In addition to the Summer 2006 StoresOnline Newsletter theme of link building, we should now discuss Vertical Portals. However, before we get into the meat of Vertical Portals, let’s briefly review the purpose of links.
The purpose of trading links is two-fold; first, we trade links to increase our page rank (discussed in the Summer 2006 Newsletter) and second, to increase the amount of qualified visitors to our Web site.
How do Vertical Portals fall into this mix?
First, let’s establish what a vertical portal is. To do this, let me provide an example: How many different types of searches can you do in Google? Millions. Right. Well, consider Google as a horizontal portal, due to the fact that you can search endless amounts of topics. Now consider a vertical portal, how many different types of searches do you think you could do on a vertical portal? One. Exactly. Another way to think of a vertical portal is an Online Trade Magazine, or in other words, a portal (engine) dealing with one specific topic
Now the burning question is, “That’s great and all, but seriously, who, or better yet, how many people actually visit these sites?” First off, we already know that we have a tool that will tell us how popular a site is on the Internet (based purely on visitors) at Alexa.com. So Alexa.com is one way that we can tell how popular or how many people visit these sites.
Remember we are not as concerned with raw visitors or traffic to our site as we are with Qualified Traffic or visitors.The way we determine whether they are qualified is if they are specifically looking for the products that you are selling.
Let’s say you sell Dental Chairs and you've decided to sell your products on E-Dental.com (which is a vertical portal). Who visits E-Dental.com? Well, the answer is dentists or people trying to sell products to dentists. Therefore, if we sell dentist chairs, we NEED to get our site listed on this vertical portal because it is our Target Market, or in other words, the exact people to whom we are trying to sell.
Now that we know what a vertical portal is, the question becomes, "What do they look like?" For the answer, you should now visit your StoresOnline Merchant Services and read the complete article concerning Vertical Portals.
