Advantages Of An Exclusive Travel Directory Listing

There are many directories for websites. Many are general but include a category for Travel. Other are specifically targetted at Travel and have only sub-categories in this niche.

Most directories charge for a listing and are therefore not too choosy when it comes to reviewing sites. They may check for adult content and other forms of abuse that might impact on their own ranking but otherwise they are happy to accept cash for a link.

A few travel directories have more stringent criteria. What are the advantages for any travel site trying to get listed with one of these?

Focused Audience

Visitors to a well designed travel directory will soon be able to navigate to the category with their specific interest or find a set of search results with the same. They will then still be fresh and focused when they begin following links.

The advantage to service providers is clear. Traffic arriving from an exclusive travel directory has already been filtered. These visitors are less likely to bounce and more likely to browse in some depth; these are the visitors most likely to buy .

Loyal Users

A well designed travel directory with an exclusive set of listings has the added advantage that, over time, it develops a loyal set of users. Those that were able to answer one query efficiently will return time and again.

Assured Quality

That leads in to the next point. Every listing in a directory gains from the exclusivity that proper management brings. Some webmasters talk about 'neighbourhood'. If you get listed with other high-quality sites then some of that rubs off. If you get listed with only other high-quality sites then the message is even clearer.

Link Value

What applies to traffic also applies in a similar fashion with link value. Since an exclusive travel directory has, by its very nature, less outgoing links than a less discerning directory all of those links will carry more page rank value with them. A site with hundreds of listings on every page passes very little value to any of those sites whatever page rank the page itself may have.