The best way to explain the definition of a vertical portal is to use a quick analogy. In the world of magazine publishing, there are different types of magazines. For example, there are general interest magazines, like "People". If you have ever read it you will notice that People Magazine tries to appeal to a broad audience by including as many different types of articles in each issue as possible, in order to appeal to the maximum number of readers. By contrast, a magazine like "Card Player" has a very narrow appeal; it only appeals to Poker players.

 

On the internet a verticle portal is a website that provides a gateway or portal to information related to a particular industry such as health care, insurance, automobiles, or food manufacturing. (A vertical industry is one that is focused on a relatively narrow range of goods and services, whereas a horizontal industry is one that aims to produce a wide range of goods and services.

 

Link Popularity is a technique that top search engines like Google use as a factor to determine your rank in search results. Google and other search engines keep track of how many websites on the Internet link to your site. Read more on the basic link learning. Vertical portals tend to have high Google Page Rank, and as a result, dramatically benefit your site when they link to yours. 

 
Finding the appropriate vertical portal is the complex part of Vertical Portal Marketing. It is essential that you are able to identify a vertical portal when you see one. If you consider websites you visit frequently on the Internet, you will probably find that you often visit one or more vertical portals, but you likely did not recognize them as such. Make sure you understand the features (as noted previously in this tutorial) that are common to vertical portals. This will make finding them much easier.

 

The following list provides ideas on where to look for vertical portals.

1. The best place to start is www.alexa.com. Alexa is a directory of the most popular sites on the Internet and keeps a rank of the top 5,000,000 websites on the Internet. (Your site should be among them, if you are trying to promote your site!). Alexa has an extensive directory of the most popular sites on the Web. You can browse to the subject matter related to your site, and find the most popular sites listed. Not all of these sites are vertical portals, but most of them are! Moreover, you know exactly how popular they are! Use the Alexa "Browse Subjects" directory for categories where your customers are likely to congregate. Most categories will have a listing for "directories". These tend to be vertical portals. Note, however, that Alexa doesn't always place vertical portals in the "Directory" category. So spend some extra time surfing the Alexa subject directory, staying alert for other vertical portals in other relevant categories.
2. Another resource is www.VerticalPortals.com, which is a "directory" of vertical portals. Here you will find a listing of vertical portals for all topics. Note that this site lists both paid inclusion vertical portals and free inclusion vertical portals.
3. The next best way to find vertical portals is to trade links aggressively. In the process of trading links, you will definitely discover numerous vertical portals related to your subject matter, including ones that you may not have found in Alexa. Once again, the key is recognizing the features that vertical portals possess, so you can identify them when you see them. Since you should be trading as many links as possible anyway, expect to find some bonus vertical portals while you are at it.
4. The least effective, but nevertheless important way to identify vertical portals is to use the Yahoo and Google directories. Note that these are not the relevancy search results, but the hierarchical directories provided by these sites. Listed among the many websites in a given category will be numerous vertical portals. Trade links along the way as you visit each site looking for vertical portals. This is an important method to use to find vertical portals, because you may be able to find some of the portals that have reasonable traffic, but maybe not enough to make the Alexa top site ranks.