Strongest Brands Breaks New Ground
These days, new directories are proliferating faster than rabbits. The advent of decent, free scripts has made it easy for just about anyone to create a directory. It’s nice when you find a rare jewel that is doing something truly unique. There is a brand new business directory that is worth a look. Here are a few of the things they are doing different:
- Unique category structure - They are not using the same category dump that everyone and their mother are copying. The category structure for this directory is expanding as submissions warrant, so if you don’t see an appropriate low level category for your company, you can submit to the lowest upper level category that makes sense and their editors will add new categories for you.
- Up to 3 deep links - It offers up to three deep links in the description. While the main title for the listing must be the registered business’ name, you can work in some SEO magic with the anchor text for deep links in a natural language paragraph.
- No ads, no featured links, no sponsored links - Are they crazy? Not really (see below), but it is true, this directory has a very clean look. There are no AdSense, banners or other junk cluttering up the page. Listings get visitors undivided attention.
- Free submissions with a twist - You knew there was a catch, right? Well, submissions are free and processed in order. However, listings are sorted by their “Strength Rank (SR)” which loosely corresponds to how much a business has chosen to pay/donate to the directory. Payments can be made at any time after a listing has been approved/published (and as often as you like). This allows businesses to choose where they want their listing positioned (as long as they are willing to pay to jump their competitors).
The web master has made some custom modifications to the base phpLD script for SEO modifications that he says should help conserve and funnel PR to the main category pages. This directory is one to watch.