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From a recent poll on Savvy Marketers, one of the things that businesses want to know about is promoting their business online to a local audience. I wrote a post about this a little while ago (Getting Found Locally) and thought it would be a good idea to expand a bit more on local directories based on speaking to local business owners.In the past, submitting to directories was an important part of link building and there were hundreds of directories to submit to of varying quality. Many of these directories sent zero visitors, so really submitting to them was a waste of time. However, there are directories that do send traffic and can often rank well in searches. Some of these either serve specific geographic areas or are national – the latter allows you to choose the location of your business. Added to that, they are worth submitting to if you only want business from your local area.
These directories include the following:
Yell.com – don’t forget your free yellow pages listing will also include a free website listing.
TouchLocal – covers the whole of the UK, but you choose your location. Free to submit to.
CityLocal – national site split into regional websites with a local representative to help you promote your business. Free for a basic listing but you can pay to enhance your listing. Sally Johnson runs the Hampshire CityLocal and is very proactive in promoting the site.
The Best Of – similar to City Local but without the free listings. You have to pay to be listed in The Best of. A local representative will write sales copy for your listing and is proactive in the promotion of their local directory.
Gumtree – a classifieds website but you can list business services and choose to place your business or ad within your area.
If you want to find specific local directories to your area, then you could perform searches on, e.g Hampshire business directory, London business directory etc.
As with any advertising, if you choose to pay for a listing with any of these sites then you need to make sure that you track visits in your web stats and find out where people found you if they telephone to enquire about your products or services!
If you’ve submitted your site to any local business directories and you’ve found them to be worthwhile, then please let us know and we’ll add them to our list. We’d also love to hear if you’ve used any of these directories and if they resulted in traffic to your website.
About Samantha McArthur
Sam McArthur is an internet marketing consultant with 12 years in the industry. She helps professional service businesses with their internet marketing strategy, helping them to see significant results from their online marketing activities, particularly within the search engines. She also consults on the latest internet tools, technology and best practice techniques.
