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Are you a directory owner and are you ready for the day that Google stops telling users PR from the toolbar. Most directories make their money based on the PR value while we in the SEO world scoff at the childish mentality for directory owners it’s a 1 way ticket to profit, higher PR means you can charge more for your links. Other then people submitting links most directories receive little to none genuine traffic this makes having a high PR even more vital as its one of the few matrices that is known to many webmasters out there.

So when you see comments like this from Googlers

Given that many of you aren’t so fond of PR info in the toolbar, I’d love to know what feature you would like to see. Mandatory criteria:
- Would have to provide actionable info for webmasters
- Would need to be useful and interesting for the ~99.9% of users who aren’t webmasters

Source – SEO Round table

Its time to be thinking about how you and your directories will cope in the no PR era.

The options

The way I see it their are 3 options when it comes to looking at the future, do nothing, sell or evolve. The first I don’t really see as an option the other 2 are worth considering.

Selling your site

Now would be the perfect time to sell your site, except of course the next PR update is due soon could this be the last? If you sell now you might not get the same price you would have got if the sites PR has risen, but leave it till after the PR update and you will be competing with an array of sites that have just had a good push and the owners want to offload.
Site selling fluctuates just like any other market knowing when to sell can make the difference between a fair price and a good price.

A quick look at sitepoint and Digital Point forums today showed that a PR 4 Directory would go for around $800 a PR 5 in excess of $2000 while a PR 3 would barely make it past the $150 mark.

Therefore we can see that the difference between a PR 4 and PR 5 is quite significant (but so is the work)

A good rule of thumb is to look at the sites monthly revenue and multiply by 12-16 to get an estimate but not all sites reach their estimates.

Evolving

Still with us, then perhaps selling was not the answer then its time to evolve ultimately to stay in the market you will need to add services and value to your site.

Without PR you will need a new benchmark people will be looking to your directory less as a means to direct money earning but to traffic so what can you do?

• Set up a blog, and advertise featured sites on blog post
• Create link or link adsvertising services
• Go social and embrace web2.0
• Something else?

Setting up a blog
The idea is simple create and maintain a blog attached to your directory, instead of the usual google adsense pull featured listings from your directory. Now this only works if you maintain the blog, but a successful blog will encourage users to submit link (it also works for building up those inbound links)

Become a link broker
You have a vast quantity of links and people looking to be advertised why not get into the link brokerage game, offering to match links within the directory assisting in 3 way link building. This can be done on many levels but the simplest is to allow users to opt in to the link broker scheme and then provide them with a list and a controlled way to contact each other. Of course these schemes can get very complicated but just look at Text Link ads.

Going social the web 2.0
Have a look at mybloglog, blog catalog, digg, reddit what do you notice, they are all directories! At their heart the same ideas of directories are their sure the focus has changed but they are still offering links back to the users site. The difference is they do so under the flag of being a community they provide a sense of belonging even if you don’t want to go as far as installing pling or similar think of the ways you can bring the community feel to your site.

Something completely different
Hey its not all about my ideas their are loads of ways to turn your directory into something more, how about a CSS gallery site? what about site profiles and allowing user feedback?
Tell us what your going to do when the end of the world comes (at least for directories)

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Running e-commerce sites can be a great source of revenue but have you ever been in the situation where only a couple of products are being sold at the expense of others after all you can only feature so many products on your home page.

Mini Sites

Mini or niche sites are a favoured tactic of the SEO community for years, they allow you to target specific terms without having to adjust an entire site instead you create smaller sites dedicated to one product or niche that then link back to the main page to make the sale. These sites work because they are bringing the searcher exactly what they want, no hassle or fuss.

Determining suitable products

Mini sites are all about balance finding products that people are searching for and are easy to compete in the SERPs the key therefore to our mini sites is research.

Keyword research is laborious and tiresome anyone who has done any serious niche blog development will tell you how many possible combination of subjects their are out there you would be amazed the number of extreme ironing websites there are. However we are at a significant advantage in that instead of the near infinite topics niche bloggers have we only have a finite number that of our product catalogue.

Using word tracker and Google trends

We will use a simpler version of a technique I use for finding niche sites but for the purposes we are using it for it will work perfectly. Instead of me explaining it I’m going to use a video from the Thirty Day Challenge which if you haven’t already discovered is a great little site.

Just a few points

• In the video they use a base line “male yeast infection” the reason is simply they know the approximate traffic for high ranking page for that term
• Wordtracker is US based so some keywords it will have problems with
• You can save yourself some time by using the Firefox or IE 7 search plugin for Wordtracker

So now go through all your products looking at both Wordtracker and Google trends and then for each one do a Google search jotting down the number of competing sites (as part of this you may want to also check your own sites current rank for individual products) You are looking for products with high number of searchers but small number of sites ranking for the term.

Hopefully you have been able to find 3 to 4 products so now its time to create your mini sites.

Developing mini sites

There are loads of resources out there for developing Mini sites and niche site’s some of the best are Quick Whois Mini site guide, and Net business blog Niche Case study. However before jumping in and setting up your site there are a few things to remember and watch out for.

• Domain names – The nice thing about a mini site is you can buy a nice highly targeted domain name however when thinking of domain names remember that you cannot use other companies brand names so for example even though you might be selling Heinz Backed beans you can’t use Heinz name therefore you will need to look for a name like backedbeans.com
• Make your sales direct – while we haven’t discussed your main site at all in this article you need to make sure that you can go from the mini site direct to the checkout in a single click, you don’t after all want to lose that customer
• Unique content – don’t just copy and paste your product description rewrite and expand it, also use pictures where appropriate.

Mini sites are a lot of hard work, however if you are running a large e-commerce store having 10 or 15 high ranking satellite mini sites will bring in a continuous stream of sales, allowing our to focus on the high traffic high number of retailer products on your main site front page.

You visited a few times and I would appreciate your thoughts on this post, why not comment?

I’m sitting typing this by a windmill in Tuxford a small village just of the A1, the small cafe here serves some of the best scones and coffee for miles. I have just been to a town called Newark again just off the A1, it has two train stations, Newark Northgate which is on the outskirts of the town and is where the Intercity trains stop the other Newark Castle right in the town centre opposite the ruins of Newark Castle.

Why am I telling you all this?

When you look for a niche to start a site you sit down and struggle to come up with a subject most people start with big ideas and narrow down but you will find it easier to develop a site based on what you know. For example I have a very good practical knowledge of British railways not because I’m a closet train spotter but simply that I was and still am a heavy train user, I know for example which Inter city trains have wireless internet connections on them, though I can’t tell you if its working. This is pretty mundane boring stuff, but it might be useful to some one indeed a simple use of this knowledge would be to create a mini site dedicated to giving users information on which services have wireless internet and the associated costs.

Some more examples…
I drive a smart car, I know a fair bit about smart cars, I know for example that you need to keep the tire pressure correct and recommend doing so once a month this is particularly important as most smart cars do not carry a spare wheel, so if your tire bursts or something similar you will have to call a break down cover. A good use of this knowledge would be a site dedicated to smart car breakdowns the location of jack points as well as best places to buy breakdown kits (most smart cars don’t come with them) it could also include some myth busting sections of common myths surrounding the car.

Book keeping, before Venture Skills I did a lot of consultancy work, and spent many years doing my own accounts I learnt the hard way how to correctly do VAT and tax returns. While many accountants have sites they focus on larger business so perhaps a blog that focuses on sole traders who are discovering the joy of the Inland revenue for the first time and providing the been there got the t-shirt tips.

So do you still think you can’t find a niche, just sit down and think about all those small things you know, be it the location of the best burgers in your town, to how to build a model boat we all have niches what’s yours?