I run a real estate site. I have been considering building a separate community/business directory that our company would sponsor, as a link building strategy. The reason for this is that a lot of directories are getting really great positioning for some of our important search terms, and I think it would not be difficult, considering the competition, to exceed their ranking with our own directory.

Has anyone tried this? Does it sound like a good idea?

I run a real estate site. I have been considering building a separate community/business directory that our company would sponsor, as a link building strategy. The reason for this is that a lot of directories are getting really great positioning for some of our important search terms, and I think it would not be difficult, considering the competition, to exceed their ranking with our own directory.

Has anyone tried this? Does it sound like a good idea?

It takes a lot of work to get a directory to place well in search results. It would be a lot easier to get first page top of category placement when possible on the directories that are placing well in your important keyword terms.

It takes a lot of work to get a directory to place well in search results. It would be a lot easier to get first page top of category placement when possible on the directories that are placing well in your important keyword terms.

I read over my original post, and I see that I mistakenly said "a lot of directories" are getting placement ahead of us for our search phrases. That's not true. The only real directory that places above us does not have any top of category for us. They rotate the ads, no exceptions. We do have an ad there, but it gets poor response. The other site above us is an independent real estate agent that has a site that's just terrible, but it ranks well... he's got that wired, heh. Some of his stuff is technically spam, but that doesn't seem to matter.

We're willing to put in the work to do it. Anyone out there with a success story for something like this? Any advice is welcome!

there is probably good money in good real estate directories. either you will want to focus iin on the local area or spend lots of money building keyword rich link text into the site.

actually the initial idea is more to provide supportive information to those interested in moving to the area. moving co. info, schools, weather, tourism, whatever we can put together that will aid people in making their decision to move to the area. i know this can be built into the real estate site, and some of it will be, but the directory will cover more categories, and hopefully local businesses will be more likely to buy space or links, etc.

we'll probably have to offer up a lot for free initially, to get the thing started. ugghhhh! but the advantage is that there is really only one other site we'd be competing with.