International SEO
Quick Industrial Directory Analysis – Industrial Quick Search
In some offline feedback to my article about Industrial Directories and Organic SEO, I realized I had inadvertently omitted IQS – Industrial Quick Search.
I hope that some marketing folks from these different industrial directories are peeking at our blog every once in awhile. Any criticism I might have, should be taken constructively as an effort to improve usability or SEO fundamentals.
To remind you of my experiment, I am going to see how easy it is to find a material handling equipment provider and if the directory takes me to a page dedicated to that topic.
First – Material Handling Equipment is not on their homepage… I have to do a search for it, which makes me pick a specific vertical site they’ve developed. To stay consistent (somewhat) I’ll choose conveyors instead.
Page Rank is great – good job IQS! But the links go to the homepage only. Thankfully (for anyone listed here) it looks likes the search engines are giving a decent amount of weight to that link.
In conclusion, I think IQS is doing some things right, but the usability really needs to be evaluated. One really big thing I didn’t mention is this - look to see what directory is coming up organically for your products and services. Today, the only directory that shows up for “Material Handling Equipment” is ThomasNet. For “Bulk Conveyors”, both ThomasNet and GlobalSpec shows up. So the moral of all this is to understand what you’re getting into. Spend some time doing keyword research. Understand what people are searching for and I’m guessing you’ll stretch your dollar just a little bit further with your directory listings.
Since we’re on the topic of industrial directories, just want to point out a couple of good postings:
- B2Blog attended a ThomasNet discussion about conversions
- I posted a topic in the ThomasNet forums about where Industrial organizations are spending their online marketing dollars. Please respond!
- Eric Ward discussing how any site is link worthy – even sites about industrial ball bearings
May 23rd, 2007 at 3:49 am
Article Submissions is really good, if you want to drive traffic to your site quickly.
August 10th, 2009 at 1:24 pm
I’ve found that using landing pages helps to decipher if you’re really getting any quality traffic from directory advertisements. Also experiment by switching up pags between campaigns and that way you can truly measure your ROI. Do you have any more recent news on “Industrial Quick Search”? Now that it’s nearing 2010