While many of your potential customers search Google for information on local services, inevitably a large portion of them find their way to a local business directory aka “citation”. Many of these directories spend substantial dollars on branding/marketing their sites to drive traffic, and Directories also do well with organic search rankings for your important search terms. So even if you can’t get your site ranked high for a specific search term, you can appear on a local directory site that ranks for that term. Perhaps even more important is that links to your site and mentions of your business aka “Local Citations” can help your site rank well in both “national” organic search as well as in the Google Places results (I still can’t get accustom to saying the “Google+ Local” results). Again, this is Google Gold! I have put together a list of the best local business directories for your SEO efforts. While other agencies have put together similar lists, invariably they focus on a mish mash of sites, many of which are irrelevant. As we all know Google wants you to be relevant and if you are linked to none relevant sites this hurts your sites grade. I wanted to go for only those that are truly important and worth spending time or money on.
If you would like me to add your site to ALL 55 sites, there is a monthly fee. I will also monitor and add new content or promotions as you need them. It is very important to maintain these directories as they purchase updated information and sometimes change the directory listings and use bad or old information.
Why Do You Need to Monitor Directory Listings? Let’s say you moved and you are in the process of updating your directory listings. You start with Yellowpages and move down the list. In the meantime Yellowpages purchases updated information from Citysearch which you have not had change to update yet, PRESTO – your Yellowpage ad now has the old information again. Or let’s say you hire an outside source to do a PPC campaign and they provide a tracking number. This temporary tracking number could end up being the one listed as your main number on the directories. This can skew the metrics of how the campaign is/was performing and if the number is not in service anymore, well you get the idea. I have relationships with these directories and can provide premium listings at a reduced rate which add video, images, review links, slogans, along with a number of other information so you can stand out from the crowd All at a fraction of what a premium listing would cost by individually listing with each directory. I add your directories manually and monitor them weekly, keeping your information fresh and accurate.
What are your thoughts on directory listings? Have you had good or bad results? If you had a magic wand what would you change in the directory listing world? Please leave your story below.
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