twigged.net

Allow me to explain…recently I posted a list of over 200 reputable web link directories to help new webmasters find the traffic they need to promote their sites and to help old web masters drive traffic to new sites. When it comes to site promotion, submitting a link to a directory is of course just one of many ways to gain traffic.

Aside from the dmoz, google and yahoo directories, plus a handful of other high ranking sites, my approach to web link directories has been quite skeptical thus far; I’ve always seen them as part of a saturated clone market in which directories end up promoting other directories because nobody sees any benefit to be gained by submitting their links.

Well today, I intend to start an experiment that puts my skepticism to the test. Using the above-mentioned list of directories I’m going to see what effect it has on a new flash games arcade site I’ve built. The site is called FingerMonkey.net (why don’t you all just take a minute to bookmark it and send it on to your friends…Can’t be bothered? Well okay then.)

Experiment aims

So here are the experiment aims in a nutshell:

1. To discern whether directory submission is an effective means of driving traffic traffic to a new website.

2. To test the potential for revenue enhancement.

3. To pinpoint the best directories on my list of 200+

4. To provide insight and understanding of SEO for new website owners

The four stages of the experiment

1. 1st December 2007: Within a 24 hour period, I will submit my site, www.fingermonkey.net to all the sites in the list of 200+ web link directories.

2. 1st January 2008: First stage of analysis. It will have been exactly one month since the beginning of the experiment, some of my links won’t have even been reviewed at this point, but it will be a good time to take stock of where things are at.

3. 1st February 2008: Two months will have passed and many of the links should be working by this stage. I will do a write up with some traffic analysis using google analytics. I will also show what impact it has had on the 3 google adsense banners on the arcade site.

4. 1st March 2008: This will be the last stage in the experiment. Time to assess which directory sites yielded the most traffic. At this stage I will use all the data I have collected to update my 200+ list of directories to include annotations on best SEO potential.

Tools to carry out the experiment

1. Online form filler tool

In order to make stage 1 (submission to over 200 directories) less of a nail-biter, I’m going to use the following free online form filler tool, available for download here.

This will allow me to fill out my arcade site’s info once and automatically paste it in for each new directory submission, cutting time in half and making the whole process more bearable.

2. Google analytics

In order to measure my arcade site’s traffic statistics I will be using Google Analytics. There are a number of free web analytics tools available but of all the ones I’ve tried google comes packed with the most features and offers the cleanest layout.