Is Your Business Listed?
A lot of business owners are disappointed because they spent a lot of money building a nice website but never get a lot of visitors. While it is very important to develop an attractive and functional site, that is only the first step. That website must be promoted to the public so people even know it exists. One effective way to promote your website is to get links from appropriate business directories. Good directories are very authoritative, both in the eyes of potential customers and Google. Many of the best directories get a lot of traffic that is very interested in making connections with small businesses. In turn, some of these visitors may become your lifelong customer.
The algorithms that search engine software uses may also view some of these directories as authoritative. Obtaining links from these good directories can help your own site rank better in major search engines too. Because these major directories may be authoritative to both users and search engines, they can be a very good place to get a listing and it’s recommended that you save yourself the work and use existing software solutions such as DirectoryBug for your actual submission process.
It is not always easy to know which directories will be effective for your particular business or website. You’ll eventually get a feel for which directories are sending you the most traffic. Submitting your site to dozens of different directories can be a very tedious job. You may need to fill out a submission form, confirm your submission in an email, and then wait to see if you got selected for a listing. This why it’s recommended to automate the process.
Manual or Automated Directory Submissions?
You can pay somebody to do this work for you. But it will take time to train your worker. If you choose to hire an experienced submission expert, it can get expensive. This is especially true if you own multiple websites and want them all submitted to multiple directories.
Nowadays there are software tools such as DirectoryBug that allow you to get these highly venerable directory listings for your business without all of the tedious manual work. A service like DirectoryBug also offers some added features that other directory software tends to miss. Such as only listing on sites the business is not already listed on, among others. This saves on wasted charges, duplicate listings and wasted time.
You may want to concentrate on finding directories that are specifically targeted to your business. This means they list local companies in your city or they concentrate on your type of business. This is an effective strategy, but it can also take a lot of time to research these directories.
Getting good listings on online directories is still an effective way to promote your website and generate more targeted traffic. The benefits of online directory submission software are pretty clear. If your business doesn’t have a citation strategy in place you may be missing out on serious potential business.