🚀 Directory Site Is Mooning

Quick note: if you’re new here, you can see recent emails here.

Two personal things before we get started today -

One, I thought having an espresso martini at lunch would be fine….it is not. Working from home & being self-employed is great/dangerous. But also delicious?

Anyways, if something in this email doesn’t make sense…well…I just told you why that might be.

Two, I’ve recently managed to get achilles tendonitis from running. It hurts and it’s annoying. And the internets says the recovery timeline is like months.

MONTHS! 😭😭😭

And this time next week I’m supposed to be traipsing around NYC … with one good foot.

But today, let’s talk about the success of one of my directory sites.

It’s Looking Real Good

When I first heard people talking about directory sites, I was like ‘duh’ of course they’re ranking well.

Cause local SEO is stupid easy right now (we’ll get back to the ‘selling local SEO series’ soon).

So, I did some keyword research and spun one up. And then I did a few more.

Right now I’ve even got one that I’ve recently started that I think will do really well.

Honestly, these aren’t really old enough to be a success.

But the oldest one is already clocking in around 3,000 monthly pageviews. Lots of number one rankings in Google.

And it’s only like a couple of months old.

Not monetized yet.

And I haven’t even started link building!

What I don’t like about this one is that display ads is really the only play here.

The niche is for a certain type of business. A branded one, so they won’t pay for placement on the site.

So, while I’m excited about that one, I don’t love that I did something with limited monetization options.

Anyways - what do you want to know about it or directories?

No, I won’t be sharing the niche or the site, but I can share things like strategies, tech stack, etc.

Unrelated: It might be the espresso martini talking, but I think I’m going to start a niche newsletter with a paid membership premium option in the travel niche. Do you want to hear about that?

Coming up…

More on what I’m working on and how it’s going.

Stay awesome,

Shawna

P.S. If you’re looking for high level discussions or tips on things like local SEO and Rank & Rent, I highly recommend Jacky Chou’s Advise community. I’ve been in it for several months and there’s tons of value in it, including a SOP for local SEO.

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