Print, Design & Websites
Posted: February 27, 2013 • Posted in: Website Design
Being found by your customers is an essential part of your marketing. There are hundreds of business directories where you can be listed, some free and some paid for. Are they important though and should you spend time in claiming your listings?
In the last edition of Impact we talked about the importance of Google Places to improve your chances of being found in local search results. It’s believed that Google does cross reference its own data with other directories on the internet to make sure the information is as up-to date as possible.
Therefore it seems sensible to make sure you claim your free listings to give yourself every opportunity to be found easily by your potential clients.
We don’t recommend paying for a directory listing as we believe that you should concentrate your time and money on improving the content of your website and on Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).
For the same cost of paying for a listing in a directory you can often achieve a better return on your money by focussing on SEO. However, if you can get a free listing it makes sense to take advantage of them to keep you ahead of your competition.
Also if they provide a link to your website this can offer some benefits from an SEO point of view.
Please be aware that you will often get a phone call from the directories to verify your listing, and inevitably they will try and persuade you to pay for an enhanced listing. Our recommendation is to decline and just ask for the free listing.
You will also find that you may get some spam mail so perhaps consider using a separate e-mail to register with so that your main e-mail address doesn’t get clogged up with spam.
If you don’t want to do this yourself we can happily arrange to create the listings for you. Please call us on 01284 752266 and we can talk through the options available.
