I decided to take a $10 package of 100 submissions, which I got at $5. Overall I think that it was OK value, but I have some concerns. I don't know whether as a review I'm allowed to give i-Traders, but if I were I'd give them a positive i-Trader, mainly due to the price and the amount of time I’d saved.
I did this on my wife’s business, and she is an aromatherapist in Ipswich. This is something I’ve been meaning to do for a while. There are a number of backlinks already.
Good Points
- Number. Promised 100, delivered 107
- Timeliness. Delivered ahead of time
- Responsiveness. He told me beforehand that he would struggle to do the UK, but he found a number of specifically UK directories. I was really chuffed with this.
- Classifications. The classifications were quite good, with almost all of them falling into the health area
- Appearance – Most of these links appear when the report’s been sent with only a few waiting for approval. If you’ve worked in directory submissions, this is an excellent result.
- Legitimate listings – These are legitimate listings on proper sites.
What could be improved (Mild)
- Communication. The communication was good at the beginning and the end, but no questions were asked, which would have helped avoid some of the issues.
- Inaccuracy in details. Although at this price I expected a number of mistakes, there were a slightly higher number than expected, particularly giving the wrong email.
- Traffic. After a day or so there’s been no evidence of any people coming through, but to be honest at this price I’m not really bothered.
- Expiring sites. A number of sites will expire after a month or so. That’s fine, but it should be made clear that this will happen and there will not be as much permanent uplift from a number of the entries. It must be said that the majority of sites don't say this.
Areas of Concern
- Wrong country. In a large number of cases my wife was listed as being in the wrong country, sometimes the UAE, but also Australia and the US. That could do some harm as it could make her look like a spammer to search engines.
- Wrong town. More of a local SEO gripe, and it probably won’t do any harm if you have a nationwide affiliate offer. She was listed in the wrong town in a large number of cases. It wasn’t consistently the wrong town, but it was just about random in the UK. She was listed in Manchester, Leeds, Belfast, Southampton, Brighton, Hamilton, Edinburgh and other places. They probably cancel each other out and I’ve got other links, but for a new listing this could really do badly with the local SERPS. A bit of communication would really have helped here, and I understand that there are a limited amount of towns on some of these places. Unless this problem gets solved I would not recommend a local SEO campaign to use these people, particularly for a reasonably new website.
- Duplicate directories. I ordered the smallest package, 100 entries. I’d say that just over half my entries were in directories that were already there. I would say I got listed on about 40 sites. This really needed to be communicated beforehand. I’d read the original entry as saying that they were going to be in different directories. If I’d ordered 1000 links would it have been those same 40 sites?
