BE FOUND ONLINE — WITH FREE AND PAID DIRECTORIES
LOCAL DIRECTORIES
Directories and Links below
If yours is the kind of business that depends on LOCAL directories for customers, there are plenty of FREE online directories you can easily get listed in.
Google Places, which gets you on their map listing, and Google Shopping if you have physical products to sell, are great places to start. When you get listed here, whenever someone enters a related search into Google, your listing will come up, along with a few competitors.
A little tip here. If you want to rise to the top of Google Places, above your competitors, make sure you’re also listed in plenty of other directories as well. And make sure your business name AND your street address are listed in each directory, because when Google sees that, they boost your position higher on the page.
Besides Google, other important free sites to be listed on are Yelp, CitySearch, Yahoo Local, MapQuest, Local.com, SuperPages, WhitePages, Yellow Book, Bing Local, Ask City, AOL Local, AnyWho, BigBook, InfoSpace, Switchboard, 411.com, YP.com, FourSquare, YellowBot, HopStop, Live, ZipLocal, NavMii, Best of the Web, Topix, Show Me Local, InsiderPages and many more.
Many of these have a premium service that lets you list offers and deals to make it easier to draw people to your business.
To make it easier and faster for you, we have a terrific link here that has tons of these local sites listed, with descriptions, and links to their sign-up pages.
Directories and Links below
YEXT WILL POST IT FOR YOU… FOR A FEE
If you don’t want to go through the hassle of filling out the forms for each of these online directories, there’s a terrific service called YEXT. YEXT costs $150 to $500 a year, depending on which package you get.
The advantage of using them is, you have a single interface, meaning you only have to fill in your information once, and it automatically gets posted to more than 30 directory sites, including Yelp, Yahoo, SuperPages, CitySearch, MapQuest and tons of others.
Also, your listing shows up faster on these sites than when you submit manually, which could take 36 hours to more than a week for some.
Plus, YEXT allows specials to be easily created and posted to the network of directories. In this way, you can create a special offer to draw people into your store or business, and suddenly it appears on directories all over the Internet.
Whether you use this type of service or do it manually, if you have the kind of service where being listed in online directories can be valuable, there are plenty of great ones to choose.
