Claim Your Free Listings, Build Your Inbound Links
Did you know that you can claim any number of online business listings absolutely free?
That’s right. Most online directories like YellowPages (AT&T), SuperPages, Google Places, and Yahoo! Local, automatically create a free listing on your behalf (whether you like it or not) for at least one city (most likely where your “physical” location is thought to be). They do this because they ultimately want to up-sell you other offerings for a monthly fee. Whether these other offerings are worth the money really depends on the nature of your business. A plumber may very well benefit expanding their listing to include neighboring towns.
Regardless, we recommend to all our clients that they claim these free listings if for no other reason than to protect their brand, ensuring all the information is up to date, including the links to their site, blog, Facebook profile, and online store. But there is another compelling reason to claim your free listings: Link Building.
What is Link Building?
If you have done any kind of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for your website (or your clients’ websites) then you no doubt have spent a lot of time on Keyword Optimization. Well, the flip side of Keyword Optimization (which focuses on what you can do on your site) is Link Building, also know as Link Popularity, which focuses on what you can do off your site. Simply put, the more people who link to your website the higher your ranking on Search Engines Result Pages (SERP).
It used to be enough to just have lots of inbound links but the spammers and scammers started using link farms (and other black-hat techniques) to spoof the search algorithms and now such tactics will get your site banned for life.
Google and company now give greater weight to the quality of inbound links not just quantity, meaning that it is better to have links from sites and blogs well-established as authoritative sources (e.g. Wikepedia, Technorati, Psychology Today).
Claim Your Listings, Build Your Inbound Links
So, having links from authoritative sources increases ranking and visibility on search sites which in turns drives quality visitors. Without costing a cent! Why wouldn’t you do this? Before you shout out time let me remind you most of these listings already exist, all you have to do is claim them and make sure the info is correct. Five minutes tops! And although many of these directories offer a lot of additional features like microblogging and social networking (intended to keep you coming back, not necessarily a bad thing), by no means are your obligated to use them, therefore, you can update and forget.
Here is my shortlist of free listings worth claiming:
- Google Places for your business and Google Profile for your personal.
- Yahoo! Local
- Bing Local Listing Center
- AT&T YellowPages
- SuperPages
- MerchantCircle
- AmericanTowns
I suggest you search for your listing first before creating a new one; start with your business address and if it is not there, try your personal address. By the way, the data entered under a search engine’s local listing appears on their corresponding map. Google now enables businesses to include videos, tweets, and such right on Google Maps (read this post).
One point of clarification: claiming your listings is not the end-all of Link Building, it is really just the least one can do to protect their brand. It is an easy way to boost your standing with search engine without needing to be an SEO expert to do it. Link Building is an ongoing effort that should be part of your overall marketing strategy. I will elaborate on this in future posts.
What other listings have you found useful? Feel free to drop a comment below.
November 8th, 2011 at 3:38 pm
No brainer!
February 9th, 2011 at 10:44 pm
Love it! Will give it a try.
February 4th, 2011 at 8:54 am
My brother suggested I may like this blog. He used to be totally right. This post actually made my day. You can not imagine just how much time I had spent looking for this information! Thanks! From London.
February 4th, 2011 at 3:04 am
Thank you for another excellent post. Where else may anyone obtain that type of details written in this perfect approach? I have a demonstration that I ‘m at the moment focusing on, plus I have recently been on the check this sort of info.
January 23rd, 2011 at 2:21 pm
I ought to state just how obvious this should be to anyone with a retail business. Yes, of course claim your free listings! Everyone searches online these days so not taking advantage of the free exposure is like leaving the lights off in your store.
January 22nd, 2011 at 1:17 pm
good stuff. thanks for the info. i didn’t know about a couple of these. look promising.
January 21st, 2011 at 6:24 pm
oodle.com is making easy to create your own classfieds like Walmart’s http://walmart.oodle.com/.
January 20th, 2011 at 5:40 pm
Valuable info. Lucky me I found your site by accident, I bookmarked it.
January 20th, 2011 at 5:29 pm
We did this and we have a link on our contact page.
January 20th, 2011 at 2:00 pm
Thank god someone that actually knows what they are talking about – thank you.
January 20th, 2011 at 10:17 am
It’s very important for people to understand, that a majority of people who are looking to start a new business or home business haven’t done so before. There is a lot of uncertainty, especially when they are used to receiving a regular income which is usually non existant when starting up your own business. It always seems that you are throwing money into somthing, when deep down you really dont know if it will be a success. Researching your new business area, and taking everything one step at a time is the place to start. Start small and build your business slowly, giving you time to iron out the kinks. Ensuring that small business owners use their avaliable funds effectivly for Marketing and Staffing is crucial to the success of their business.
January 20th, 2011 at 7:34 am
100% agree with the post, but as someone at another site said, sometimes you succeed and sometimes you fail, even if its a simple task. I use backlink tools augesoft.
January 20th, 2011 at 7:11 am
Thank you for another informative post. Really enjoyed this one. – Kat
January 19th, 2011 at 8:01 pm
Great content.
January 19th, 2011 at 7:39 pm
This is absolutely excellent. Thank you so much for writing it.
January 19th, 2011 at 4:42 pm
Most of my web traffic comes from Google.
January 19th, 2011 at 3:56 pm
Great article here. I think the $25 a month for Google tags is a good investment especially for local retail and restaurants. Nice job putting this together. – Mike
January 19th, 2011 at 10:47 am
essential post , really good ideas. didn’t know about a number of these.
January 19th, 2011 at 7:12 am
I also use Craigs List for my trucking business and get good results free.
January 19th, 2011 at 7:05 am
Really helpful post. Good job. Thank you so much.
January 19th, 2011 at 5:53 am
I just bookmarked this site. Good info.
January 19th, 2011 at 4:58 am
I have procrastinated long enough and am really excited about starting my first business. I’m reading up on as much as I can to make sure I get started on the right track, and appreciate your info on free listings.
January 18th, 2011 at 5:51 am
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