The Best Way To Rank a Directory

Hello guys,

I recently purchased an exact name domain (I'm AMAZED nobody owned it).

My plan is to turn it into a nation wide directory for the niche (hairdressing).

However, I'm not sure how to go about the layout of the website, and what would be the best plan of attack to get the individual pages to rank.

My "plan" was to have a page for each area. So "******* hairdresser in London" or whatever. Then, once I get the page to the top 5 on Google. I'll attempt to effectively "rent" the page out to the relevant local businesses, as an advertisement portal.

I was thinking to have some sort of lightbox overlay of the clients website when you visited the page once it had been rented. However, I can't find a suitable WordPress plugin for this. Does anyone know one?

In addition, What would be the best approach to SEO? Just a scattering of PR8/9 backlinks on the main domain, and then a few on the subpages?

Any advice would be great

Anyone got any advice?

Or will I need to have a custom plugin created?

SEO is no different than any other site. Just cover your inner pages. Figure out how to build the site first, chicken then the egg mate.

I suggest you to go with some traffic related service like social media,yahoo answers etc because these will affect better.

ThopHayt said:

SEO is no different than any other site. Just cover your inner pages. Figure out how to build the site first, chicken then the egg mate.

Click to expand...

Sure it is the egg then the chicken.

if i build a directory i build a blog with it ,that way i can search some low competition keywords and make posts about them . i can get traffic and rankings for areas other people arent to bothered about .ranking a page for hairdresser in London would be hard but writing a little article about Rainham in Essex for example for your blog would be much easier . rare images of these areas as featured images can also bring steady traffic if you add your keyword to its description.
if you do something like this it will also save you over keyword stuffing your actual listing
pages and give a secondary purpose for you directory.

Maybe you could try adding it to http://info.vilesilencer.com/ and similar places.

My current plan of action for the day is to use Silos to create linkages between all the pages. Then drive link juicyness to the top page in the silo

Going for just a few high PR links at first.

which cms you use ?

instantppvcc said:

which cms you use ?

Click to expand...

WordPress, just for ease of use for the future potential clients.

Interested to see if you have made any progress on this?

Ranking a local directory is going to happen either for:
-a specific niche
-a specific geolocation

For ranking locally, you couldn't rank for directories, no one searches for them, so you would need a business name like: Atlanta Business Listings LLC or Atlanta Biz News. Of course you need a local address to rank locally for marketing keywords like Atlanta SEO companies, Atlanta Ad Agency, Atlanta PR firm, Atlanta marketing firms, Atlanta marketing agencies, or Atlanta advertising agencies.

Ranking organically, you would rank a niche based site with a name like lawyerfind.com, focusing on City, State, and possibly county names with your niche keyword i.e. Atlanta Lawyers, Savannah Lawyers, Georgia Lawyers etc.

If you are doing a combination for the above, ranking a specified geolocation for a specific niche like San Francisco Salons, and I lived in the area and had a home address I would definitely try to do both organic and local seo for the directory by being portrayed as a local marketing business.

If you have a specified niche you are going after, look for other niche seo companies to partner up with and sell ad space or listings while giving them a split.

There are directory scripts that are sold here on Blackhatworld, as well as through other sources. It seems like it would be a good start to do some research first before jumping in and crafting out a strategy.