How To Correctly Analyze Your Directory’s Competition

There are thousands directories on the planet. Everyday more and more directories are created. And you know, the more directories there are, the harder it’s to be a successful directory owner. Once each directory is created, your directory is losing a chance of becoming profitable. So what’s the solution to all this? One of the solutions is to analyze your directory’s competition and do something about it.

Follow these three simple steps to analyze your directory’s competition:

• Carefully select and choose your top ten competitors.
• Subscribe to their feeds, bookmark them, and try to check them out approximately twice per week.
• And now, do the analysis by simply asking your self a number of questions and don’t forget to write them down, such as:

Design:

• What’s your first impression about the directory?
• What color scheme the directory uses?
• What font styles and colors are dominant?
• Does it have unique logo, what kind of logo is it?
• Does it have a favicon?

Directory Structure:

• How many categories does the directory offer?
• Do categories cover all concepts of the directory?
• Are categories related to the type of directory? (Most directories call them selfs “Business Directories” while they have default category structure, also known as category dump. )
• Are listings listed in the right category?
• Are listings described well enough?
• Do listings titles follow the guidelines for accepting submission titles.
• Do detailed pages have useful information in them? (Such as, Alexa Rank, Link popularity and so on.)

Promotion:

• How is the directory promoted?
• Does it target the right audience?
• Does it use good attention grabbers?
• Does it promote it self well enough, both in quality and quantity?

Uniqueness

• Does the directory have a blog with unique articles?
• Does the directory offer free phpld/wordpress themes?
• Does the directory offer unique way of selling/displaying links?
• Does the directory have unique template/mods/other features?

(As you might have noticed, all directories look a like just like these questions about uniqueness… So be unique - standout!)

So what? Why do I need to ask these questions?

The purpose of the analysis is not to do what other directory owners practice (as most of you might have thought) but to find out gaps in a directory and try to fill it in your directory. The more successful you can find out the gaps and try to fill them, the more successful your directory is going to be.

Good luck with your analysis, if you find anything interesting about your competitors, please let all directory owners know by posting your thoughts into the comments.