Target Groups!

So, I have decided that I want to target a few main groups for starting out as far as businesses I want listed are concerned. First, I want to target Annapolis Valley Real Estate Agents. They are one of the most competitive groups out there, and the search Annapolis Valley Real Estate gets searched on average about 40 times a day. That is a lot of potential hits to my site, and also very valuable to the Realtors, who dont need to attract very many clients at all to make it a worthwhile proposition.
The second is Annapolis Valley Contractors. This is a group of people who for the most part, have not done much to establish an online presence. Many dont have personal websites, which makes a directory like I am creating all the more valuable. I think it is also the type of work where people would love to be able to make a more informed choice regarding who they want to visit their home to give a quote or do a job. If they know who specializes in what, etc. Not only will the customer be happier with the job done, the contractor may also be happier, as they are doing what they are best at.

Why is it so hard!

So heres the problem I am coming across right now. You have to get content on a site to get moved up in googles search results. However, you have to get moved up in googles search results before anyone wants to pay to get their business listed on my site (the content), so where does that leave me? Answer, Im not sure. Im just keeping plugging away writing up one listing at a time, adding my site to one directory at a time, hoping that my traffic improves enough to the point where people will see me as a place they cant afford not to advertise. The Annapolis Valley of Nova Scotia is full of businesses, it just seems that most of those businesses arent willing to take risks on new things. They are willing to stick with what they know, which may not be as good, as compared to switching to an unknown that has the possibility to be much better. Progress will come when its ready I suppose. I have no where to go but up, and I am already getting 50-60 hits a day on my site.

Moving On

So I had the name. Next came the tedious process of planning the website and beginning to write up some content for the pages. I dont think it is a surprise that I am not the best writer in the world. But write I did. Pages and pages, trying to jam as many keywords into the site as humanly possible. Annapolis Valley this, Annapolis Valley that. New Minas this, Kentville that. Real Estate here, contractors there. It really was the hardest part of the whole process. After I had a basic plan I got a friend of mine to start helping me do the actual design. He is a guy I met in Australia while travelling, and has always helped me out with all of my web projects. I love designing websites, but sometimes I want something that is beyond my capabilities. Thats when I bring in Danny. Anyways, between us, we had the site to the point where it was ready to publish within 2-3 weeks. Then comes the hard part of SEO and getting businesses to sign up to the directory.

Starting A Business In The Annapolis Valley

The Annapolis Valley in Nova Scotia has been my home for most of my life. So it isn't that big of a surprise that I would try and start my first business right here, close to home. Growing up I always enjoyed making websites for my own baseball team, or fantasy sports league or whatever and I loved having other people come to my site. Im not sure why, but I still love having people come to my sites and look at what I have done.
Anyways, long story short, I have always wanted to do web design, and so I decided this was as good of time as any to start. So I got to thinking what the Annapolis Valley could use for an online site, that could bring in lots of traffic, and hopefully make me a decent income while I was at it.
There are several different business directories on the web which I looked at, none of which struck me as extroadinarily well done. Also, I am aware of the need in our local economy to support local businesses, and have therefor created a web directory that is all about locals and tourists helping support the many locally owned businesses in the Annapolis Valley, no matter what size they are.
From there came the idea for AnnapolisValleyLocalfied.ca. The funny thing is, that originally I was planning on using the domain name foundin.ca as a prefix to the site. But I wanted to own the main domain foundin.ca incase it ever caught on, and I wanted to start similar sites throughout the region. During the week or so that I was thinking over the name, someone happened to snatch it up. Pretty ironic, that the name domain had been unused for how ever many years, and the week I was about to buy it, boom someone else jumps on it. Anyways, then the search was on. I couldn't come up with any other local type names that werent already in use, so I decided to make up a word and use it. Localfied. Kind of a mix between classified and local, and I liked it.