Catalog Connection 2012 Web Clips

Mobile Web Directories

With today's mobile technology, it is a good idea to provide a version of your website that can be easily viewed on a mobile phone. I have begun the process of creating a mobile version that uses the same database as the normal one. An example can be found at http://careerseeker.biz. Viewing this site via a desktop computer will give a different result than from a mobile phone.

I use a script on the static site that detects the type of browser, so it can send the user to the mobile site, if necessary. All functions are visible on both versions, including the display of a Google map for Premium listings. Both sites allow link submissions for both a normal and a Premium listing, and both have a PayPal integration for the Premium listing fee.

The script that I use is the latest version of PowerSeek version 6. In my estimation, it still is the best script available to operate a Directory. I have found that the mobile version has to run as a 'Dynamic' site and as a 'Medium-sized' directory to make everything work properly.

I run the mobile version as a Dynamic site so the database doesn't have to be built into static HTML pages every day. They automatically display any new changes made on either version. I just included a 'noindex,nofollow' tag so the pages aren't duplicated by Google.

I run the mobile version as a Medium-sized directory to allow users to submit to the directory. I found that running it as a Large-sized directory will not allow submissions because the script looks for a particular category to submit to, and the dynamic version does not provide that information.

Please give me feedback. I am always looking for ways to improve the quality, and any suggestions would be appreciated.

Expanding the possibilities

Long ago, I decided to create a regional Directory ( http://etalii.info ). One that will list any site, from anywhere, and categorize each by their own city. Because I own 19 Directory websites, I get tons of submissions every day. My goal is to add any site that contains full address information to this regional Directory, and it is expanding very rapidly both in popularity and Alexa ranking.

I also decided to add an extra field to this Directory to list the county that the business resides in, and to make this field searchable. This way, visitors can do a search for all businesses in a particular county.

The problem was that I haven't found any businesses that list their counties on the website. It was easy to find the solution: http://uscounties.com/zipcode_finder.html

With this tool, I can easily look up the county by simply searching the zip code.

This may seem like a lot of work, but I believe it is worth it. I have found that if you use the tools available, and you are willing to put the time and effort into the creation of a quality site, it will pay off in the end.