Whats the best way to set up a directory listing website

[fatcreat]

Hello all,

I am building a website that lists homeschool events and field trips across various states (locker-time.com) and I have a few questions on setting it up correctly. Both the events and field trips are searchable by distance. For clarification, events are associated with a specific date and time and field trips are not.

1. I currently have a link that says homeschool events and you enter your zip to find things close by. Is it better to create a separate page for each state I am targeting instead?  So the link would be homeschool events and then a sub-link that says homeschool events in GA and the GA page brings up all the events in GA, still searchable by zip.  Or does it matter? I was thinking if its a separate page, I could put keyword rich copy on top, but then clicking on the menu and choosing the appropriate sub-menu is an additional step for users on the site and as the number of states increase, that sub-menu could get pretty big.

2. The search results pages lists the post title of any events or field trips found and the links go to a page on my website with more information, such as the location, details on the event / field trip and a link to their website. I am wondering for SEO purposes, is this the right way to do it? Or I could set up the results page to show an excerpt and some listing info and then link directly to their website.  Does it matter?  I was thinking a page on my own website since then I could add images (but that might end up sucking up all my hosting space).

3. As I am adding these listings to my website, I simply copied/pasted the details on the event.  Now that I'm thinking about it, original content is best, so should I stop doing that and rewrite the description in my own words?  Since the events are date specific events and when they pass, they are no longer on the site, does it matter as much for the events? The field trips do not have dates associated with them, so I can probably work on creating my own descriptions for those. Just not sure if I should bother with events that are more short term.

Thanks in advance for ANY advice or suggestions. I'm so looking forward to getting this all set up correctly! I find working on this SEO stuff such fun!

Jeanette

[ronell-smith]

Hi Jeanette,

While I think your questions are certainly apropos from a search engine perspective, I'd like to see you take a step back and look at the site from the standpoint of the people who'd/who'll find value from such a site. Getting found, while important, is simply the start, for no one wants web searchers to leave their site unsatisfied.

With that in mind, I'd like to offer up a few quick ideas:

• Who's your ideal web user? And what content do they desire and would consume most readily? (Use the answers to these questions
• Aside from being a directory, consider creating some original content, which could aid in increasing your site's reach and help establish it as an online destination.
• Look at what website owners in similar verticals are doing to drive awareness and traffic to their sites. You can likely follow a similar path to success by adding some of their seemingly successful elements to your repertoire.

RS

[fatcreat]

Hi Ronnell,

Great things to think about!  We are absolutely adding original content in other areas of the site. The ideal audience here is me, lol. I am a homeschooling mom and there are no other sites that list out events the way I do.  I know, because I've searched for it myself. It doesn't exist and would be super-helpful if it did.

Since I am my ideal visitor, I ask myself would it annoy me to have to navigate through a menu to find my state of Georgia when I could just put in my zip code on the top level page and save myself a click. Yes, that would annoy me. But from a SEO standpoint, the Georgia page is probably better, so I'm not sure which is best to implement.

As far as event pages on my site vs going to the 3rd party website, I again ask myself which would I prefer, since I am my ideal visitor. I would prefer to stay on this website. It annoys me to keep leaving a website to see what the event is and then having to close that separate tab, return to the site and then continue checking the list of events. However, when I check other homeschool sites, they all link directly to the 3rd party website.

Copy/pasting content from the 3rd party sites... again, I don't like going to the 3rd party site for information. When I'm on a homeschool site and their 'original' description is "this looks like fun, i've never been there, but heard its great", or some other 3 or 4 sentence description - well I hate those descriptions because they tell me absolutely nothing. So personally I like to see the meat and potatoes description that's on the 3rd party website without having to go to the 3rd party website. But since it's simply duplicate content from the 3rd party, it's probably not best for my SEO, which is why no one else does it. So I really don't know which way to go!

-J