enhance search visibility. But I'm concerned about the devaluation directories have incurred in recent years and I've even seen advice given to the effect that listings in some directories might be harmful to a site's link profile. It is not our intention to harm those who might list in our directory.
Any thoughts on this matter would be greatly appreciated!
-
Hi David!
Interesting topic! I'd like to show you something here on Moz that might help hash this out bit more. This our our recommended companies list:
https://moz.com/rand/recommended-list-seo-consultants/
This section of our site (which resides on the main domain, not a subdomain) helps people find various types of marketers they need for different services. I don't believe it has earned a ton of links; it's just a pretty straightforward resource for the marketing community that many companies feel proud to be included on. So, that's one approach - if you feel your customers would benefit from knowing of other digital service providers you trust in your city, then build the resource on your own website for the sake of usefulness, and maybe you'll earn a few links to it. Better, maybe some networking opportunities would arise for you for real-world work with related agencies in your city.
The alternative I see would be to start a completely separate business - a directory - on its own domain. Depending on the size of your city and the number of companies offering these types of services in that city, management could be a minor effort or become a full time job. I've never build a directory, but I did curate one back in the good 'ol days once and it was a big hassle, so my view of this is a bit biased, based on that experience. That was back when you could plonk a bunch of Adsense on something like a directory and earn a bit of money. The challenge today would be how your business would directly benefit from undertaking this second path of running a free-standing directory.
I'm no authority when it comes to directories. Yes, many have been devalued over the years, but local ones can still be useful in markets that aren't too saturated. The question mark for me in this scenario would be whether you would see some form of ROI for the effort.
Hope these thoughts are helpful!
-
Thanks for the answer, Billy. Since we've already built it, I'll launch it on another domain. The intentions are all above board.
-
I think you can do better things before, like try to find opportunities on existing local directories, town halls, local events...
If your shop was in a small city it could be a good idea, but in big one ...
-
I would say--and many may disagree with me--that if you are building a directory to honestly help users than that is great. However, to do so on a subdomain of your company's website is very likely going to seem fishy. I wouldn't do that, personally.
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
-
Local Schema
Hey, Were adding schema to a website and I was wondering how it would be best to tackle a business that has two location. Would it be better to put it on two different pages or on one page using one or two itemscopes. Thanks, Luke.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NoisyLittleMonkey0 -
Are paid directories any good?
Hi Everyone, I have have listing our site in free directories. Are there any paid directories that are worth listing in? Our company and site is based in New Zealand. Thanks, Pete
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Hardley10 -
Mobile SEO
Hey, In the following article, Google recommended using a 301 redirect but doesn't specify why. http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2011/02/making-websites-mobile-friendly.html I assume this is to pass over link equity to the relevant mobile/desktop variation. Can anyone confirm this? Also is there any other reason? Again assuming this would keep the correct URLs in the correct index? Anything else anyone can chip in would be great. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CraigAddyman0 -
How much % of directories are punished?
Hi I was checking a site and I found lots of directory listings. 70% of the directories are punished in the list which I created (pagerank 0). Except from the directories which are listed here in seomoz, how much % of the others outside are punished? Also I noticed that this punished directories with pagerank 0 have most of them authority 30-40 according to the seomoz tool bar. I should bother to put a link or not? Why I see this difference? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nyanainc0 -
How to promote good content?
Our team just finished a massive piece of content.. very similar to the SEOmoz Begginer's Guide to SEO, but for the salon/aesthetics industry. We have a beautifully designed 10 Chapter, 50-page PDF which will require an email form submission to download. Each chapter is optimized for specific phrases, and will be separate HTML pages that are publicly available... very much like how this is setup: http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo My question is, what's the best way to promote this thing? Any specific examples would be ideal. I think blogger outreach would likely be the best approach, but is there any specific way that I should be doing this?.. Again a specific start-to-finish example is what I'm looking for here. (I've read almost every outreach post on moz, so no need to reference them) Anyone care to rattle off a list of ideas with accompanying examples? (even if they seem like no-brainers.. I'm all ears)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ATMOSMarketing560 -
How to be a good SEO optimizer while competing with a good ranked Bad SEO optimizer?
My keywords are very competitive. My on page optimization report gives A grade for all the keywords I want to target to my Root domain. But my root domain does not show up on search engines for those same keywords. So thanks to SEOmoz i have managed to understand the place I lack is good link building. My competitors have done lot of link building through spamming, commenting on blogs, directories etc. Now according to good seo, this is not right. What do i do? I get digging more in it, i realized that i am getting traffic mostly for less globally searched keywords. But my competitors get high traffic from well searched keywords. How do i cope with such competition? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MiddleEastSeo0 -
Do interstitials hurt SEO?
If you go to www.homeportfolio.com and click on one of the links in the footer. you'll notice you are presented with an interstitial. Can you tell me if that hurts our SEO and if we lose any link juice or suffer in any other way as a result of this linking method? my main concern is whether having anchor text that says "bathroom ideas" that goes to an interstitial that doesn't mention bathroom ideas is non-relevant... even if it refreshes 12 seconds to a page that is.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KaplanSEM0 -
Do you think video syndication is a good link building tactic?
I am creating a process & strategy for publishing videos and would like some feedback on if it is worth syndicating the videos on multiple third party sites either manually or via TubeMogul. Currently the plan is to put the video on our main site, create a video sitemap, submit to webmaster tools so that hopefully the videos on our site show up in the SERPs. Then wait a week and syndicate on third party sites such as youtube, vimeo, viddler, etc. Are there any negative side affects? My thinking is that some people may only see the video if it is on youtube and the other niche sites because they may search those sites for videos rather than Google/Bing. Your thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | elephantseo0