Why get connected? NEREJ's new Connect Directory - by Eric Wilson

With over 20,000 unique visitors a month to the New England Real Estate Journal’s website it seemed imperative to find new avenues of advertising to offer our clients to get in front of the monthly readership. Our new Connect Directory is just that; an inexpensive and easy to maintain way of staying in front our visitors. First let’s discuss what is the Connect Directory, it’s benefits and how you can be part of the growing number of companies joining this list today.

The Connect Directory is a paid listing service that is broken into industry specific and geographic categories. Your company page will have a banner advertisement that is featured on the page and rotated among the featured services banners on the homepage of the NEREJ website. Your company page will feature a brief company bio followed by links to your online network, ie. website, email, and social media platforms. Your company name will appear highlighted in blue in all your NEREJ published articles or press releases, with active links back to your company listing page. This page will contain your most recent articles as well as leadership biographies and professional profiles.

Once this page is set up your company will begin to reap the rewards. What are those you ask? Because the NEREJ production and tech teams are constantly working on SEO and ways to rank high on search engines, this in turn will help your content get located quicker. Your Connect Directory listing is a place you can promote. This will allow potential clients to get to know you a little first and then contact or follow you directly through your page. More and more businesses are joining and continue to be added to the Connect Directory. As such, the Connect Directory’s status will continue to grow, rankings and traffic increase, which will ultimately help your company gain more exposure. Through something called “inbound links,” search engines rank your website based on relevance. If you are featured on relevant sites to your industry that regularly put out fresh content (which we are doing), then this increases your search engine rankings and allows you to rise through the search rankings much quicker than otherwise.

Joining the Connect Directory is an inexpensive way to add to your content marketing campaigns by moving the conversation forward. It compliments your social media campaign by allowing easy access to join your growing social networks as well as reach out and connect. With your website being a huge investment and expense, how do you justify reactively marketing via keywords, joining this Connect Directory gives you the much needed SEO boost by proactively marketing it with inbound links to an industry specific directory. So what is stopping you from getting connected today?

Eric Wilson is the director of social media at the New England Real Estate Journal, Norwell, Mass.