One of the easiest ways to build inbound links to to your website is to sign up to online directories.
It seems that every month I get an email from a new directory offering me ‘the opportunity’ to list my business on their site “For Only £xxx a month!” The effectiveness of such sites is of course debatable but online directories do come in all sorts of shapes and sizes and the right ones can help bring in some good referrals.
Different Types of Directories
Online ‘Books’
Theses are the traditional book directories, or rather their online equivalents. Sites like this normally offer a basic free listing but this doesn’t always include a web link. This is a technique which the companies use to get your information so that they can up sell a premium listing to you.
Traffic wise, these are going to be the most popular of the directories and they usually have smart phone and tablet applications as well. That popularity comes at a price and in all honesty I’m not convinced that their effectiveness is equal to the spend.
Being larger, more expensive and of course more established, these companies do offer a lot more information in terms of traffic insights and analytics. One service that has come from the print days are special phone numbers which allows you to track how many calls you actually receive from your listing. You can also expect a break down of how many impressions and click throughs your listing is receiving.
Generally speaking these directories are working harder than most to get your business listed and offering more and more features and apparent benefits but if the cost is going to consume a large amount of your marketing budget then I would perhaps suggest that you look elsewhere first.
Don’t be swayed buy the sales pitch line “You only need to book one wedding and that’s your listing paid for.”
That may be true but it also means if you only book one wedding you would have spent all of your fee in getting that booking in the first place!
Photography Society or Association Listings
These are normally free and part of what you pay for as part of your membership fee. So not really free in other words!
These are unfortunately a first port of call for many advertisers as they are free source of relevant leads.
Expect to receive a large percentage of your calls from the listings to be in the form of ‘advertsing opportunities’ and realize that an equal amount of click-throughs to be from the same source.
Traffic wise you can also expect a fair amount coming from your fellow society members especially if you are active within the forums and competitions.
One the other hand these sites do have a good amount of Google juice and you might even find your listing appearing above your own website for search terms like your name.
They also ranks fairly well for more general terms like wedding photographer but you will of course be appearing alongside many others in your area so as a referral source it’s not really so effective.
Wedding Directories
I thought I should mention these as I know many of you are (or hope to be) wedding photographers.
There are lots of these directories around and as I mentioned, there seems to be a new one appearing every month, or week!
Normally these sites are fairly cheap or offer a free listing in return for a reciprocal link.
Effectiveness differs from site to site but some of them are fairly popular and rank very well in regards to SEO. Unfortunately they are often used as a price comparison sites and even you receive referrals you might just find yourself in a bidding war you don’t really want to be in.
Specialist Websites
There are a handful of exclusive and often invitation only specialist directories which are more of a photography showcase for a particular style rather than your run of the mill listing site. These might be small in size but they are very keyword heavy and very popular with potential clients who know what they want from a photographer and are looking for more than price comparison.
Alas, exclusivity comes at a price and many sites will require a portfolio review. If you are concentrating on a specific style of photography, (documentary wedding photography springs to mind) then these sites might be worth joining.
Local Business Listings
These smaller, local directories are normally focused on a particular town or city. You will find all sorts of different businesses listed on these sites and they do sometimes rank quite well for very general local searches.
It’s also likely that the photography section of these directories won’t be a busy as some of the larger listing websites so you won’t have too much competition.
On the downside, they don’t normally rank very well for the sort of keywords you might be concentrating on. If someone finds you via these directories it’s usually because they searched within the site rather than from a search engine.
Choosing the directory that’s right for you
The best way to decide which of these directories will suite your business is to do some research and some Googling. See what directories appear for your keywords and if they are even on the first page of search results. It’s not always the most expensive directories which rank the best but those ones do rely on potential clients going to their site first before refining their search.
Ask for advise on forums or speak to photographers that are already listed on these sites. The feedback can be quite insightful and for the most part people are willing to share what their experiences have been.
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Michael has been working as a photographer for the last ten years. In that time he has shot over 100,000 peoples’ portraits and worked in four different continents. In 2001 Michael graduated with a degree in photography from Manchester Metropolitan University.