One tactic to increasing your SEO online is adding your businesses to directories like Yelp, Foursquare and YellowBook. If you are spending the time to create profiles in directories like these and then not taking more time to really fill the profile out completely, you might be doing your business more harm than good. You need to make sure that if your business is listed, that people find everything they need right away and don’t have to go looking elsewhere. It’s like trying to cook a great meal with only half the ingredients when you’ve already started. SomeHealthy Body’s plate is going to look a little empty.
Here are a few important points to think about when creating content about your business online.
The Importance of Having Your Content Consistent
Seeing one of your local competitors on a directory, you freak out and instantly create a profile for your business. Why? Well in hopes that you get found as well. If you do this without thinking about it, you can cause more harm than good. Your profile content needs to be consistent across all directories otherwise Google will think that each directory listing you created for your business is actually a different business. This can actually prevent you from showing up when people are looking for your services. Take your time and do it right. Here is a great article to read about this, called the 4C’s of Local Online Search. Read it, get familiar!
What Are Key Words and How to Use Them
Keywords are words and phrases that you put in your business descriptions or any content that you put online. You want your keywords to best describe your business in the terms that someone would use to search for you. For example, if you are a massage therapist in Toronto, the obvious keywords are massage, therapist, RMT, Toronto. But there is also back pain, pregnancy massage Toronto, deep tissue massage, Toronto massage, and the list goes on. Can you just add these words to your website or profile? Nope. Google is smart and looks for them as part of content. Am I losing you here? There is a lot to think about when adding your business online but if you are smart about this, it is greatly beneficial for your online foot print.
Once Your Business content is listed on the Directories, You’re Done. Yes Or No?
NO! So you thought you did your job spending 3 or 4 + hours adding yourself to directories and you are done. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news but if you do not login to these profiles every 3 to 6 months, they go stagnant. Yup, all your hard work is lost. You have to login and change even just one thing in order for Google to think that it is still active. Who has time to do this? Crazy right? I know I’d rather be spending time with my family watching the newest show on Netflix everyone is raving about or working on other parts of my business. Wouldn’t you?
What Are The Top Directories To Be Listed On?
While there might be over 45 and growing for directory sites, there are only 25 that people commonly use. Still 25 is a lot. If you want to see what the top 25 are click here to get a free download of the top 25 most commonly online search directories. This would be a lot of work if you want to do this yourself. But if you have someone doing it for you, you can sleep better knowing every option has been maximized and save yourself the frustration of having to learn all the “technology stuff”.
I’m sure by now you’re realizing that directories are not the be all and end all of upping your online profile presence. We all know they are valuable as a free marketing tool but if you don’t place value on that free price tag and take advantage of every option within the profile, or worse yet, your information isn’t correct on each profile, well, that free price tag just got dollar amounts added to it. And I don’t think that was the point, do you?
