Why Directory Sites Are Still Relevant and Worth Building in 2021
Hi,
I’m Brett, and I’m here to tell you why you should be building directory sites in 2021.
But first, here’s a little history lesson.
When I started using the world wide web in 1995, one of the first types of website I encountered were directory sites. They simply helped you find stuff online. Then along came search engines like HotBot and AltaVista, supposedly making directory sites irrelevant…
Actually, no.
Directory sites became bigger than ever in the late 1990s. When businesses first went online, they were busting a gut to get into Yahoo’s coveted directory. Then when Google came along, one of the absolute first cornerstones of SEO is that you just had to have a listing in the DMOZ directory site. This was mostly because at this stage Google was still learning how to rank websites. One of the easiest ways for them to determine if a site was of good quality was to see if it was included in DMOZ.
Meanwhile, smart people who knew a bit of HTML and maybe the techie skills to wire up a website to an SQL database were busy building their own directory sites, albeit on a smaller scale. In 2007 I built a directory site of software documentation tools (yawn). After discovering the Warrior Forum online marketing discussion board a year later, I switched to making directories of dating sites. Now that was a much more promising niche! Lonely people went click crazy on my sites’ ads promising them that they would find their special somebody for just $29.95 a month.
Fast forward to 2021 and are directory sites still relevant?
I let my dating site domain expire in 2020 after a disastrous attempt at a rebuild. But another directory site I built in 2013 is doing very well for itself. Traffic took off like a rocket in 2020:
As you can see from this chart, directory sites are dead.
When people proclaim that directory sites are yesterday’s online business idea, they’re probably thinking of sites like the one in the screenshot below. As people ditched their thick yellow telephone directories and turned to the internet whenever they needed a plumber or a locksmith, these sites made large amounts of money charging businesses for listings.
Then of course Google came along and started directly integrating business listings into their search and maps product offerings. So the legion of directory sites experienced catastrophic traffic losses, compounded by the fact that their costs started to go through the roof as they started to realise keeping a directory site up to date is very time-consuming.
Away from local searches though, directory sites are alive and kicking. There are still a lot of opportunities in such sites, and they are bigger than ever. If you think about it, TripAdvisor is basically just a directory site of hotels and restaurants, albeit a very large one with a lot of bells and whistles. Google itself is also basically just a directory of websites.
If you’ve made it all the way down here then you must be pretty keen about the idea of starting a directory site. So how should you go about it?
The first thing you’ll need is an idea. If you’re as adventurous as I am then you could make a directory site of everything. For example, at the end of 2020 I started a directory of WordPress blogs at FindABlog.Net. Given that it is estimated there are anything from 150 to 400 million blogs on the internet, it looks like I will be busy for some time.
You’ll probably be better off picking a smaller niche. For example I really regret letting a domain name expire that would have been perfect for a directory site in the goth clothing niche. In fact, there is already such a directory site at altfashiondirectory.co.uk. This site is in a pretty small niche and it’s also UK focused with further restricts the audience. Still, any site related to shopping is easy to monetize and I’d love to own a portfolio of such sites.
You could also do a lot of thinking outside the box. Directory sites don’t just have to be about stores and dentists and lawyers in your local area.
A quirky directory site I absolutely adore is HauntedHouse.com. This site looks as old as the internet itself, but it shows what you can do if you spend a few weeks compiling lists of things like haunted houses.
Once you’ve got your idea then pop over to Google’s search and validate your idea. You need to check out two important things:
- Are there any existing directory sites in your chosen niche? Don’t despair if there are. A little competition can be a good thing as it shows there’s a market for what you want to do. It’s also quite likely that if there is already a directory site in your niche then it could be dating from circa 2010 or earlier, and many of the links are probably broken. Dare I say it but you can also cherry-pick their directory apart to compile your list of sites to include as well as learn how best to categorise them.
- Check to see if there are any knowledge gaps in Google. The Googleplex might be full of incredible AI but for many searches their results are just plain poor. What you need to try to find are niches where Google shows you blogs and Pinterest pins and all those low value scraper sites instead of the actual thing you are looking for. Such niches are crying out for directory sites.
Google’s AI still has much to learn about so many topics. Take the search query for brunette dating sites (yes they do exist!). Some of Google’s suggestions are listed below:
Of these search results, the first link is to a spammy looking Pinterest account. The next four search results link to costly international mail order brides type dating sites using SEO tactics to lure in punters. The final result “curvy girl dating site” redirects visitors to an NSFW adult dating site. So Google seems unable to identify the legitimate brunette dating sites out there.
Knowledge gaps can be incredibly good niches to look for. For example, I’ve built a directory of YouTube channels at FindAChannel.Net. People think I’m mad to basically just rebuild YouTube. After all, if you want to find YouTube channels then you just, er, go to YouTube and use their search, right?
Well, up to a point.
You see I’ve done my market research using wonderful keyword suggestion tools answerthepublic. From this tool I realised that people want to know all kinds of stuff about YouTube channels, one prime example being which channels have the fewest subscribers. To my knowledge, this isn’t something you can easily discover on YouTube, but over on my website I have a whole list of glorious channels with dozens or even hundreds of videos and only a handful of subscribers!
It’s also easy to add value to a directory site, much like TripAdvisor have done. For example, in shopping niches people always want to see honest product reviews, and people will always rush onto the internet and post about bad products or scams.
So once you have your grand idea, how do you go about building a directory site?
If you’re a coder then they’re not that difficult to build from scratch. My tip is to start with the database categories, then add some data and build the website around it. Use jQuery and HTML 5 client-side libraries to build interesting maps and charts and other features to add value to your directory site. An example is the map of the USA the Haunted House directory site I mentioned earlier uses. On FindABlog I use a jQuery mapping component to show visitors which countries travel bloggers most often blog about.
If you can’t get your head around coding then hire somebody to build your dream site, or just use the immensely popular WordPress blogging platform. There are plenty of plugins that allow you to turn your blog into a powerful directory site — one example is WPGeodirectory.
Maintainability is of crucial importance with directory sites, and it is something that bloggers tend not to worry about when building sites using WordPress. Successful directory sites do need to be curated. New sites need to be added as they appear. There also needs to be a system for updating and removing old sites. Automation is crucial here. Once a site exceeds 1000 listings it is difficult to remember all the sites that are listed. My FindABlog directory now has 14,000 blogs in the catalogue and I have personally only viewed the listings pages of a small fraction of these.
If this is a business venture then you’ll also need some way of monetizing your site. As I mentioned earlier, many directory sites charged for inclusion in the directory, or for obtaining premium listings. This revenue model is probably dead, unless you have a very niche niche directory and can send a lot of laser-targeted leads towards the sites in your directory.
Advertising and sponsorship is probably a better bet these days. AdSense and Ezoic are two advertising platforms I’ve used to monetize my sites. If your visitors are interested in a specific niche then you can also promote affiliate offers. For example my blog and YouTube channel directories will eventually be monetized by offers appealing to bloggers and YouTubers respectively.
Finally, revenue-generating directory sites are always popular on website sales platforms such as Flippa. To appeal to as wide a pool of buyers as possible, it’s best to build the site using technology their buyers are familiar with, such as WordPress, or if it’s custom-built, stick to plain old PHP and MySQL.
So the next time you’re in the shower and have a brilliant idea for a new website, don’t just go for a WordPress blog, consider building a directory site.
Anyway, I hope you found this overview of directory sites useful. Have I convinced you to build one this year, or are you going to stick to WordPress blogs?
