I have added lately a cheat database of over 15,000 games on my game directory. I thought that a gaming directory must also be benefic to users (gamers in this case).
Well after it got indexed by google (1,5k in one day, WoW!), I noticed a huge traffic boost. From those little 50 visits/daily, the site is now getting over 300/daily. 80% of this is from google. I wondered which keyphrases/keywords lead have such a big impact on the traffic.
When I opened the list of keyphrases, I noticed there are over 200. This is, of course, counting from yesterday, since my host rests each month the list. 90% of them where in this form : ‘game name’ cheats or free ‘game name’ cheats or free ‘game name’ hacks etc. etc.
I was also surprised to find out that some of the users, after seeing the cheats also visited the main directory page (it’s easy to find out, I tracked down one ip randomly which was brought on the site from google, and saw what pages did he view during his stay).
So you all guess what’s my suggestion for niche directories now. Content for users. That’s what it is. For example, if you have a real estate directory, try putting up some real estate or house design articles. This will surely improve your traffic.
And we all know the magic formula: good content = backlinks + traffic; backlinks = better rankings, pagerank; traffic = low alexa rank; low alexa rank + good pagerank = money!
