Tips for Submitting Your Listing to Online Business Directories

February 25, 2015

Start by submitting your listing to industry-related or local business directories.

By Maureen McCabe

In my previous posts about free Toronto Business Directories and Canadian Business Directories, I offered up lists of good-quality directories for you to submit information about your small business. Now that you’re prepared to start creating profiles on these sites, this blog post will provide you with some pointers on how to maximize the benefits of business directory listings, and how to avoid any potential negative impact on your website that could result from listing your business on poor-quality directories.

Make Sure You Submit Your Listing to High-Quality Sites

Most importantly, the key to maximizing the SEO benefits of free business directories is to ensure you are only submitting your listing to reputable sites. By choosing directories that rank well and receive a decent amount of traffic, you could potentially have some of that site’s authority passed on to your website.

When choosing which web directories to start with, focus on those that make the most sense for your business. These will likely be online business directories dedicated to your city or your industry. Next, check to see if the directories you are considering receive a decent amount of traffic by entering the domain at Alexa.com. The lower the Global Rank Alexa indicates, the higher the traffic that domain receives.

Not sure where to begin? Start with these two lists of Toronto business directories and Canadian business directories.

Make Sure Your Business Information is Consistent

You may have heard that having duplicate content about your business online can negatively impact your website. However, when it comes to directory listings, having the exact same information across web directories is highly beneficial.

Before you start submitting those listings, make sure you decide exactly how you will enter your information. Google will read your information — such as a phone number, business name and address — differently, depending on how they are formatted. So decide ahead of time whether you will list your business number as (555) 333-4444 or 555-333-4444, or your address as 123 Main St. or 123 Main Street. This level of accuracy and consistency can make all the difference when it comes time for Google to attribute this information to your business! You’ll also want to make sure that this information is exactly as it appears on your website’s contact page.

Make Sure You Aren’t Spammy

You may be eager to start submitting your business to hundreds of directories as soon as you finish reading this post — but it’s important that you take a more methodical approach to adding your business profiles to directories.

You don’t want to flag Google by submitting to a bunch of directories all at once. Google regularly crawls your website, and if it notices that you’ve been receiving hundreds of links from directories in a short period of time, your site could be penalized. Instead, take your time, submitting to only one or two directories per week so that you don’t alert Google to your activity.

For more business directory and SEO tips for small business, check out these blog posts:
Free Toronto Business Directory Guide for Small Businesses
How to Evaluate SEO Company. Independent Marketing Consultant Assessment. Part 1
Using a Keyword Search Tool to Create Great Blog Post Ideas

Like what you've read? Please share this article, here:

0 comments