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Directories have alot of potential. The geography of web based directories is huge ranging from the well established highly regarded niche specific directories through to the made for google generic directories that crop up like weeds through any well laid surface.

Directories offer many benefits, both obvious and not so obvious. Getting a listing in a directory in its purest sense is aimed at bringing new business to your company and/or hits to your web site, but directories are also well used for generating links to your site, and in the eyes of Google, links meeans increased popularity and better rankings.

At TWS we manage free listings for clients. This means that new clients are submitted to free directory listings which are then recorded for management purposes. Through a secure counter hits from these directories are then recorded. This means that we can then determine which directories are performing under a free entry and make informed decisions regarding enhancing those entries, etc.

Free listings range from excellent sources of traffic through to virtual wastes of time. But as an excercise in managing and understanding the geography of the internet it is a critcal aspect of a companies online prescense. When a client can log in and see 60 directory listings for which they are listed and their respective traffic volumes they can gain a better understanding of the environment. This is quite useful for when telesales agents call trying to say they are the best directory. The client, in theory, can look at their directory overview and say, but yes, what about these other directory? Why are you better than them. Telemarketing agents will often try to claim that they are the only directory on the internet, and nearly always have no comprehension of other directories at all.

This leads on to the TWS philospohy regarding directories from a holistic perspective. Like the term Company UK, we see the sum of all these web directories as a singular unit, which each directory being a sub-section of that singular web directory. This holistic singular directory offers alot of potential, but also alot of rubbish.

So, a TWS client can see, for example, 60 directories that they are in. To start with these are free listings. Some of these free listings might bring in significant amounts of traffic. However the idea is that people pay for these listings in order to generate more traffic.

This is really the issue I have been trying to get to in this blog. Paying for directory listings. In short, directory listings are expensive. Ridicuosly expensive.

As you might already know, TWS run their own directory, County Industry which generates a modest amount of traffic. The cost for an enhanced entry is £50 which for a year is a reasonable amount of money. Its affordable, people can risk a gamble with £50. However, alot of the mainstream directories are really expensive. These are directories that have high profile names that people trust. However, from experience, they dont always generate any traffic. In fact, the TWS clients directory overview will often show that free listings are generating more traffic than paid listings. The reason for this is that these large directories do not have clear vision, and neither do their clients. So often when i'm talking to directory telesales agents do I hear the argument, we have 90% renewal rate so customers must be happy with their directory listing that they have paid for. The truth is that alot of these customers dont know how much traffic they are generating from their paid directory listing. Further, they are not at the coal face. The only time they think about their listing is when the renewal comes through. They are busy people and they dont have the inclination to look into the return, and neither do they have the ability.

At TWS we strive to make this issue transparent. For example, a client was spending about £3-400 in both Yell.com and The Phone Book by BT. Our counter showed that whilst Yell was paying its way, the Phone Book generated essentially nothing at all. So TWS helped to save this client £300/year because they would never have realised that otherwise as both names are high profile.

But it doesn't stop there. You have to look at return versus cost. TWS manage this by dividing cost by hits. For example, a listing in Kellys directory might cost £1200 and generate 300 hits which is quite alot, but that is really £4 per click. Once you have that rate you can compare the real cost to other directories. For example, an entry into The 1 which cost £10 and generated 100 hits over the year had a return of £0.10 per hit. Quite a difference. Obviously, the total amount of traffic generated by The 1 was less but the ROI was higher.This comparitive approach to quanifying directory performance is important for understanding directory value. At TWS we then use Google Ads as a benchmark. So a company selling widgets would run a Google campaign which would cost £0.20 per hit. Google ads will vary according to industry, but for each industry a Google Ads campaign should set the pace and provide a decent bencmark for calculating relative value.

From there we are better placed to assess the value of a directory. However, value is also calculated accoring to value of lead/sale. As such, even £4.00 per click might be worthwhile for a sale of £10,000. This is where this chart comes in handly:

The chart shows a decreased return as cost increases, but an increase in total volume of traffic. This means that whilst a directory listing in Kellys might be expensive, the sum total will produce more traffic.

That said. With reference to the cost of £50 for an enhanced listing in County Industry the actual cost of on line business directories is way over the top. A directory is essentially a database that is available online. There is not alot that needs doing. A new entry can be enabled at the switch of a button. For that, the some directories charge £1000. In actual fact £1000 is alot of money. Its more than many people earn in a month. The beef here is that that is tamprmount to theft. Especially when the directory does not generate ay traffic, especially when the directory entry does not generate more than a free entry in another directory. Examples of these types of directory entires include Touch Local, Scoot & ITV Local and many more. TWS have seen time and time again where clients have been telemarketed and sold dircetory listings over the phone for £2-400 which have never generated any traffic. These directories are often supported by large call centers, which are costly, and they are pushing diectory listings that dont work. But because customers cannot see that, they manage to secure 90% renewal rates. Its obsene.

Whilst TWS does not want to push its directory too far, its worth saying that the simple structure of County Industry is intentional to the extent that its very easy to use and provides alot of information. This is relevent when you note that many of these high end directories are justifying their high prices through added features, many of which just add confusion to the communication of information.

Just to finish up. The world of directories is, in the view of TWS, one which offers a great deal of opportunity, but one which is frought with inconsistencies. Unlike the price of beer, which in general is the same everywhere, the cost of a directory listing is not consistent or standardised. Using the analogy of beer, the world of directories is currently one where a pub can serve a pint for £1.00 whilst another will serve a pint for £7.99. Another pub could sell a litre for £6.00 whilst another sells gallons at £16.00, which is better value? Did you want a gallon? Yet another pub might sell a shot of beer for £1.00 and another might sell a 0.05% pint of highly watered down beer for £4.00. With this type of uncertainty its no wonder people get ripped off.

One more point. Many directories offer counters so they can demonstrate how much traffic their sites get, however, even with the best intents, there is no way you can measure traffic that accuratly. That is, search engine spiders click up hits. There is nothing that can be done about that. Obvios spiders like Google can be ruled out, but there are always new spiders that dont identify themselves, and they search through directories requesting pages and in short, clicking hits on directory profiles. TWS has experience of directories that claim 400 hits per month whilst we detected 2 hits that month. However, when you talk to dircetories, they will swear blind that they block all spiders. This is about as possible as having a sign on your door saying no unsolicited mail or flyers etc. You know they'll still put the free newspapers through your door.

It is difficult to qualify directory traffic, but TWS have methods in place to help do this. This means that clients can get a better handle on directory traffic and a better understanding.

Another issue with directories is relevence. Many of these directories, especially directories such as Yell will tell you that they get 2 million viewers a day which means that you'll get lots of sales enquiries. What they dont say is that 99% of those viewers are looking for flowers or MOT garages. If your business is about selling 100,000 aerospace fabrications which you sell 3 of a year then this traffic is going to be irrelevent. In fact, the relevent traffic through to your section will be 0. But they dont say that, because they dont understand. The point is that many companies markets are generally too specific for certain directories.

TWS hold a database of about 3000 directories. It is fromthis database that clients will end up in about 30-100 directories depending on time since the service began. And of these directories only a handful will be of any major significance. Some of the favorite TWS directories include and . Obviously, these directories are only relevent if you are in the fish or pig industries. But they are great examples of industry specific niches. So imagine, if your a fish processing company, where do you want to me, Yell or FIS? With TWS you get visibility of the entire directory market. Other interesting directies include directories focussing on magnts, sundials, concrete, Uganda and mechanical seals.

Hopefully this has been interesting. Excuse the spelling mistakes and the disjointed prose, I recieved a few calls inbeteeen and lost my train of thought. Its worth noting that I also gained a new client, inbound, whilst writing this. Hopefully i'll spell check later......

Just a few short extras. Some of the draw backs of directories include return calls. What happens is that you submit to a directory and the next day they call the company to confirm that the company details are correct. This can be a pain, especially when TWS put themselves as the main contacts. This is further frustrated when directories such as Engnet call and intonate that if TWS wont convert clients into paying customers that they will call the company directly to make a sales pitch, against the suggestion of TWS who knows the client is not currently interested, for example.

Other issues include rubbish calls, calls from india looking to seel products and spam. But al of this is, in theory, relativly minor.

Another benefit with directory subbmission is that you are seeding the directory with your company information. Each directory is owned by someone or some company. It is the belief of TWS that each of these bodies has the intention of making their directory work. A great example is Engineering Capacity which was a relative backwater for many years but in 2007 had a major redesign placing it at the forfront yet again. This means that submissions to Engineering Capacity whilst before might have been regarded as a waste of time, pay dividends when the directory starts to work. This has happened in many cases. Another bonus is that data is traded. For example, Hot Frog was spawned from KellySearch and the Reed Group and is now a reasonable source of traffic for several clients. Another example is Build.co.uk which appeared out of nowhere but which had a lot of current TWS clients data included, data which had to have come from somewhere because the companies were new. What makes the Build.co.uk example interesting is that they dont accept fre entries easily. Having tried to submit to Build.co.uk recently TWS found that they call the next day with a very intimidating sales pitch.

This leads on to the issue of FREE ENTRIES. Directories offer free entires but then call and try to upsell the customer. This appears to be wrong, they will often even deny that the directory is free. They will say stuff like, So how are you going to get business? Well, that goes back to the overview of the single directory. Out of 60 odd directories and search engine traffic, hits will come, but they use a tone that insinuates that without their paid listing you'll get nothing. One directory even finished the call with the line, so you dont want google leads? And many will say, so you dont want busines. Of course a customer wants business, but they dont want to accept the narrow minded view that business is all generated through a single directory source. The worst of it is that the listing is supposedly free, and yet they approach you as though it deserves payment.

Another issue is that all these directories base their business on information about comapnies. They would not exist without the information they hold. In theory they should not be able to profit from that information without the permission of the owner. This is relevent because directories will hassle you about getting a fre listing, whilst they dont accept the fact that it is they that should be humble about recieveing free listings, because without them they would be nothing. This issue can be taken further. If each directory had to pay £5/year to each company for the right to profit from the presentation of their contact details, they would soon be out of business. Applegate has about 160k entries, which at £5 each would cost them £800k. They have about 2k paying customers at on average £400 is £800k. Most directories do not even make that kind of profit. Its an interesting point.

Another issue that has been brought up recently is copywrite and trademarks. This is in relevence to a directories updatability. Some companies will use trademarks in their keywords, they might even submit those trade marks to directories. Directories might even trawl the internet and generate listings themselves from metatags. The result is the possibility of information that is out of date and for which their is a legal president, within local counties for ammendment. But which id the directory is based in India or the web master cant be bothered to address issues? Further to this point, when a company relocates, directory listings can show old company information. Often its impossible to update this information. TWS specialise in managing drectory listings enabling company loves to be reflected not only in the web site but through directories. Many directories offer passwords so they can be edited, but many are completely automated and dont respond to e-mails.

Again, a very rushed addition and rushed blog entry, hope it makes sense, ]]> General http://technicalwebservices.com/blog/index.php?itemid=6 Fri, 29 Feb 2008 15:51:53 +0000 http://technicalwebservices.com/blog/index.php?itemid=3 General http://technicalwebservices.com/blog/index.php?itemid=3 Sat, 2 Feb 2008 03:42:56 +0000