Do Directories Help Traffic?
When I first started this blog back on Blogger last summer, I somehow got the idea that listing my blog in as many directories as possible was the way to go. I don’t think I read this anywhere but I think my theory was that as many links I could get to my website as possible would be good. I eventually amassed a very large collection of directory listings in my sidebar. The 80×15 banner was my attribution of choice, which I displayed proudly like a badge of honor.
When I made the switch over to WordPress, I kept the directory listings for awhile but I realized that I didn’t really see any traffic from any of these directories. Most of my traffic comes from various social networks & direct visitors, as it did then as well. So I decided the space was too valuable to clutter up with 20+ little directory buttons. I also felt like the only people benefiting from these buttons and reciprocated links on my blog were the directories – not me.
It’s been a month now that I’ve been on this new home of mine and I’m starting to wonder if I did the right thing. I wonder if that “every little bit helps” method I had before was correct, and I got too full of myself in thinking that I didn’t need these links anymore.
So what have you found with directories? If anyone reading has any experience with listing themselves in the many blog directories there are around there on the net I’d love to hear it – please share!
Read MoreFree Toolsday for April 15th
Happy tax day! Here’s a great free tool to save yourself some green. Honestly, I’m not sure why it’s taken me SO long to tell you about this tool. Anyone who’s ever had to hire a graphic designer for a really simple postcard or business card knows how frustrating it can be to put so much back & forth into a project that takes the designer 10 minutes to flesh out. Not to mention how much money it costs. This is why PsPrint launched the fabulous Design It! tool last year.
Design It! uses state of the art online graphic technologies that allow you to design a business card or postcard in mere minutes. It’s super easy to do the design work and ordering online. With the tool you can either upload your own background or photograph or pick from hundreds of stock designs that PsPrint’s internal graphic design team have developed since the launch of this tool.
You may be weary to use it since it it’s provided by a printing company, but there’s no obligation to buy. At no time do you put in your name or email address or anything unless you decide to order. So you don’t have to worry about receiving junk mail or anything after just giving it a try.
All text boxes are very intuitive to use when adding your custom text, and you can change fonts, colors, and customize the photos or logos you use on the cards. When designing postcards you can even add your own indicia to mail the cards professionally. At last count there are over 300 different templates for the business cards and over 150 templates for the postcards. PsPrint even has an open invitation to users to submit their feedback about what templates they’d like to see and what would improve the system.
Give it a try today. You have nothing to lose!
Read MoreReputation Management Made Easy – By Trackur!
I wish I could tell you all that this amazing service is free, but alas like most good things nowadays there’s a price to pay. This is definitely a service that’s worth the coin.
Trackur.com, launched earlier this year by Andy Beal of MarketingPilgrim.com, is an amazing tool that basically scours the web for you to find references to your keyword. I enjoyed my free trial, and am excited to see that the minimum price has gone down to $18/month. It’ll be much easier to sell execs on using this service now that it’s ultra affordable.
This ain’t yo mama’s reputation management!
Google Alerts have pretty much been the standard in the past, but once you try Trackur I promise you’ll cancel half those alerts. I found SO much more on Trackur that the Google Alerts never mentioned. Trackur scours all of the web, so if something happens to get past Google’s spiders (not likely but hey, it’s possible) it’ll show up on Trackur.
So don’t let me sing the praises for it – go sign up for the free trial. It’s a great tool that I’ll definitely be hounding the execs here to use. And I know this sounds like I have something to gain from this post, but I don’t. It’s just such a great service I think it deserves more recognition!
Read MoreGet it Together, FeedBurner
My feed subscriber count went from 33 this morning to 28. Is it possible that 5 people jumped ship today? By all means – but it is suspect since for the last week my count has been bouncing sporadically between the two numbers.
Get your shit together, FeedBurner.
Read MoreYet Another Blog Experiment
I’ve signed up with BlogRush to try to drive some traffic over here. I read about it on MarketingPilgrim.com, Andy Beal’s blog. He doesn’t seem all that impressed with it, but I’m going to give it a go for myself. As long as it’s free, why not?
So check out my BlogShelf (over on the right down there) and take a look.
Read MoreFussing Update
I fussed around more with del.icio.us, Digg, and Technorati. So far my thoughts…
del.icio.us: really easy to use. I exported my bookmarks from Firefox and imported them into my bookmarks in a matter of minutes. I’ve spent probably the last half an hour cleaning up my tags since they’re so scattered and I’m a neat freak like that. But it’s a really simple interface that’s a breeze to use. I’ve head a lot about this site, so I get the feeling I’ll be using it a lot whenever I come across something particularly cool.
Digg: pretty easy to use, but there’s a lot there. The home page of News & Videos is cracking me up reading some of the titles. Not sure how this can be leveraged though without digging my own stories. I did try a plea on Twitter for digs, but got none. And it’s taken me hours, but I’ve figured out how to add the Digg This button you see to the right. I found out though that I have a friend already on Digg, so I can foresee messing around more with this and building more friends on this network.
Technorati: Okay what the hell? The main function of the site, as far as I can tell, is to keep a list of your favorites. Do me a favor and look HERE. Do you see any favorites? If you don’t I’m really annoyed because I followed their instructions to export my blogs from Google Reader, saved the file correctly, imported them to Technorati, they showed up for a couple minutes and now they don’t show. So my frustration is building with this site to the point where I’m already ready to give up… which for an experienced web user like me, isn’t good at all. So I’ve decided to walk away from it for awhile, focus my efforts on the other two, and mess around with this once they’ve got this bug fixed. I already ventured into their help forums on the first day… not really a good sign, folks.
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