by: David G Hallstrom
The following article was written for and originally published by Resources For Attorneys.com.
You are an attorney or other service or product provider. You have built an excellent web site, it looks good, it is well optimized and it tells your clients and prospective clients or customers everything they need to know in order to do business with you or purchase your product. You have submitted your site to the major and many minor search engines. Now all you need to do is sit back and wait for clients or customers to come flowing in, right? Wrong.
As the number of websites grow on the internet, it is getting more and more difficult for web sites, even excellent web sites, to obtain good rankings in the search engines. Nowdays it appears that in order to obtain good search engine rankings (somewhere on the first page for your catagory) you must have your meta tags, format and text just right, and then you have to get tons of other web sites to link to you. Even if you do everything right there are still numerous other businesses out there also doing everything right. Therefore, you still might not obtain good rankings. Even if you do obtain good rankings today, the search engines might change there way of ranking sites next week, and your site might well drop or even dissapear from the rankings.
Additionally, it is estimated that nearly 200 million adults use the internet as a source to search for products, services or information, and this number is likely to grow each year. As the number of websites grow on the internet, it is getting increasingly difficult for web surfers to find the product or service that they need. As a result, web surfers are turning to online specialty or niche directories, such as the legal and service directories from Resources For Attorneys.com or the Lifestyle Directories from Resources For Attorneys, to sift through the numerous websites and locate the product, service or information that they need.
Specialty and niche directories normally charge a small fee, $3.00 to $100.00 per year, for your listing. They are usually much smaller and have far fewer listings than the regular search engines. This makes it easier for you to obtain a good listing and it makes it easier for consumers that are actually looking for your service, product or information to find you. Additionally, there is a collateral benefit to listing your site in a directory. Most search engines count directory links as good links and this can sometimes increase your link ranking with those search engines, thereby improving your search engine listings.
Although there is a cost in subitting to these directories the total cost of submitting to several specialty and niche directories is much less than the cost of yellow page, radio or television advertising and the benefits can be as good or sometimes far better.
Finally, many of these directories allow you to submit articles, press releases, news storys and testimonials about your services. This can increase your presence and allow your customers to learn more about you, your service or product.