Link love is a wonderful thing and regardless of it’s actual effectiveness in terms of SEO (increasingly less and less if you believe everything you read from certain experts) but it’s still the top of people’s marketing agenda.
But be honest, how many clicks does your links page get? For that matter, are the links in your blog-roll getting any real traffic from you? Sometimes link sharing isn’t just about SEO it’s actually about sharing useful information.
Today’s marketing campaign is a simple one but it could help build new relationships with other vendors and offer your clients a useful resource.
Creating a industry specific directory.
If you’re a WordPress user there’s some very good directory plug-ins. One I can certainly recommend is the WordPress Link Directory which has some nice features including automatic checks for reciprocal links and Categoryies and Sub-Categories with parenting.
Advantages over a regular blog-roll
- You can create different categories enabling your viewers to find what they’re looking for.
- It’s a little more compact and tidier than a list of links
- People are more likely to click on a page titled ‘recommended wedding vendors’ or ‘wedding suppliers directory’ than a page that just says ‘links’ or ‘blog-roll’.
- Business can add themselves in return for a tracked back-links
- It can be a good reference when clients inevitably ask ‘Do you know a good…….?’
Using your directory
It’s all very well listing all of your favourite services and businesses but it equally important to let the people you’ve listed know! Alternatively if you already a member of a particular group or forum then invite the members to add there own listings.
LinkedIn is a great place to find these type of industry specific groups. People will certainly jump at the chance to get a free link and it’s great for reminding contacts who you are.
Promote your directory in your blog posts
For example if you’re writing a post about a wedding venue in London then at the bottom of the article you might want to add something like – If you’d like to search for more wedding venues in London then visit our Wedding Services Directory.
This is good not only as it builds internal links within your site but it keeps your potential clients in your site for that little bit longer….. and what a useful service you’re offering!
This marketing campaign won’t get you loads of bookings overnight but it will add to what you offer both to customers and other businesses.
*The Current Photographer website contains links to our affiliate partners. Purchasing products and services through these links helps support our efforts to bring you the quality information you love and there’s no additional cost to you.
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.
Great idea! Photographers need to leverage the web and other social media tools more to promote themselves.
Here’s another great article on photography marketing. http://bit.ly/jsQBaQ