How I Deep Research Directory Niches (to maximize my chances of success)
I just went MIA for 3 months to vibe code my first SaaS (made a vid here), and now I'm back to building directories.
Now I'm back online after going on this massive side-quest where I spent 1,000 hours over the course of 100 days to build an app called heylinks.ai.
TL;DR on why I built it: The most painful part of building directory isn't the website build, data curation or on-page SEO in 2026. It's getting high-quality, relevant backlinks that have real page traffic. I hated doing targeted link outreach manually, so I built the app I always wish existed. It automates 95% of the process. Big caveat: you need an ahrefs subscription to get the most out of it (for now).
Now that I've created a tool to make backlink outreach much easier at scale, I've been in the mood to build these suckers at scale.
The goal? Go back to building a bunch of directories in low competition niches that earn tens of thousands of monthly visitors.
I'm already knee-deep in my first build and here's what the competition looks like:
Rapid traffic growth in a "short" amount of time
Successful examples of a directory in the niche with a beatable DR and backlink profile
Part of the challenge is finding these ideas.
But as I've started building directories again, I thought I'd share the fundamental question that leads to most beginner directories to fail.
How do you know a directory niche is good enough? And why am I so confident that I'll be able to rank and get traffic with a high degree of success?
Step 1: Make sure the niche fits in a 2-5 word phrase
If you can't describe your directory idea in a short key phrase, SEO won't work. Period.
Someone once asked me to help build a directory for "private security companies for Americans visiting South America." Real problem, sure. But when I looked it up, the addressable search market was literally zero people a month.
No key phrase = no keyword = no traffic. Move on.
Step 2: Check the intent behind the keyword
This is where I see even SEO agencies get it wrong.
Take "cybersecurity." 105K monthly searches, low competition, high-ticket services. Looks like a dream directory, right?
Wrong. When I googled "San Antonio cybersecurity," the #1 result was a university degree program. The intent was education, not businesses looking to hire.
Don't guess intent. Google the keyword and look at what's actually ranking on page one.
When in doubt, remember that Google has millions of data points on what searchers want. Big G will always understand intent better than you.
Step 3: Ask if you can actually get the data
Some directories (like seakexperts.com, a $3M/year expert witness directory) are built on self-submitted listings that are brutal to replicate.
You can scrape, but then what happens when you try to monetize leads for people who never asked to be listed?
Honestly, with Claude Code and modern scrapers this deal breaker rarely kills an idea anymore, but it's good to double check before committing weeks to a build.
Step 4: Decide which game you're playing
Yes, there's a bunch of novel and innovative directories that monetize in creative ways.
But to keep things simple, there's two games I typically choose from.
Game 1: Pure traffic. Find keywords that can drive 20-50K monthly visitors, slap on display ads, monetize passively.
Game 2: Low traffic, high commercial intent. Collect expensive leads, sell them to local businesses.
If you're new to this, my recommendation is to play Game 1. It's way simpler, and it's the one I continue to play (even with the current directory I'm building).
Step 5: Find a keyword with real volume, then search "[keyword] + directory" into Google
Playing Game 1 means I need keywords with tens of thousands of local-intent searches ("hot springs" has ~194K/month with local intent).
And the #1 highest signal for your directory's success is finding directory in your niche that's already winning.
To do this, I literally just google "hot springs directory" and click through everything, hunting for a role model directory.
Simply plug a directory URL you find into ahrefs, or similar site explorer tool, and verify that they're actually getting significant amounts of traffic like this one.
You'll hit a lot of dead or tiny sites. That's normal. Keep going until you've exhausted the results, or swap in a new keyword and repeat.
Step 6: Vet the winner in Ahrefs
When I found hotspringsofamerica.com (20K+ monthly visitors to a single locator page), here's what I checked:
DR — it's a 17. Small publisher range. Beatable.
Backlinks — a couple strong ones, but most were DR 0-1 sites with zero traffic. Also beatable.
Traffic by country — mostly US. Tier 1 traffic is what pays with display ads.
Growth speed — they spiked to 20K+ monthly visitors within months of launching. That tells me this niche can move fast (I'd estimate 4-6 months if I execute well).
Top pages — the locator page and state location pages get the traffic, not blog posts. Always confirm this. Plenty of "successful" directories are secretly just blogs.
This takes practice if you're not super familiar with ahrefs, but if you want a visual you can check out the video I made this week and follow how I did this in ahrefs.
Step 7: Size up the real backlink competition
In their backlink profile, I filter: dofollow only → one link per domain → non-spammy. That took them from 860 backlinks down to 65 that actually matter.
But here's the thing. Nobody can tell you "build exactly 66 backlinks and you'll rank #1."
Quality beats quantity. I could very well build a fraction of backlinks for my imaginary hot springs directory and outrank these guys. I'd just need to build links that are more topically relevant with real referring page traffic that clicks through to my directory. 100% possible.
This step is kinda optional, but I do it to know what I'm up against, AND I have a ready-made outreach list of every site already linking to my competitor.
Another pro-tip if you have ahrefs: Check the "top organic competitors" section. I found ultimatehotspringsguide.com (15K monthly visitors), another successful hot springs directory, which means another pool of proven backlink prospects. More successful competitors is a good sign.
Step 8: Reverse-engineer their on-page structure
Click into their top pages in ahrefs and take notes. This tells you exactly how you can structure your own directory.
For hotspringsofamerica.com, I spent 5 minutes doing this to discover:
Clean URLs (/state/montana)
Simple H1s (theirs is just "Montana" — I'd do "Hot Springs in Montana")
Statewide pages, not city pages — and they rank great
Listings are shockingly shallow: photos, address, phone, a map embed, some internal links
That's it. That's what 30K monthly visitors looks like in this niche.
Just to be clear, this hot springs directory is nearly perfect in the sense of passing all my filters, questions and research processes.
If you repeat this same deep vetting process, you'll find that most directories aren't this easy to find role-model directories for that are super easily replicable.
That's it! As a heads up, the directory I'm building isn't around hot springs at all.
If you want to use this research to build your own hot springs directory tomorrow, go for it. Just be prepared to build relevant links after it's all said and done.
If you're curious about what niches I'm choosing + how I'm building these directories...
I'm sharing the entire building process in my SYD Pro community in a "from scratch" series.
As much as I'd love to publicly share my projects, it's attracting way too many competitors.
Fun fact: I've found 15+ competitors that have copied my first directory since I started making SEO content.
I'll still share insights and experiments I'm running, but I'm not trying to feed the copycats all day. Hope you understand.
